MESSAGE #263 THE VALUE OF SPORTS

A Happy Belated Birthday to Scott Peters in Texas.

Today’s message is especially dedicated to the great Dan Horowitz.

Craig Masback was the 1980 U.S. indoor mile champion and former American record holder at 2,000 meters. His 1979 clocking of a 3:52.02 mile, one of his 30 sub-four-minute miles, put him at history’s sixth fastest miler at the time. Masback’s first sub-four-minute mile was run at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, England, where he was the second man to break the magical barrier. Mr. Masback is the former CEO of USA Track & Field and now Director of Business Affairs-Nike Global Sports Marketing.

I met Craig last night at his talk at Princeton University. The topic was “The Enduring Values of Sports-Facing Up to the Challenges of the 21st Century.”

Masback began by talking about how sports are in crisis, giving several examples of cheating, such as athletes using performance enhancing drugs and Nascar drivers illegally leaving pieces off of their cars so they are lighter. He then went on to say that Values and Community are just as important, if not MORE important than just results.

From Craig Masback’s talk, I could see that he and I are on the same mission…to use sports to help society. When you see all this cheating around you, you are more likely to cheat yourself. Masback gave an example of a restaurant in Florida that claimed they served grouper when upon further investigation, it was not grouper but tilapia or some other sort of similar fish.

I think sports are a microcosm of life. HOW you get there is more important than IF you get there. If you get straight A’s but cheated, it’s tainted. If you make a million dollars, but you only care about yourself, it’s tainted.

Some of the life lessons in sports are: honesty, teamwork, confidence, focus, concentration, goal setting, contribution, dealing with failure, and taking risks.

The skills you acquire, and the challenges you face in sports, are the same skills and challenges you will encounter in life. If you can succeed in sports, you can succeed in life.

Thanks for reading.