Seattle Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman has heard a lot about his famous rant from the NFC Championship over the last week. He's heard people make all sorts of nasty and crude comments about him including many on how he ever got into Stanford let alone graduated.
While the actions themselves were ill-advised (something that he has admitted) the way he has handled himself in the aftermath proves what kind of person he really is.
Personally, I love his passion and found nothing wrong with what he did. Yes, it was ill-advised, but I say that just knowing how folks would react (and did) on social media. We should want our football players to be as passionate as he was though. That way we know we are getting someone who is doing everything he can to win, and not someone who is going through the motions just to earn a million dollar paycheck.
Anyway, I digress....
One of the more puzzling developments to me was the number of people that questioned his intelligence and how he survived at a prestigious academic university like Stanford. While I see nothing in football that can prove or disprove someone's academic worth, Sherman has proven his intelligence and maturity with how he has handled himself over the last week.
He's shown that he is able to not only reflect on what he has done and how he presented himself, but he can give critique himself as well--and not just in a self-serving way that makes him look good.
In his latest post to MMQB he wrote this:
No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is. That’s not mine. It belongs to Irvin Himmel. Somebody tweeted it at me after the NFC Championship Game. If I could pass a lesson on to the kids it would be this: Don’t attack anybody. I shouldn’t have attacked Michael Crabtree the way I did. You don’t have to put anybody else down to make yourself bigger.
The post was lesson No. 1 of the 10 things he's learned over the last week. It's an excellent read; one I'd highly recommend.
We all make mistakes. It's all a part of being human. While it is important to apologize when we do (which he did) I'd say it is just as important to learn something from our mistakes--and not just that we shouldn't get caught or shouldn't have done whatever it is.
Sherman has done that. Did he have to go to Stanford to be able to do that? Absolutely not, but it does show that there is much more to the man than many are giving him credit for.
No comments:
Post a Comment