National Signing Day and the Super Bowl that just passed annually represent football’s most over-hyped week.
Nothing says excess like glorifying high school players before they’ve even taken one snap in practice.
Nothing says excess like two weeks of over-analysis of a single winner-take-all game.
But there are lessons to be learned from two teammates that arrived at the Super Bowl in very different ways; Peyton Manning and Jordan Norwood.
Jordan Norwood is a graduate of State College and Penn State and a star of two of the most electric offenses in school history. Penn State fans remember his clutch catches and reliable hands. What you may not know is that he was one of the smartest and toughest players to play here.
He understood the roles of every player in the pass game and could switch positions in the middle of a game. He could take a hit and keep on playing — and he looked like he was still a sandlot player (and he still does). Off the field he was a model citizen and an excellent student.
But there was no signing day hype for Jordan. His decision came down to Bucknell and Penn State. In fact, when it came time to offer scholarships to receivers at Penn State, Jordan initially had the vote of just one coach — but it was the right coach. Joe Paterno told his staff: ‘I am offering Jordan a scholarship. Argue all you want but this is my recruit.’
Over a decade later as a punt landed in his hands, Jordan showed once again how right his old coach was on a Super Bowl record 61-yard return. Seven years after his Penn State career ended, he is still in the NFL. Not bad for a guy that flew under the radar on signing day.
But recruiting experts cannot measure heart, drive, and commitment. Jordan has them.
The other lesson comes from Peyton Manning. Over the years I’ve met and even recruited some members of the Manning family — from Archie to Eli who came to Penn State’s camp and his brother Cooper who considered the University of Virginia when I was there.
The reputation they have for class is well deserved.
Certainly Peyton Manning, one of most highly-sought players in the country, had a signing day that was a big deal. His football career has proven worthy of his advanced billing. But what Manning made look easy came from years of hard work born from a respect for the game.
Photo of Peyton Manning by Jeffrey Beall // Flickr.com
My former coach Jim Caldwell coached Peyton for many years. Years ago, when Caldwell was visiting I asked him to share with the guys I coached what made Peyton so successful; a relentless drive to improve himself every day.
Drive is a blessing and a curse in an athlete. It takes many repetitions of every play, every throw, and every situation to make the final results on game day look so easy to fans. For older athletes, the drive never recedes, but the repetitions it takes to perform start to add up. They wear on a player as much as the games themselves.
Like Peyton, I grew up in a football house and was raised with reverence for the history of the ultimate team game. Peyton’s colleagues always talk about his respect for the game. People who respect the game understand that anything less than their maximum level does a disservice to the game they love.
They understand the history of the game and relish being a part of it.
Peyton’s respect for the history of the game became evident to me in a letter of support he’d written to Joe Paterno five days after his career ended at Penn State. Peyton mentioned the Penn State teammates he played with in the NFL and the love and respect they had for Joe Paterno.
The letter spoke volumes about how Peyton looked at the world and the values he learned in his family.
Those values included loyalty and a commitment to the team. That was never more evident than this year. This was far from Peyton’s best year statistically. He endured adversity he’d never seen in his career yet he handled it with class and maintained a commitment to doing what he could to help win. But I suspect that when it is all said and done it will rank as one of his favorite seasons because of the way it ended.
In football, ultimately it is the end result that you attain as a team. No one has reunions for teams that lost in the playoffs but had a player set an NFL record. Years from now, no one will care about anyone’s stat line. They’ll remember the moment they held up the Lombardi Trophy.
If he rides off into the sunset, the football gods will certainly smile on Peyton Manning and welcome him into the realm of the immortals, Champions who made the game better by the way they played. We can argue about where he ranks among the all-time greats later — an argument no one can settle.
For now, just relish that we witnessed a player that we will tell our grandchildren about. We witnessed a player who respected the gridiron gods and helped us appreciate the glory of the most uniquely American of sports.
As the book closes on this season and recruiting the lessons are this; what happens on signing day is irrelevant to a team’s or an individual’s success. Signing day hype or a lack thereof won’t define your career. It is what comes next. Do you have respect for the game? Do you have heart and drive? That is how guys like Peyton Manning and Jordan Norwood end up on the same Super Bowl Championship team from such different places and that is a lesson for fans and players alike.
