Jack Del Rio, Coaching Basketball and my Amish Neighbors

I had an Amish wedding dinner the other night and it got me thinking about some stuff.

Jack Del Rio is the current coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars football team. He was an All-American at USC and played for linebacker for several teams in the NFL, most notably the Cowboys and the Vikings. He moved on to coaching and moved up the ranks to head coach. Today he is the only Hispanic coach in the league. He has worked hard to achieve this milestone…to reach the pinnacle of the NFL career ladder. He led his team to a Wild Card appearance last year and won the opening round game over the Steelers. Before the next game against the Patriots I heard a radio interview with him where he said something that has stuck with me ever since: "A lot of people are interested in being excellent but not a lot of people are committed to being excellent."

In what situation in your life or mine would that not be applicable? I want to be better at daily Bible study and daily meditation and prayer….I want to keep my garden weeded…I want to be more trim and fit…I want to be thinner and healthier…I want to be a better husband, father and son…I want to be on top of the latest medical research and techniques…I want to be better at keeping in touch with friends and family…I want to be better at managing my money and my time…I want to be excellent in all these things and so many more but I’m not. I don’t work hard enough. I don’t work long enough. I desire it more than I am willing to work for it. It’s not that I am horrible or deplorable on all these counts…I am just not excellent and often, I am just not trying.

When I was coaching basketball I used to yell. A lot. I yelled when they loafed and when they missed an assignment. I yelled when they chose poor shots to take. I yelled when we lost and I yelled when we won. I yelled when we failed to execute or play as a team. And so I yelled a lot. And my kids mostly laughed. They knew that the bark was far worse than the bite. They listened but to them a yell was just me talking loudly. I didn’t yell to belittle them or embarrass them. I yelled because I believed in two things and tried to pass those on to my athletes:

1. "If I stop yelling, you stop playing." I yelled because I believed in them. I felt that they had more to give. That they could do better. That they had a deep well of potential into which they had barely dipped. But woe to the player that I stopped yelling at. I had given up on him. He was no longer worthy of wasting my breath. He wasn’t a poor athlete, he just wasn’t willing to work or learn or change. My players knew that when I stopped yelling, I stopped caring. They may as well walk out the door. I was done with them. I yelled because it was my way to encourage them and spur them on. I yelled because I am an emotional guy and yelling is my passion for these kids showing through the sometimes hard outer shell. It was my way of showing that I hadn’t given up on them. Ask yourself, "Who in my life still yells at me? Or do I yell at myself? Who do I yell at?"

2. "The good is the enemy of the great." This is so closely related to the first point that it hardly bears explanation. But it goes far beyond the basketball court or football field: when we settle for "okay" or "done" or "good" we are stopping short of our potential. Sometimes even achieving great is still short of achieving excellence or perfection. So, when is contentment good and when is contentment bad? I will leave it to you to examine your life and ask yourself, "When have I settled for just ‘good’ when I could have had ‘great’ with a little more work or a little more patience?"

I love my Amish neighbors. We live in the midst of a small Amish community in upstate NY. We moved in and were immediately embraced by the community. Over the past year we have come to love our "plain folk"…our "simple people". They have taught us much and have extended their arms to us in surprising ways.

The Amish value hard work and community. They prize their relationships above all else…their relation to God, their family and their tight community. In personal values, they hold humility as essential. (In a nod to irony, they work hard not to be more humble than another member of their community…kinda interesting). They believe that the work they do should be excellent for the work they do is a direct reflection of and a tribute to the perfect and orderly God they worship. Now take note: sometimes their houses are a little messy—there is a toy lying here or there—and sometimes the garden has a few more weeds than vegetables. Sometimes the snow is not cleared from the drive and sometimes the bike is left on the sidewalk. Sometimes the kids talk too loudly or don’t follow instructions the first time. No, the Amish are not perfect but they want to be. They work hard at it. They get up early to do their own chores, they work a full day’s work, and they return to cook and clean and tend to their homes. They work hard six days a week. They strive to be perfect…they work to be perfect. And there is the difference. It is not just a desire…they work at it. A lot. And they do fall short, a lot. But to not keep working towards excellence would be a much greater sin than continually falling short. They would be a poor representation of the God they claim to worship and adore. This perfect, excellent, orderly God. They would be a poor representation of their community. And they would be a poor representation of their true self.

So here is my question: Why should we strive for excellence anyway? If you have a good answer to that, are you then working at being excellent? When you fall short, what is your response? When you face adversity, what is your response?

Maybe Aristotle said it best, "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. "