By John Grindrod
Guest Columnist
Character is one of those intangibles that’s sometimes difficult to determine, especially when it comes to those we don’t really know on a personal level. However, in this age of ubiquity when it comes to how we scrutinize our stars, sometimes there’s a story that emerges, often on a social-media platform, which grabs the eye. In this case, it’s a story that shows that not all those athletes for whom we so lustily cheer, many of whom are long on ego and a sense of entitlement, are cut from the same flawed bolt of cloth.
In late August, in the sports world, the spotlight shines very brightly on the top dog on the sports landscape, professional football. While once upon a first-half-of-the-20th-century time, the kingpin sports were boxing, baseball and horse racing, it’s football, especially pro football, that now moves the needle, with the first game of this, the 104th season for the NFL less than two weeks away when the Super Bowl defending champion Kansas Chiefs host the Detroit Lions.
For the rest of the run-up to the season’s lid lifter, first-year players that were selected in last April’s draft and a group of undrafted free agents will be trying to impress team coaches and officials enough to make team rosters.
Of course, for first-round draft picks, there’s little doubt that they’ll make their teams’ rosters, especially the first-round picks that play what has been described as the most important position in all of pro sports, quarterback. That’s why a look at any list of the sport’s highest paid players shows the position’s value. According to the website overthecap.com, the first 14 highest paid all await snaps from centers with the top salaries now cresting $50 million a year.
Per usual, in the last draft, the position was again highly valued at the top, so much so that three of the first four players selected are quarterbacks. The Carolina Panthers selected Alabama’s Bryce Young first overall, the Houston Texans selected Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud second and the Indianapolis Colts selected Florida’s Anthony Richardson fourth.
Now, obviously, I don’t know any of these young men personally to offer any opinion as to their character or lack thereof. However, after a lifetime of following sports, I’ve read enough stories of professional athletes that suggest many carry with them a certain sense of entitlement. Often, big-time athletes, because of their preternatural athletic abilities, from an early age have been treated specially by family, school officials and coaches. As a result, many of them never truly grasped the meaning of the words, “Everything earned, nothing given.”
Now, lest I paint with too broad a brush, let me tell you of a story I ran across recently about one of this year’s high first-round drafted quarterbacks that suggest to me a high degree of character. The story involves Anthony Richardson and was one I came across in a tweet attributed to NFL aggregator Dov Kleiman.
Here’s Kleiman’s tweet: “Awesome: After a recent NFL rookie event, #Colts 20-year-old QB Anthony Richardson decided to stay behind after everyone else exited and clean up a big mess left by the draftees. He insisted on staying to help until the room was completely tidy, even though he was given the option to leave after NFL executive Troy Vincent told him, ‘You don’t need to do this.’
“Richardson told Vincent: ‘We left this room in an unacceptable condition, and it’s not right for us to expect the staff to clean it all up.’
“The Colts drafted a young man with high character and integrity.”
In a sport where so many others have given little regard to others and have time and again proven themselves to be, despite their extraordinary athletic ability, lacking in other personality ingredients that in the long run, matter far more than how many touchdowns they’ve scored, how refreshing it was for me to have read Kleiman’s tweet.
Come this upcoming season, I’ll be, per usual, paying close attention to how the newly drafted players are transitioning from college to the pros, but I’ll be especially interested in that young man starting his professional career 159 miles from Lima in our bordering Hoosier State, the one who remembered perhaps a mother’s admonishments from years earlier. I’ve a hunch he just may be a cut above.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
