GRAVITATIONAL PLAYERS, PEOPLE

Gravitational players do what?

They find the ball and put it where it belongs.

They make the move that changes the game.

They are the people that make a difference.

Some of the players with that sort of pull?

I start with Joe Montana, and here’s why:

As great as he was, and he was good enough for four Super Bowl wins and three MVP awards, you hardly see him on television.

Wouldn’t he make a good color guy on a broadcast team?

Or a member of a sports panel breaking down games and trends?

There is no Joe Montana show, no special program for the Eighties icon.

His fellow four-timer Terry Bradshaw, the Seventies icon, does the job for both of them.

The man of the Nineties, three-timer Troy Aikman, is working it with Joe Buck, but no Montana.

Was Montana more of a gravitational player than the other two?

Based on his career after sports, I’d say yes.

He did what he did and moved on.

He threw the ball that became THE CATCH, among other highlights.

We don’t hear a network guy say, “And my partner the hall of famer Joe Montana.”

Why would a guy with a bright future under the hot lights of television reporting ditch it?

By no means did Montana want to be the grumpy former player who criticized current players.

In fact, he told Marchand he didn’t really want to critique anyone.

“I hear guys say, ‘He did this, and he did that.’

I say, ‘How do you know that he did [what] that offense does or what the defense does or whose mistake it is?’ Making that kind of judgment wasn’t fair to the players because I had it made on me so many times.”

 

That sounds like a gravitational player to me.

 

Larry Bird Kind Of Gravity

It wasn’t all Joe in the Eighties, not all football, not with Larry Bird on the basketball court.

Like Joe, Bird keeps a lower profile.

He did what he did and that was enough.

Instead of reminding everyone how great he was, and he was, he has others speaking up for him.

That’s what gravitational players do?

Early in his career he said he wanted to be the fattest man to leave Boston.

He looked like he could do that, but he left a different way after he ruined his back laying cement for his mom’s driveway.

The player he was at the end was ready to retire, but that wasn’t the story.

The Dream Team came first.

 

Gravitational People? You Know Them By Other Names

We find our sports heroes based on their record.

Second place and every place after?

Fans don’t remember, but families do.

Someone played baseball in high school and that’s it?

No way, not based on the talk in every tavern in every town across America.

There’s always someone who peaked and never got over it.

The best outcome is applying what worked in sports to real life.

Practice, conditioning, more practice, then a game.

In real life that means helping others succeed, work on your own success, show others what you’ve done, then get together and do it better.

Do that for the next  year and get back to me.

Or maybe a month, or week?

How about doing it the rest of the day and see if anyone notices?

Go head and try being gravitational.

That’s how gravitational players develop into gravitational people.

How’s it going so far?

Have you started?