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| Pro Football HOFer Ronnie Lott |
After a unanimous All-America season at USC,
RONNIE LOTT was the first-round draft pick of the 49ers in '81. A punishing DB, he was an immediate hit in the NFL and went on to earn four Super Bowl rings and ten Pro Bowl berths in his 14-year career. He was named to the league's 75th anniversary team in '94 and elected to the Pro Football HOF in '00. Lott continues to make an impact off the field. In '89, he founded All Stars Helping Kids, a philanthropic organization that leverages the names, efforts and resources of other athletes, corporate leaders and individual donors to promote and foster educational and health initiatives for disadvantaged children. He is also the chairman of Play It Smart, the National Football Foundation program that seeks to improve the learning environment and build leadership skills for high school student athletes. In '99, he co-founded HRJ Capital, a private-equity firm that manages almost
$2B in assets. Lott spoke to SportsBusiness Journal N.Y. bureau chief Jerry
Kavanagh on the eve of the NFL conference championship games.
Favorite piece of music: The music of
PRINCE.
Favorite vacation spot: The Four Seasons on the big island of Hawaii.
Favorite quote: Be still and know.
Favorite movie: "One-on-One."
Best football movie: "Everybody's All-American."
Favorite book: "Manchild in the Promised Land."
Pet peeve: I eat too much Cold Stone ice cream.
Basic business/management philosophy: You're always a rookie and you always have to exhaust the opportunities.
Best decision: To work with people who are like-minded: people who have been invaluable in caring and sharing and loving and in dealing with some of the pains and challenges in winning and losing, not only in football but in business as well.
Most influential person: My dad. He has been an inspiration because he has looked at life and he doesn't have any regrets. He has truly exhausted the opportunity that God gave him.
Q: How is life after football? You have been busy.
Lott: Life after football has been just like playing: You're always out trying to make a great play.
Q: What was your biggest adjustment to life after football?
Lott: Learning how to be a rookie again.
Q: What have you learned?
Lott: That the playbook is definitely challenging. It's much different. And the relationships that you have to build, and the new teammates that you have to work with, bring valuable resources and experiences.
Q: I read where you said, "I'm a warrior, and a warrior puts himself in an arena where the odds are against him. He likes to have his back against the wall, and I think that's always the mission I've had -- in football, in business, in life -- you have to constantly push yourself." Where or how are you pushing yourself these days?
Lott: You have to exhaust life. When you do, you find yourself looking at all the opportunities where you can become better. I would imagine that every day there is a constant improvement. When you are around the Toyota environment (I own a Toyota dealership), that is a word that is most often used amongst their culture: improvement -- constant improvement. That is something that we have to have, and that is something that you have to apply when you¹re trying to exhaust life.
Q: Tell me about All Stars Helping Kids.
Lott: All Stars Helping Kids is a platform that we have been involved with since 1989. It allows young people to be engaged with opportunities that allow their education, their health initiatives, ways of getting them a chance to succeed or a chance to stand on someone's shoulders to have success.
Q: About the program you have said, "We can achieve more collectively than we can individually."
Lott: That is true, and that's why we are calling on more athletes to be engaged with the philanthropic efforts of our society. We believe that there should be a calling for more athletes to get involved. I had an interesting phone call from JIM BROWN a year ago. He shared with me his thoughts on what he started doing in the early '60s: creating a social change, a social opportunity for others.
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Lott (l) And Allen Are Active
Participants In All Stars Helping Kids |
Q: What did that phone call mean to you?
Lott: For him to say that we are a part of that network, and that we continue to carry that baton and really try to inspire others to be a part of it, is a huge statement and a huge responsibility for all of the people who are associated with All Stars Helping Kids -- EMMITT SMITH, MARCUS ALLEN. All of us have to carry the torch of guys like BOBBY MITCHELL and BILL RUSSELL and Jim Brown, who tried -- and continue -- to create social change. If you have any faith in your life, you realize that you're here to serve, to empower and to give. If you can apply those three characteristics, you can definitely allow a young person to achieve some things greater than they have today.
Q: Toward the end of your career, in a poll by The Sporting News, eight of 20 NFL coaches (including BILL BELICHICK) cited you as the best candidate among then-current players to be a head coach. No interest in coaching?
Lott: No. The reason is, if you look at a guy like coach Belichick, and you look at the resources and you look at what he's learned about coaching, the same journey that he's been on in his search for excellence is the same journey that I've tried to incorporate in my life, even though it's not coaching. You find yourself wanting to be around people who are great at their profession and to be able to understand how they became great. I think that that's one of the things that when you're a coach or a CEO, you see those same attributes in a lot of folks. I believe, and I've often said, that BILL WALSH could have been not only the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, but also the CEO of Apple. And that's what's appealing to me in my life right now.
Q: The Super Bowl is going to honor Bill Walsh. What is your involvement in that ceremony?
Lott: It's a small role -- being there to flip the coin with Bill's son and daughter and JERRY RICE and STEVE YOUNG. Bill had given so much to the game of football and, really, to society. This is a great tribute to what he has been able to leave behind for the game. I'm excited that I have a chance to be a part of it.
Q: What was Walsh's great talent?
Lott: Bill Walsh had the ability to inspire not only the great players but also the players who were the bottom half of the team. Another attribute was his ability to find a collective group of people that might not be the most talented group but the best group that would be able to win. His vision of how he introduced the offense, his way of cultivating relationships and putting forth his efforts in trying to create a platform for more minorities to participate in the coaching ranks. Those are things I will always remember Bill Walsh for.
Q: Another former 49er teammate, FRED DEAN, is up for election this year to the HOF. Do you expect him to get in?
Lott: I hope so. I would not be where I'm at if it weren't for Fred Dean. His ability to get to the quarterback and disrupt the offensive line -- there was a period when he played when he was the most feared pass rusher. His characteristics were right there with LAWRENCE TAYLOR's. So, I would like to believe that that's a Hall of Fame-type attribute.
Q: In January '06, in the Charlotte Observer, you said that the NFL and NFLPA "didn't do enough to help former players, especially pioneers of the game suffering crippling health and financial difficulties." Do you still feel that way?
Lott: Yes, and the reason why I feel that way is simple. There is a debt that we still owe to those players who came before us. And that debt needs to be serviced by all of us.
If we're able to come together and put an endowment in place and ask players to take some of their resources to put toward this endowment, I think we could help resolve some of the problems. It's going to take a collective effort of everybody who's been associated with the NFL to help these guys who have suffered and who have not had the resources to live a quality of life. And that's all we can ask: not to support them in a way where it provides luxuries but just the basic necessities. That's where I think we should focus our efforts.
Q: At one time, some people thought that you would succeed GENE UPSHAW as head of the players association.
Lott: That was not my idea, and that idea was thrown around a number of times. I think that when you look back, there are definitely some highlights of what Gene has been able to accomplish, as well as some times when we would love to have had him think about all people, whether they were retired or not. That's a challenging job when you have to think of all of the athletes who have ever been associated with the game of football. Big task.
Q: What's the mission of Play It Smart?
Lott: Play It Smart is a phenomenal program centered around elevating young people who might not have the resources and it provides for them the opportunity to see that they can enhance their needs. So, when they do move beyond the playing field and beyond their careers in sports, they have a chance to have the right resources to compete.
Q: EDDIE DEBARTOLO called you the greatest competitor. What are you doing now to satisfy that competitive passion?
Lott: Working every day. It's a simple thing. You wake up every morning trying to be the best you can be. You wake up every day trying to compete, and you find yourself sometimes losing and sometimes winning. At the end, you're hopeful that you win more than you lose.
Q: Are there any sports business stories you are following closely?
Lott: I'm following the steroids issue, just from a standpoint that I think that there should be a governing body that should be implemented by all professional sports. It should go from the professional sports level and drill all the way down to the amateur level and test all athletes so they all have a level playing field and are all protected. I think that that governing body, if it were implemented, could be a great resource to educate, advocate and create a way that kids can stay healthy. And I think that we would have a way to insure that it's not just our Olympic athletes and our professional athletes, but it's all athletes who would have a chance to lead a successful life in sports.
Q: As far as steroids, the NFL thus far has escaped the scrutiny that MLB is undergoing. Is that because the NFL has a good handle on the issue?
Lott: I think that what you find is that each league has the ability to improve. If you look at the NFL, what they've tried to do is constantly improve, and they have been in the forefront of this problem. You have to be proactive, and I think that's where they've been able to be a little different from the other leagues.
Q: What's the biggest challenge facing the NFL?
Lott: One is to continue to foster programs that allow all people to be able to participate. Meaning that all people have a chance to have an equal opportunity to be head coaches, administrators, to be a part of this great enterprise. That is going to be their biggest challenge. As the league continues to go beyond the boundaries of the U.S., it has to reflect all of the different countries that it will be associated with.
Q: You won four Super Bowl rings with the 49ers. How would those teams have fared against this year's Patriots?
Lott: I would like to think that we would be able to compete. You want to give yourself the ability to go out and be the best you can be. Could we win? You like to think that you could win. The question is, would we be at our best; would they be at their best? And no one knows that. That's the quest. You've got to get 55 people to be at their best at any given time. In the fantasy world, that doesn't happen. Even in our greatest wars and our greatest battles, we've always had a chink in the armor. It's hard to say, but we would compete.
Q: In a fantasy world, it's fun to consider the possibilities of such a game.
Lott: Definitely a game that would come down to the will of who would survive and who would quit. There's always a way of breaking someone's will, of breaking someone's spirit.
