A Tale of Two Coaches: Obligation and Responsibility vs. Growth and Love

There is a quote from Hall of Fame college football coach Lou Holtz making the rounds on the internet that goes…

“Today’s athletes talk about rights and privileges. And the players 50 years ago talked about obligations and responsibilities. And to me that describes society today.”

It is not that new of a quote because it used to be about players 25 years ago and Holtz, who is now 84 years old has become a bit of a curmudgeonly social and political gadfly in his golden years with appearances on Fox News and making comments comparing playing college football games during last fall’s Covid pandemic before vaccines to storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Like a lot of older people, and people in general, Holtz is making public his yearning for a better, bygone time, but did that golden era ever exist, or is it simply a trick of memory?

Fifty years ago, Holtz’ sport of college football was not even fully integrated. African American players from across the South couldn’t in many cases play for their state university, no matter how talented they were, and the mere right to attend that school had been won less than a decade earlier. Imagine college football played without African American athletes? 50 years ago enforcing segregation was an obligation in some places

Many, not just football fans or admirers of Holtz as a coach (and I am an unabashed admirer of Lou Holtz the coach, not necessarily the historical observer) are looking at this quote positively as an indictment on our times. These are undoubtedly challenging times but those golden days just aren’t as quite golden as they may seem. Others are dismissing Holtz as a crank. He is cranky for sure, and at a certain age one may earn a right to a bit of crankiness and inflexibility. Just listen to my knees pop in yoga class and you’ll know flexibility is hard to achieve and even harder to maintain. Still, it is indispensable to our capacity to learn and grow.

At risk of sounding like Billy Joel, laying out the string of grievances from “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” I can say it was definitely burning 50 years ago, with an unpopular war in Vietnam raging, the Cold War, three icons of peace and understanding murdered in less than a decade, violence in our cities in opposition to civil rights and voting rights. So maybe it was better 75 years ago? World War II, no! 100 years ago?

None of this is exactly about sports but sports are a reflection of our society. Holtz is right about that. And we absolutely fight our battles for greater societal understanding on our athletic fields, courts, pools, and arenas. But the Holtz quote to me indicates that he is advocating for a mirage of a past, that celebrated obligation and venerated responsibility rather than embracing a future that demands increased flexibility and must be met with empathy and love. Obligation and duty are inherently neutral concepts. Being obliged to a wrongful cause or being dutiful to a bad one, can be very harmful and each requires little exercise of conscience or introspection. In other words, they are easy. By contrast, exercising one’s rights or giving access to or declining acting on privileges can be very hard, and require great understanding and forbearance. If you read more about Holtz, you’ll see him talking about the need to adapt and change. But this particular quote, the one making the rounds now, is about just the opposite and it encourages people to choose not to grow and that unfortunately misses the main point of sport which is to prompt growth.

If you need a famous coach to hold up as a role model, and I might be someone who does, I have one for you, Bill Curry. Curry’s playing career was shaped by legendary coaches Bobby Dodd, Vince Lombardi, and Don Shula, and his coaching career included stints as head coach at Georgia Tech, Alabama, and Kentucky and a second act of launching a football program at Georgia State, is from almost the same generation as Holtz, having just celebrated his 79th birthday in October. But if you listen to Curry, (www.billcurry.net) or follow him on Twitter (@coachbillcurry), or hear him in any context, you know he is resolutely a man who visits the past to learn from it and uses it to guide us to better tomorrow.

Sadly, Curry, who is at a time in his life when he is losing his teammates from his long NFL playing career, the men he describes as his brothers, at an ever-quickening rate, has taken a holiday break from Twitter for “spiritual growth.” I await his return, because he reminds us of what is best and that it almost always achieved through empathy and love. This is Curry on the transformative power of kindness…

“Unexpected, undeserved, unrewarded acts of human kindness change lives… every time. Their effects are undeniable.”

That is the world I want to live in and the team I want to be on. Team Curry. I am sure Coach Curry would be horrified to be compared to Coach Holtz, someone I am sure he also admires professionally, in this way. But to both give and receive those “unexpected, undeserved, and unrewarded acts,” we must be willing to grow and not hang on to any past, especially one that never really was. That is what sports are about.