Page 2 Module 1- Education
A Commitment To Excellence
‘With grateful thanks to Lou Holtz whose presentation this section is based on.’
You are probably thinking, “What in the world does Lou Holtz, the football coach, have in common with all of us?” Well, we have an awful lot in common, for instance, our jobs. One day we are planting the mielies, the next we are picking the corn.
I know you have had tremendous success and I’m proud of you. But the Lord put eyes in front of your
head rather than the back so that you can see where you are going rather than where you have been. It is great for you to be here, but just like last year when we had a great football team, what we are more interested in now is the present time and how we will get back next year.
We really have an awful lot in common. The first thing we have in common is time. We all have 60 seconds to a minute, 24 hours to a day, etc. The difference is what we do to utilise our time.
When I get up in the morning, the first thing I try to do is organise my day. I read two newspapers to
find out what’s going on in the world. Yesterday’s newspapers tell me who did what, and in approxi-
mately five minutes I go through that newspaper, cut out all the articles of people who received a
promotion or did something worthwhile. I throw them in my briefcase, and in five minutes at the
office put it in an envelope with a simple little note that says, “Dear John: Just saw your picture in the
paper, want you to know how proud we are and hope you keep up the good work. Sincerely.” That way, whenever I have to call upon that individual he is going to look upon me in a favourable light.
I bought a product from a salesman 11 years ago and every year since I have received a communication from him which demonstrates after sales service excellence. I’ve tried to set up the same thing with all the athletes and coaches who are
very important to our overall future. Yes, we do have time in common.
The second thing we have in common is competition. I refuse to pick up a newspaper or magazine and read about the South-west Conference because all I read about is
how super everybody is going to be. Texas is going to be great and SMU is going to be fantastic!
I worry about competition, but I realize I can only coach one team in a game and that’s hard. I don’t want to offend anybody and I hope this won’t be interpreted as off colour, but when you have competition like I do, you’ve got to get up early and work harder in this extremely competitive world. But, as my Grandma used to say, and this is my feeling,
“You do the very best job you possibly can, if that’s not good enough throw it and start again..” I’m going to do the best job I possibly can.
The third thing we all have in common is that we all get discouraged. There has never been a person in this world who hasn’t gotten knocked down, but the one who gets up more times than he gets knocked down will be successful. You have become discouraged, but you also have gotten up more times than you have been knocked down, and that’s
why you are here.
We don’t ask our athletes, “Do you want to win?” Of course they want to win; everybody wants to win. The question I ask them is, “Can you live with failure?” If you can live with failure, you’re going to end up having it. I don’t ask, “Hey, do you want a million rands?” Everybody wants a million rands. The question is, can you live without a million rands? We all get discouraged.
The last thing we all have in common is that we all have problems. I’d love to tell you about all my problems, but you are not really interested
because you have enough of your own. I’m from
East Liverpool, Ohio where there is this oil well.
Once the oil well caught on fire and they put out a
call for anybody to come and try to put out that fire.
Firemen came from all the big departments around
East Liverpool, Chester, Wellsville and Tolanville
but not one of the trucks could get within 400 yards
of the fire because it was burning out of control.
Now, outside of East Liverpool is a volunteer fire
department with one fire truck, one ladder, two
buckets for water, three buckets of sand and
one blanket. They answered the call also.
They came down that hill, got within 400
yards of that fire where all the other fire
trucks had stopped because the heat was too
intense, but they didn’t stop. They got right up on top of the fire, jumped out of the fire truck, threw the two buckets of water and the three buckets of sand, took the blanket and beat the fire out. The owner of the oil well was so impressed he said, “You win the $3,000 reward. What are you going to do with the money?” The fireman said, “Well, the first thing I want to do is get those doggone brakes fixed on that truck.” The point is, we all have problems and always will have problems. It depends on how you handle them.
I have not always been a football coach. In 1963
I was an assistant football coach at the College of
William and Mary. It was a nine month a year job,
which meant the other three months out of the year
I had to get a job in order to support my family. I
have four children, two of each, and I’m real proud
of that.
I got a job that summer working for a guy by the
name of Gene Sears who still resides at Williamsburg,
Virginia. The job was selling cemetery plots. Now,
I know how tough selling insurance is, but I want to
tell you I have never had anything in this world
tougher than selling cemetery plots. My wife was
very skeptical. She said, “You won’t sell anything.”
Well, that summer I sold our car, our stereo, our TV,
everything we owned – but I didn’t sell a cemetery
plot.
I did learn something that summer though, that
has been my whole philosophy as a coach. Every-
body in this world needs help, and the person who
could help the most people would be the most
successful. There isn’t a business in operation today
that isn’t in it to be of service to other people. And
if you forget about what you want and start accen-
tuating what other people need and want, you can
get anything in this world you desire. Whatever you
want constitutes a goal.
I am very much goal-oriented. About 10 years
ago I listed 100 things that I wanted to do with my
life. Some of them were professional, some of them
business, some of them social and some of them
related to my family. I want to take my
family on a trip down the Snake River and
I am going to do it. I wanted to learn how
to juggle, to learn how to do magic, and so
far I have scratched off 37 of those 100
goals. I believe you have to be goal-oriented and
know where you want to go.
Goals cure boredom. About seven months ago, I
listed the 101st goal. I decided I wanted to fly an
airplane. We were 7,000 feet above ground in the air
with the school pilot, Gary Armstrong. He looked
over at me, winked and said, “Hey, Lou, what would
you do if I had a heart attack right now?” I said, “I’d
beat your butt all the way to the ground.” I really
wouldn’t have had much of a choice than to do that.
I decided then,”Hey, I want to learn how to fly an
airplane.” I believe that goals are extremely important.
Our goal at the University of Arkansas this year
will be to win the national championship. It was our
goal last year, it will be our goal next year and five
years from now. It was my goal five years ago. When
our athletes come back they are going to tell a lot of
crazy stories about Lou Holtz. The one thing I never
want an athlete to say is that “If Coach Holtz only
believed in us and knew how good we wanted to be
or what price we were willing to pay, we could have
been great.” I don’t think you should ever undersell
yourself, to your spouse, your family or the people you
work with. I don’t think you get discouraged by
failure.
Abraham Lincoln won three elections and lost 23.
Babe Ruth struck out every 1,300 times. And while
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb at age 24, he
ran over 10,000 unsuccessful experiments. When
Marconi said, “I have a theory that will enable man
to transmit sound through space,”they committed
him to the insane asylum. I think you have to have
goals and there is no such thing as magic in anything
you do.
Whether we are going to be successful or not in the future depends upon a couple of items. The first thing is that you have to have a sincere love of people. Basically, you have to worry about what other people need.
But I think it is also imperative that we raise our
self-image. I am convinced that you are not
born a winner and you aren’t born a loser.
You are exactly what you think you are,
nothing more and nothing less. If you think
well of yourself, you are going to perform
well. If I can raise the self-image of our athletes and our assistant football coaches, we will have a great football team next year. And I will promise this right now, the University of Arkansas will be in the bowl game next year even though we are not supposed to be very good. If I can raise the self-image of our athletes and of myself – it might be the Toilet Bowl in Flushing, New York, I am not sure – but we will have a good football team.
We all have more ability than we will ever use. So many of us get down on ourselves at times, and at others who have as much ability as we have. But they are not here because they don’t have the self-image that we have. They also don’t have the good conception of the job they are doing.
A lot of people say, “Well, I can’t be successful
because I am not good looking.” A guy introduced
me one time by saying, “The best thing I can say
about Lou Holtz is he’s not two-faced. If he was he
wouldn’t be wearing the one he has.” I stand five
feet ten, weigh 152 pounds, wear glasses, speak
with a lisp and have a physique and appearance like
I have been inflicted with berry-berry scurvy most
of my life.
Another thing people say is, “Well, I am not real
intelligent.” I want to tell you something about my
background. I ranked 234 in a high school graduat-
ing class of 278. That didn’t bother me, but the fact
that the principal said it was a rather stupid class
overall did bother me. The guidance counselor,
Miss Sloan, called me in at the end of my senior
year. I thought I was a good athlete, as a matter of
fact I could do everything with a football but
autograph it. I was a good student, and Miss Sloan
wanted to know if I was going to work in a steel mill.
I said, “I am going to go to Kent State University.”
And I will never forget what she said. She looked
at me and said, “Lou Holtz, there are a lot of people
in this world who don’t know what is going on, but
you don’t even suspect anything is going on.”
Nevertheless, I went to college and I graduated
after many years of perseverance.
Intelligence doesn’t have one thing to do
with success, nor does luck. But character
does. Character has a great deal to do with whether you are going to be successful or not. Character is nothing more than honesty, and honesty is nothing more than what you do in the dark.
I think that no matter how much you believe in
yourself, though, there comes a time when you have
to believe in someone far greater than you. In my
case it is God. I am not going to make this a religious
speech, but I will say that we all have that “foxhole
religion” when things aren’t going well. I can’t
begin to tell you how many times I prayed when
Texas had the ball on our two-yard line, and the
prayer went like this. “Oh God, don’t let them score,
let them fumble the ball, and when I go to Chicago
next time, I will change my ways.” And as soon as
they fumbled, I say, “That’s ok, God, I had my
fingers crossed, I didn’t really mean that.” We all
have that, but no matter how much you believe in
yourself you have to believe in someone far greater
than you.
I heard a story once which summed it up best. An
auctioneer held up a violin by the bow and said,
“Now tell me, my friends, what are my bids for the
old violin? who will start the bidding for me? A
dollar, who will go to two? Two dollars, going to
three. Three dollars going once, going twice and
going for three dollars to the. ..” From the back of
the room came forward a tall, gray-haired man. He
picked up the violin, blew the dust from it, tightened
up the strings and proceeded to play a melody.
When the music ceased the auctioneer in a very low
voice said, “Now, my friends, what are my bids for
the old violin? A thousand dollars? Who
will go to $2,000? Who will go to $3,000?
Going once, going twice, going three times
for $3,000! The people cheered, but some-
one asked, “I don’t quite understand, what
changed the worth of the violin?” And the auction-
eer replied, “It was the touch of a master’s hand.”
Many of us with our lives out of tune, tattered and torn, are auctioned cheaply to a thoughtless crowd, much like that old violin. With a glass of wine to drink we are going once, going twice, going and going until we are almost gone. But the master will come, and the foolish crowd can never understand the value of a man’s soul or the changes that can be made by the touch of the master’s hand. If you don’t believe yourself then believe in somebody far greater than you, because that is what brought you here and what will bring you back in the future.
The second thing I believe in is that there is a
solution to any problem in this world. They asked H.
L. Hunt once, “Why are you successful?” He said, “I decide what I want and I decide what price I am willing to pay.”
To me, that is a key phrase, what price you are
willing to pay. I have a lovely family and I’m
extremely devoted to them. But if you are going to be successful, if you
are going to provide services for other people, you
are going to have to be gone from home. Now, you
don’t have to be gone from home long, and you have
to put your priorities in the proper perspective. You
may have to do certain things at night for the business, but
you have to do certain things for your family, and
too much of either one is no good. You will get
pressure from the family like I got to be home every
night, and you can’t be home every night if you are
going to be successful.
About six months ago I got a “why am I not home
all the time” from my family. I gathered them all in
the car and drove down to the worst section of
Fayetteville, Arkansas I could find and pulled up in
the front of a home that was almost ready to fall
down. I stopped the car and I said, “I can be home
every single night, but you are going to live here.
There isn’t going to be any country club member-
ship. There won’t be a new dress or new
ball glove. But I will be home every night
if that’s what you want.” Well, to make a
long story short, if I am home too many
nights in a row they look at me funny and
say, “Are you sure you don’t have to be somewhere,
Dad?” You have to devote time to your family, but you also have to pay a price in order to provide services for other people.
I have heard so many people say, “I can’t do this,
I can’t do that.” The biggest thing I have to fight all
the time about being positive is self-pity. Why, I
could sit around all the time and feel sorry for
myself and the problem I am confronted with. I am
sure that you have to fight the same thing. Self pity
is nothing more than self destruction. What’s inside
of you will either bring you back or refrain from
doing so; will enable you to make a contribution to
society or not.
To be positive is nothing more than to be enthu-
siastic. Enthusiasm is one of the greatest qualities in
this world, and we all have it. I have had people say
to me, “I knew your football team was going to win
that Orange Bowl by the way they came out of that
locker room. They were so enthusiastic they almost
tore the door down. What did you say to them?” I
said, “Men, the last one out of this locker room will
have to start this football game.” They tore the door
down in order to get out of there. Enthusiasm is a
great quality.
I think also that you have to have a commitment to whatever you are going to do. The first three years of my marriage I tried to find a way out of it, because I really didn’t make a commitment to what I was going to do. I believe a commitment to what you are going to do is extremely important. Once a year I decide what I am going to do with my life for the next twelve months. I make a commitment to my family, to my job and to my religion.
I have done one thing that I don’t feel I was
successful at. I failed at professional football. I am
not proud of that, but I want to tell you this, I turned
a job down on three different occasions. Finally, on
the fourth time they asked me to coach the New
York Jets. I said to my wife and family, “I really
don’t care to go, but let’s just go up and see what it
is like. If we don’t like it we could always
come back to college football which we
thoroughly enjoy.” Anytime you ever en-
counter any difficulty, any problem without
making a commitment, the first thing to
happen is you are going to leave. That is what I did, and I am not proud to tell you that. The only reason I tell you that is because you might be able to benefit from the failure that I experienced, strictly because I did not make a commitment.
I don’t say that when you make a commitment
you are not going to have difficulties. There is a
book written by David Schwartz titled, The Magic
of Thinking Big. It is a tremendous book, and in it
he talks about failure and the way newspapers
always magnify it. He says the front page is for
people who want to read the news, the sports page
is for people who want to read the sports, the comics
for people who can’t read and the editorial page for
people who can’t think.
David Schwartz also discusses what happens to you when you have failure. The first thing that happens is you become frustrated, then you become aggressive. You don’t know what else to do so you become aggressive. That’s when you go home and punch your wife, spank the kids and kick the dog, etc. We all have that from time to time.
Then you become insecure. You begin to wonder if you know anything about the job you are doing and start worrying about your future. I don’t care if you have sold products for eight years and have been extremely successful, when you go a couple of weeks without selling you question it. I won 12 games in a row one time and lost two games and I started to become insecure.
Then you become very lonely. You don’t want to
be around other people, rap on any more doors,
which is just the opposite of what you have to do.
And then you become uncertain… you don’t want to make decisions. As a football coach, you start putting in alumni plays, then you resent every-
body that causes your failure, and then the last thing is you get an empty feeling of what basically happened to you.
Understand that this will happen to you when
things aren’t going well. You are going to question your own ability, and that is why one failure leads to more failures. You have to fight the failure inside.
The last thing I want to talk to you about
is the love of people. I think the love of people is
without a doubt the most important reason for any
success that I have had. I am as tough on the football
field as any human being, yet I genuinely love
people. It is impossible for people to dislike you if
you genuinely like them. And if you genuinely like
people then look for the good qualities in them. It
goes back to my basic philosophy that everybody in
this world needs help. And when you like people
you will go to great extremes to help them.
There are two things a person should never be ashamed to do in public: cry at a time of sorrow, and tell people he loves them if they have been a positive influence on their life. You ought to take the opportunity to tell people you love them before it is too late. I try never to let a day go by without telling my wife and children how much I love them and what a positive influence they have been on my life. Every day I try to show the people I am associated with how much they mean to me by caring for them. The only friends you have in this world, when things don’t go well, are those you eat with, sleep with, bleed with, pray with and cry with.
I believe very strongly in the family and approximately four years ago I got hold of a book called FamilyTime. I have four children and it is difficult to give those children all the time and attention that they really need to build up their self image and let them know that they are cared about. I want my children to believe in themselves.
In FamilyTime it says, “Set aside one special day
for a child and make it their day.” We have the other
children in the family make something for the child
we honour that day, just to show them we love them.
We honour them one at a time and they decide what
we are going to eat or where. After the meal we go
around the room and every child has to say all the
good things they can possibly think of about the
child being honoured.
When we went to the Orange Bowl, I had
to suspend three athletes who had scored 75
percent of our touchdowns. You don’t go
into coaching to kick people out, but I am
hired by the University of Arkansas to make
decisions predicated upon what I think is in the best interest, both now and in the future. And I am going to do that regardless of the personal consequences involved to me.
In addition to that, we lost an All-American guard
and we went down to Miami as a 21-point underdog
and not given much of a chance to win. And I don’t
mind telling you the seven days we practiced down
there were the seven worst practices that I have ever
seen. In all due respect to New York Life, if we
played your team you would have beat us by five
touchdowns. When you analysed the situation it was
simple. All they read about in the newspapers was
the athletes who weren’t there, and not one of those
athletes who were there had a positive comment
written about them. Everybody talked about what we
didn’t have, nobody talked about what we did have.
Finally, on December 30 in a fit of desperation, I
remembered what we tried to do to raise the self-
image of our family from FamilyTime. I called a
meeting of the entire squad and asked them to do two
things for me: to make any positive comments they
could about any other member of the football team,
and, to make it sincere. We went around the room
and one by one the athletes got up and spoke, and
they pointed out things that the rest of the football
players had basically forgotten. They reminded
everyone that we still had the best defense in the
country and that anybody would be lucky to score
seven points against. And they pointed out that we
had a great place kicker in Steve Little and a great
competitor in Ron Calcogny. Then Roland Sales got
up and gave one of the most moving talks I have ever
heard, yet it was less than a minute in duration. He
said, “You know, I have only been a running back
four games in high school as a defensive tackle. I
never carried the ball much and when I
came to the University of Arkansas I didn’t
even play as a freshman and was red-
shirted as a sophomore. I haven’t practiced
well but I haven’t felt well, but I am so
happy and thankful to have the opportunity to play
in this game because we have the greatest offensive
line and the greatest teammates that a young man
could hope to be around.” This was spoken by a
young man who had never started a game and never
gained 100 yards in his entire career, not just in
college but in high school as well. When we walked
out of that meeting there was no doubt in my mind
that we were going to be successful; we had a goal
to win the ball game.
That game was a great win and without a doubt the highlight of my career. Not because we won the football game, but because I think we won a group of football players who will go out and be better members of society.
Just to review the things I strongly believe in: everybody in this world needs help; set your goals and don’t undersell yourself; have a good self-
image, and; raise the self-image of the people around you. Make it a point to bring Encourage them and you will make this a better world to live in.
You can do anything in this world if you put your
mind to it. Make a commitment to whatever you are
going to do, and have a genuine love of people.
It’s all about ATTITUDE and not necessarily aptitude. It’s about your willingness to grow, to adapt to changing circumstances that life throws at you, and to never give up. Every day is a learning day and even if it is a tiny insignificant (in your mind) event, the mere impact on who you are gained from an experience is what counts. Never stop learning and always keep the door of your mind open. You may be pleasantly surprised.