TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Tuesday this week, in our Florida State Beach Volleyball offices, presented the rare occasion in which I was on the other side of an interview, the one receiving the questions. Audrey Rothman, a senior on our team who was doing a project for a class in entrepreneurship, asked me one I’d never before thought about: What legacy do you want to leave?
What a question.
For a while, when I took the time to think of it, like most ambitious individuals with big goals and lofty dreams, the legacy I’d sought to leave was one of accomplishment. I wanted to be a New York Times best-selling author, like J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkein and Mitch Albom and the other defining writers of my childhood. A professional athlete like Mike Mussina and Brady Anderson and Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. A commentator who called an Olympic Games, like Jim Nantz or Al Michaels, perhaps an acclaimed studio host like Scott Van Pelt or Mike Tirico. A writer for Sports Illustrated, like S.L. Price and Chris Ballard and Lee Jenkins and Tom Verducci.
I’ve accomplished some of those things. Not quite to the level of any of the aforementioned individuals, but still: I’ve written books. I’ve been a professional athlete. I’ve called three World Championships and had my writing featured in all sorts of newspapers and magazines. It’s been fun, doing all of that.
But as I’ve checked off on box after the other, I’ve realized how empty a legacy of accomplishment has become to me, and the tradeoffs that are required to accomplish feats of truly magnificent proportions.
An example: Nick Saban’s legacy will be that of the greatest college football coach of all-time, a winner of seven National Championships, 12 Conference Championships, and an absurd 297 wins to just 71 losses. He will be revered, as he should. Already, there a stadium and field with his name on it, a docuseries on his life and accomplishments, and hundreds of thousands of words in multiple books written about him.
Like anything, there were tradeoffs to this legacy-building.
For multiple decades, Saban had one dinner per week with his family.
One.
On Theo Vonn’s podcast, he talked about how he rarely, if ever, felt joy during his career. How he’s only just now beginning to legitimately enjoy life.
I love Saban. Admire him to a tremendous degree.
His is not a legacy I seek to leave, because he made tradeoffs I am unwilling to make.
The legacy I most want to leave is on my front porch.
It’s in the books I read with my kids at bedtime, and the made up games we play when I return from work.
It’s in the (exceedingly rare) quiet hours I spend with my wife.
It’s in the small interactions with waiters and waitresses, cashiers and folks I run into on the sidewalk or street. It’s in helping a lady with her bag on a plane, or my neighbor who needs a cane and a helping hand to get from her car to her front door.
It’s in Galatians, chapter 6, verse 10: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.”
I’ve written before about mental health and Christianity, and how the latter was an enormous help to the former for me. I’ll again quote a sermon from JD Greer, the pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, in which he said: “So many of you are pouring your life into things under the sun. Things that don’t matter. You’re living as if life under the sun is really what counts. A lot of you are giving your life away to things that won’t eternally matter.
“Your investment dies here.
“Only two things in life will last forever, and that’s the souls of men and the word of God. So make sure you build your life around those. Build your life around eternal things.”
That’s a better answer than the one I gave Rothman.
The legacy I want to leave isn’t one of athletic accomplishments or book sales or TV viewership.
It’s in things eternal, which are, ironically, in things miniscule.
It’s in, simply, doing good.
It’s in Galatians.
