Lou Holtz

Lou Holtz spoke about the importance of faith and belief in God. He shared personal experiences and emphasized that being a Christian does not eliminate problems, but it helps in coping with them. He mentioned the significance of having a relationship with God and how faith can guide and provide peace. Holtz also discussed the influence of the Bible and shared lessons from the story of David and Goliath. He highlighted the importance of obedience, not running away from challenges, believing in God's presence, and taking action. He concluded by mentioning the impact his wife has had on his life and the advice to listen to one's spouse. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry, for that wonderful introduction. It is obvious that Jesus Christ is present here, and as it's said in the Bible, Peter said on the Transfiguration on the mountain, Master, it is good for us to be here today. I think that's appropriate also for me. It is very good for me to be here today. We have an obligation as men to be leaders, to be leaders of families, to be leaders of children, to be leaders of the community. But before we can be a leader, we must be in control of our lives and have a close association with God. What I'm going to say and share with you today are things that I honestly feel in my heart. I'm not saying they're absolutes. I'm not saying they're things that everybody should believe. I can only tell you how I believe in my heart. Being a Christian does not eliminate problems. There was a time when I was younger thinking if I was a Christian, I wouldn't have problems. And gentlemen, I'm here to tell you it probably presents more problems being a Christian than it does not. But what I can promise you without any equivocation of mine whatsoever is that being a Christian enables you to cope with the problems better than any other way. I've often said Christ will never send anything your way you cannot handle. But like you, many times I've often said I think God overestimates my talents and abilities. I was raised a Catholic. All my life I was a Catholic, and I'm very proud of it. I was an older boy when you had to learn Latin. For an individual, one particularly smart test was rather difficult. I'm sure you're well aware of the fact that I ranked well in the lower half of my graduating class. If it was not for me, there would have been no upper half of the class. And as I said so many times, it isn't a question whether you're smart enough. It's a question whether you believe. It isn't talent. It isn't ability. I firmly believe it's faith. As an older boy, and as a Catholic at a time where you could not eat meat year-round on Friday, I can't begin to tell you how many times I wished the apostles had been ranchers rather than fishermen. But I also believe this, that God does answer prayers. God answers prayers. You know, we all have that foxhole religion. I can't begin to tell you how many times I prayed when Michigan had the ball on our four-yard line. Oh, God, you don't let them score, and I'll straighten out my life. I think we all have that type of mentality. But when I was a youngster, I used to pray that God would enable me to be a good athlete. I don't think there's anything I wanted more than to be a good athlete and to be able to participate in athletics. But I wasn't. I was a very poor athlete. I second-stringed most of my life. You probably remember when Tim Brown won the Heisman Award, and I was up in New York. And I was interviewed by, I think it was Jim Nance at the time. He said, did you ever have aspirations to win the Heisman? I said, I did. I always wanted to win the Heisman because if I did, I would have accomplished two things. I would have been the first person from Kent State to ever win the Heisman. And I would have been the first third-teamer to ever win the Heisman. And I prayed to be a great athlete, and God never allowed me to be. And yet He took me and led me into a profession where I had the opportunity to be involved in athletics my entire life. And I was at the University of Minnesota, a job that nobody really wanted, and I wasn't sure I wanted also. I was up there, and I wasn't sure whether we wanted to go or not, and I took my wife, my two children up there. And when we tried to discuss it, everybody was on a different page. I then asked the family to go into a different room. They all went into a different room, and I asked them to pray for one half hour for proper guidance on what to do with their lives. Gentlemen, it was amazing when we came back after that half hour of individual prayer, how we were all together, how we felt it was the proper thing. If we just put our faith in God's hands, if we have a faith in Christ, He will lead us in the proper direction and give us the proper guidance. See, if you want some great advice, I say listen to God and read the Bible. I think Proverbs 3.5 is a great way to live. And then a phrase that is said, if you want approval of both God and man, then lean not on your own understanding, but put all your faith in God, and He will direct your ways and crown your efforts. I'm not a very smart individual, but I do know this, that no matter what you accomplish, you can win national championships, you can do this, you can have standing ovations, but there's nothing in this world that means more to you than your relationship with God. There's going to be a peace and a tranquility within your life that nothing else you can ever hope to accomplish will ever satisfy. See, life is faith. We get in the car and we have faith that the other driver is going to stop. We get on an airplane and we have faith that the plane is going to work. But so many times we don't put our faith in Christ, in God. See, I don't worry about the past. I've made an awful lot of mistakes, but I don't worry about the past. See, happiness is nothing more than having a foreign memory. You can't remember what happened yesterday, you feel pretty good today. You can go through, you read the Bible all the time, where Christ forgives your past. I don't care what you've done, your past is forgiven. And I really don't worry about the present as well. In Matthew 11, 28 it says, Come unto me all that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. See, I don't worry about the present. The past is forgiven, the present is taken care of. I forget the passage, but it says, Even the lilies of the field and the birds are clothed in the beauty of it, etc. So I don't worry about the past, I don't worry about the present. And we should not worry about the future. But like everybody else, we sit there and we say, God, I believe that Jonah was in the well for three days. I have no problem believing that. And I have no problem believing about Noah in the ark. And I have firm faith that Moses separated the Red Sea. And I firmly believe that you took five loaves and seven fishes and fed 5,000 people. I believe that. But God, you don't know how good Michigan is. Have faith. It's so important. You know, people say, well, you give me proof and I'll believe. If you have proof, that's not faith. That's fact. Faith is believing when the facts are not always there. But we have to go through life with faith. And I don't know how people can cope with the everyday trials and tribulations of life without a faith and belief in somebody far greater than them. People ask me all the time, who influences you or what books do you read? I don't think there's any doubt the Bible is the most positive book in this world. If you want to know how to live, just go through and read Proverbs. I used to share Proverbs with our football team. The one thing I truly regret was I didn't share enough of the Bible with our football team. And sometimes I got to the point I said, you know, Lou Holtz, you're a football coach. You're not a theologian. But I also think we have obligations to profess our faith, particularly to those people we're responsible for, which is our children and our spouses. We didn't learn so much from the Bible. Just very briefly, for example, David and Goliath. David and Goliath, we all know the story of David and Goliath. Goliath, any child five years of age can tell you where David was out in the field. His father gave him some things to take to his brother. And he went to the brothers in the Philistines. And the Israelites were there. And Goliath was down there challenging the Israelites. And David just showed up and said, what's going on? He said, they want somebody to fight them. Nobody will. And David said, I will. And they said, oh no. He said, yes, I will. And they wanted to put on his heavy armor. He said, no. And he took a slingshot. And he said, God will be with me. And he went down there. And he slung the slingshot. And he killed Goliath. And he cut his head off. Everybody can tell you. But what lessons can we learn from that? Well, many of them. First of all, let's be obedient. David was obedient. When David's father said, will you go take this? He didn't say, no. That's not my job. I don't want to do that. Second thing, when he got there, he didn't run away from a challenge. So many of us run away from a challenge because we don't realize that God and Christ is with us. And the third thing, he believed. And he said, God will be with me. And he didn't listen to all the doomsayers. People are always going to tell you, you can't do this. You can't do that. And then, of course, he had prepared himself in using the slingshot to protect the sheep. And then, of course, he selected the proper method and he acted. He didn't stand around and procrastinate. He made a decision and he acted. And then he finished the job. There's so much we can learn as we go along from the Bible. I've had so many wonderful experiences. I'll never forget the time I went to Omaha, Nebraska, to speak at a Notre Dame club. And they honored a young lady there. She was luckily 64 years of age and had eight children. Seven of them graduated from the University of Notre Dame. Lawyers, doctors. And I sat down and I want to tell you, she reminded me of my wife so much. My wife's a very, very special person. If you really want some great advice, listen to your spouse. Nobody loves you as much. Nobody knows you any better. Nobody cares about you anymore. Nobody will be more honest with you. My wife, I think, is a saint. And I want you to understand this, as I've told my wife. It's more difficult to live with a saint than to be one. But I was with this young lady, as I say, about 65 years of age. And there was a peace and a tranquility about her. And I said, how do you keep this peace and tranquility? And she said, I pray. And she then told me something that I want to share with you. She said, if you really want something, like I wanted a good Catholic spouse for my son. She said, I would say the rosary every day for 30 days, asking for a request. And then I would then say the rosary for 30 days after, thanking our Blessed Lady for answering it. She said, I've never done that, that it hasn't worked. And I want to tell you something. I've done the same thing. Let's not forget our Blessed Lady. Let's not forget the power that our Blessed Lady has with our Lord Jesus Christ, the Mother. See? The rosary has unbelievable power. See, God wants us to dream. Here he talks about the 108 goals, and that's true. But you go through, God wants us to dream, and we ought to still dream, and we ought to dream big. Do not be afraid to dream. The one thing I worry about when I'm out of church is, will I stop dreaming? As long as we can dream, there'll be an enthusiasm for us to do things. And if we dream, then God will enable us to strive for it. Let's remember Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King didn't get up and watch this in front of thousands of people and say, I have a strategic plan. Nobody would have listened. He said, I have a dream. And I think we need to have dreams. And I don't believe there's any dream in this world that we have that Christ won't help us reach if it's in his plan. I firmly believe that God has a plan for all of us, and our obligations be the very best we possibly can be. One of the things I want to do is float to Snake River. Several years ago, maybe three or four now, I took my wife, my four children, my 76-year-old mother-in-law. We went out to Hell's Canyon to float to Snake River. Gentlemen, I had no idea how difficult that was nor how dangerous. Two people drowned on the river that week. I should have known it was quite dangerous because a lot of people offered to send their mother-in-law with me. We're going to be there three nights and four days. We get in that raft, and I put on my life preserver. We're not there. We got the professional guide. We're not in that raft five minutes. And the guy said, get ready. We're going through a class five rapids. I had no idea what a class five rapids was. It just looked like it was fun on TV. I said, what's that? He said, that's the most dangerous you can go through. I said, give me an example of class six. He said, Niagara Falls. We hit that raft, that water. My feet go up over me, and I came out of my raft three seconds before my right thumb. I broke my right thumb in four different places, but I didn't realize it. You see, I came up underneath the raft. They didn't teach me to walk my way up from under the raft. I went back down thinking the raft would continue. But unfortunately, I was going at the same rate of speed as the raft, and when I came up the second time, I came up underneath the raft. It was at that precise moment when I realized winning the national championship wasn't the most important thing in my life. And the only thought that goes through your mind is the word win. Win stands for basically what's important now. Decide what you want to do, have a faith in God, and just say what's important now. You want to be a better Christian, you get up in the morning, what's important now? Get out the Bible. Pray. Go to confession. Whatever you have a dream or goal, just what's important now. See, there was a time when we believed that we were special. But if you go back and you look at it, what has happened to the individuals that believed we were creatures of God? I guess we have to go back when Copernicus came out and said that the world does not revolve around the earth. And then Darwin came out and said we're nothing more than descendants of animals. And then Freud came out and said we aren't even responsible for our actions. And then pornography became commonplace. And we see ourselves acting as animals in so many different ways. I'm here to tell you I believe in the bottom of my heart that we are creatures of God and we are special. How else can we account for the fact that you can see me? Because you have 100 million receptors in your eyes. How else can you account for the fact that you can hear me? Because you have over 24,000 fibers. You're not paralyzed because you have over 500 muscles, over 200 bones, and over 7 miles of nerve fibers. And you have a heart that beats 36 billion times a year, year after year. And you have blood, 5 quarts of it, with 2 trillion blood cells. And each cell has 1 million molecules. And each second, each second, 2 million blood cells die and are replaced instantly by 2 million other blood cells. You have a brain that weighs 3 pounds with 13 billion nerve cells. More than two and a half times the people on this earth. How can we sit here and say that we aren't special? How can you look at the earth? How can you look at a human individual or a baby and not realize that there's a God? You know, to be different, people are going to take cheap shots at you. And we're here today. And God has blessed this, it's obvious. I congratulate the people that put this together. This is magnificent. But I knew it would be filled. And I knew that this day is going to change the lives of many people in the audience, and hopefully including me. Because when you pray on something for a year, and you do it in God's name, and God blesses it, it's going to be successful. But the problem we're going to have is the same problem I had in football. We're here. And we feel Christ's presence. And we make resolutions. But what happens when we go back to the church? And if you go back to the church, and you go back to your family, and you stay isolated, and go back doing the same things you did before, you're going to get the same results. What needs to happen here today is for us to make change and go back and put together other men. And have weekly meetings to re-insure our faith. Because we must stay focused on what we're trying to do. It was like in 1989, we opened up with the University of Michigan. We're coming off an outstanding year, but we also had to play Michigan up in Ann Arbor. When our football team came back to report in the fall, in 1989, I talked to them about the schedule and the difficulties, and I said, there will be no challenge greater than going up to play the University of Michigan, our opening game under Bo Schembechler. And if we're to win that football game, we better have great fall practices. I said, you're going to make mistakes on September 12th in Ann Arbor. I will forgive them. The one mistake I will not forgive is a mistake to prepare. If you fail to prepare, that's a mistake that I can never forgive. We went out to first fall practice, outstanding enthusiasm like we have here today, a sense of purpose, we're going to change, we're going to do this. But each day, we lost that enthusiasm. By the 10th day, we had forgotten why we were practicing. We had forgotten the fact we were going to play the University of Michigan. Instead of focusing on what we're trying to do, we were more worried about the fact we were tired and we were worn out. And on the 10th day, I called them up. I said, man, I know you're tired and worn out. It shows in your practice. And I feel your pain. So I said today, I called Bo Schembechler, the coach of Michigan. I really hadn't called him, but I told our team I did. I hope the priest will forgive my lack of honesty. And I said, I called Bo today, and I said, Bo, are your Michigan players tired? And he said, yeah, we're real tired, Lou. And I said, Bo, we're real tired too, so I'll tell you what. I said, Bo, you give Michigan the players a day off, and I'll give Notre Dame the players a day off. And then Bo said no. Bo said he didn't care how tired you were. He was going to practice. Because he has a real tough opponent in our second game. Well, their first. I said, I don't want to practice here, but if Michigan is going to practice two hours, we've got to practice two and a half. It took us three hours to get two and a half hours of good practice in. But the enthusiasm was back because of our purpose. It worked so well, the first day I walked out, the next day I called him up, and I said, man, I called Bo today. And they looked at me real funny, and they said, what did Bo say? And I said, Bo, I said, I know your players are sore. I said, I'll tell you what, let's put them out without pads today. Let's practice in shorts. Bo said no. Bo said he had to scrimmage. I said, man, I don't want to scrimmage you. But if we're going to beat Michigan, we have to scrimmage. I don't want you to get mad at me. You remember this when you see Bo on September 12th. Bo's the guy that did it. Well, we had a great scrimmage. I did it for four straight days. Every day I started off practice by saying I called Bo today. I walked out the fifth day before I could say a word. One of our players said, hey, coach, I called Bo today. And I said, what did Bo say? He said, Bo said his players eat steak and lobster. See, let's stay focused. And we can't stay focused if we don't go back and change certain things and get together and get Bible studies or a group of men together to meet for breakfast and share thoughts and ideas. See, as Christian men, we have certain obligations. If certain obligations conduct ourselves in a certain way, the greatest obligation we have in this world is to provide the leadership for our families. I know we have many single individuals here today, single men. And that's great that you're here with us today. But you're going to be in a position of leadership if not with the family as a teacher. Or you're going to adopt or become a big brother. Because if we are really, truly Christians, we are going to go out and give to other people as well. As Christians, we're going to reach out and try to help other people. Consequently, we have to have our lives together. I've tried to keep my life rather simple. As I said, I wasn't very smart. I don't think it's important whether you're smart or not. I think it's important to believe that Christ is with you, and I've always believed that. I've always believed that Christ would have a role in my life. I remember Sister Mary Harriet in the seventh grade not particularly liking me. She looked at me one time when she gave us a difficult test, and I looked at Sucker, and my eyes started rolling around. I knew I was in big trouble. She could tell I was in big trouble, and she looked at me, and she said, Don't even think about it. She said, If I even suspect you're cheating, I'm taking 10% off your grade. I got out the book and said, 90% sounds good to me. All right. But it's belief. We have to have a belief. We have to have a belief in so many things we do and the way we do it. See, I think what's important for us is just try to simplify our life. If I put 10, 152 pounds, wear glasses, speak with a lisp, have a physique, it appears like I've been inflicted with beriberi and scurvy most of my life. As I said, CBS, I have the face that's ideally suited for radio. If you put all the talents I have into a computer, the last thing you would come out is a football coach, etc. What I've tried to do is just simplify life. It's not real complicated. But I've said so many times over and over, and I cannot possibly sit down here without sharing with you the things I firmly believe. Just do what's right. Do what's right in your heart, and if you have any doubt, get out the Bible. Just learn to live our life by just saying, Hey, what's right and what's wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I think it's right to be honest. I think it's right to be on time. I think it's right not to have sexism and racism. I think it's right not to be bitter. There's not an individual in this room that doesn't have a reason to be bitter about so many injustices done by us, by the media, by a spouse or somebody. I've seen people grow old being bitter about something that happened ten years ago, and they're the type that the spouse has to hire pallbearers when they pass away. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot be in accordance with Christ's will if we're bitter. I also think it's important not to feel guilty. I look over there, and I see confessions. I sit on TV, and I hope the priest will forgive me. I've never gone into a Catholic church where there isn't a confessional. That means we're going to make mistakes. It doesn't mean we're a bad person. It means we may have made a bad decision. If you have any doubt about how important it is to do what's right, to have things go in the proper vein, I suggest you look at the schools where several years ago the Supreme Court ruled you could not post the Ten Commandments on the walls of the school because it put undue pressure on students to behave in a certain manner. And we look at what's happening in our schools with the teenage pregnancy and the crime and the violence, et cetera. Let's just conduct our lives by saying do right. I also think it's also important that no matter what we do, we be totally committed to excellence. I coached at Ohio State in 1968 under Woody Hayes. We won the national championship, and I'm a great admirer of Woody Hayes. I don't condone everything Woody did. But Woody didn't worry about being popular. What Coach Hayes worried about was everybody being the very best they possibly could be. A few years ago the Cleveland plane dealer called me and said, what's the difference between athletes today and 25 years ago on the national championship team? I said, it's probably the same difference I see in society today. Today everybody wants to talk about their rights and their privileges. Twenty-five years ago people talked about their obligations and their responsibilities. Ladies and gentlemen, when we take on a spouse, when we bring a child into this world, we have obligations and we have responsibilities. And our obligation and responsibility is to make those people be more productive, to feel better about themselves, and to walk in accordance with Christ's wishes. That's our obligation. When we join a team, we have an obligation to other people as well. I'm sure you all remember when we were ahead of Stanford in 1991, 16 to nothing, and lost the football game. It was a very decimating loss, a devastating loss because the national championship was no longer going to be realistic. I might also add that sometimes the expectations of people are unrealistic. We can't worry about that. All we can do is the best we can. As I said to the team in the locker room after the game, we aren't going to win the national championship. So you're going to think we ought to lower the standards. I said the greatest disservice we can do to people is to lower the standards because we lower the standards. We're saying I don't think you're very good. I don't think you're capable of accomplishing very much. And if we don't have a faith in God and a faith in ourselves, we're going to lower the standards for our children because we worry about being popular rather than being a leader. We have high standards. You don't say if you don't reach them you're God. You say here they are and I'm going to help you reach them. But it starts. We have obligations. I'm going to help you reach them, but we're going to do the best we can and we aren't going to accept anything less. And I said we aren't going to lower the standards. We're going to raise them. We went out to practice, true story. You couldn't give one. I said I want you to go over to the sideline and think about it. Third string left guard jumped in his place. I said no, we're going to play without a left guard. We broke the huddle. We only had ten people. We had a center, a vacant area, and a left tackle. That's when I was proud of our defense. They immediately recognized we didn't have a left guard. I said I know. They said what do we do? I said act like we have one. Rick Myers was our quarterback, Jerome Bettis our fullback, Reggie Brooks our tailback. Rick Myers took the ball, gave the ball to Reggie Brooks, our tailback. The guy over the vacant left guard came through completely uninhibited. Hit Reggie Brooks with a tremendous thud. There was a moment of silence. Reggie started to holler, I can't see, and it scared him. We then turned his helmet around. He was fine, and he came back to the huddle. As he came back to the huddle, the players started to complain we don't have a left guard. We ran another play, and same result. The drummer became louder, and after the third play I'd open rebellion. And I said to him, I said what's wrong, man? What's wrong? They all started hollering at the same time. We don't have a left guard. I very calmly said, when did you notice? They looked at me like I had Alzheimer's. The good thing about Alzheimer's is it gives you a chance to meet a lot of new people. They said three plays ago, three plays ago, I said, man, we haven't had a left guard all day. I said I'm tired of pretenders. I'm tired of people pretending they're a football player. You think because you put on a headgear and tape your ankles. We have people pretend they're Christians. We have people pretend they're business people. We have people pretend they're parents. And we have people pretend they're spouses. Never making a commitment to somebody else. And when we make that commitment, we have obligations to fulfill it. We have obligations to maintain high standards for ourselves and our expectations. Not because somebody's going to look. Not because somebody's watching. But because we know that's the way that God wants us to live and it goes through the Bible over and over. The last thing I think is absolutely critical is to care about people. You know, we talk about caring about people, we think we immediately have to go to the homeless center. I want to tell you, an individual in this room doesn't need a kind word. Doesn't need help. Oh, I had a great experience at Notre Dame. So many of them, and Notre Dame's a special place. Notre Dame's a special place because you get two types of education there. One, you get an education on how to make a living, but the other education you get is an education on how to live. And I'm sure the second one's probably far more important than the first. And they have standards at Notre Dame and the way they expect you to conduct themselves, but they also expect you to help other people. The experience I had in that stadium in 1987 was International Special Olympics. 6,000 Olympians with every reason in this world to be down and negative. All they wanted to do was love and be loved. And when I was at International Special Olympics, I was a hugger. Ladies and gentlemen, every contestant is assigned a hugger. When they finish their event, whether they finish first or last, you run up, you throw your arm around, you say, that's great, that's wonderful, I love you, I'm proud of you. Wouldn't it be great if we all had a hugger? Wouldn't it be great if when you went home from here, you walked in the house, and your mother or your father or your children or your spouse or somebody ran up and put their arms around you and said, I love you, you're wonderful, you're special, and I appreciate the sacrifice you make. That would be great. But as a male, don't expect people to hug you. We expect you to go home and be a hugger. As a leader, you've got to be the hugger and don't expect to be hugged. That, that is what leadership is all about. You know, in 1958, when I was at Kent, I had to thumb home from Kent. I found out my mom and dad were getting a divorce. It was a traumatic experience for me. I didn't feel like I had a friend in the world. Thumbed back to Kent, was left off at Exit 14 on the Ohio Turnpike or Route 5, trying to get to Kent, thumbing. That's the only way I could travel. I had no money. Seven and a half miles straight away, I had an easier chance to get a ride at the Daytona 500 than I did there. It was the middle of January, starting to snow, I was standing by there, and there's a little restaurant about 200 yards behind. Had no money to go in there, but not many cars came by because it was snowing. A car came by, two gentlemen, went in there, came back out about 7.30, I was still there. I didn't hardly see a car from then to about midnight, and that car with two gentlemen came back. They said, where are you trying to get to, son? I said, I'm trying to get to Kent State. They said, you aren't going to get there tonight. They said, we'll give you a ride. Two and a half hours to drive that 30 miles. I then had to take the two hours and drive back. They have no idea who gave me that ride. They have no idea they gave Lou Holtz a ride. When we got there, I remember saying to them, I have no money. I wish there was something I could do for you. They said, sometime do a favor for somebody else and think about us. You know, I've been fortunate because so many people have made a sacrifice. That's all love is. Love is sacrifice. Why do children get on TV and say, hi, mom? All my life I taught my son to say, hi, dad. And he gets on TV and he says, hi, mom. That same young man that roughed a plunder at Southern Cal. And when he roughed a plunder, it was then I could understand why certain species of animals devoured their young. But they say, hi, mom, because they see the sacrifices that mom make more than they see the sacrifices we make. I hope it's a fact that they see the sacrifices that mom makes more. But we have to make sacrifices also with our time, et cetera. My time is rapidly running down. Just remember this. I'll get ready to close. That everybody you meet asks three questions in your business and in your personal life and in your marriage. The question they ask, number one, can I trust you? Without trust there is no relationship. It's important to generate trust. My wife and I have been married together this summer, 72 years, 36 apiece. But we've been married because she can trust me and I can trust her. You must have trust to have a relationship with your children. The only way I know you generate trust is when both sides does what's right. And then, of course, everybody wants to know are you committed to excellence. You can have all the slogans you want. First will be best, then will be first. But you send a message whether you're committed to excellence by the standards you have. The last question everybody wants to know is do you care about me? We have an obligation to make sure our children, our spouses, our parents, the people we work with know that we genuinely care about them. If you follow those three rules, it answers those three questions. I just sat down and said a prayer and said, Dear God, I hope I can express myself here and to honor Christ in every way I possibly can. I'm like anybody else, though. I make mistakes. I get short-tempered, et cetera. But as I say, we're here because we're sinners, not because we're perfect. We need this type of thing because we are sinners. And because we don't have the strength, we've got to call upon each other. People ask me so many times who's the greatest athlete or what athlete will you remember the most. I'd like to think I'd remember them all. Rocket Ishmael is such a great athlete. Tim Brown, great athlete. Turned out to like getting to bed before it got dark. Rocket Ishmael, watching him play tennis. Wasn't impressed about that. He was playing by himself. I mean, people can do that. I think about Chris Norwich and what he's done with his life, and it goes on and on. I'd like to close with just a couple of comments about a young man by the name of Alton Maiden. Alton Maiden won number 42 of the middle guard for us this year, an Afro-American out of Dallas, Texas. A year and a half ago, he had a 1.9999 average, one thousandth of a percentage point below a two-point. And Notre Dame threw him out of school for a year. Oh, he could have complained, and it could have been better. He could have said he was a victim of society. It was racist, but he didn't. He sat out a year. He prepared himself. He came back to Notre Dame. He graduated this past December. Then we went over to Ireland to play a football game. We had Thursday's practice. It was 33 degrees, 40-mile-an-hour winds, sleeting. Got on the bus, and the driver said to me, oh, the weather might turn nasty this week. We went down to visit a monastery which was built in the year 1200, and there was a tombstone there, a graveyard. And Alton Maiden wrote this poem. The young man who played for Notre Dame wrote this poem, and I'd like to close by reading it. And it's about a cemetery, and it's titled The Dash. I've seen death staring me with my own eyes in a way many cannot know. I've seen death take others but still left me here below. I've heard many screams and mother cries, but death refused to hear. And in my life, I've seen a lot of faces filled with many tears. After death has come and gone, a tombstone sits for many to see, but it's no more than a symbol of a person's memory. I've seen my share of tombstones but never took the time to truly read, the meaning of what's behind there for others to see. Under the person's name, it read the date of birth, Dash, and the date the person passed. But the more I think about that tombstone, the only important thing is the Dash. Yes, I see the name of the person, but that I might forget. I also read the date of birth and death, but even that might not stick. But thinking about the individual, I can't help but to remember the Dash, because it represents a person's life, and that will always last. So when you begin to chart your life, make sure you're on a positive path. Because people may forget your birth and death, but they'll never forget your Dash. Thank you so much for being here, and God bless you.