SPORTS AND LIFE: Lessons to Be Learned - a football quarterback discusses sports

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1999 by Jeff Kemp

I learned to see not only where I was, but where I wanted to be in the future. The best players--in life as well as in football--never are content to win one game. They want to win the next game, too, and the one after that. This requires long-term planning and commitment.

Vision also is about seeing opportunity when it seems least likely. My parents reinforced this lesson. For example, when my college football team lost a game and I didn't even get to play, my father consoled me by saying, "You looked great today." Stunned, I replied, "What?" He insisted, "Yes, you looked great. I saw you warming up. The ball was really spinning. Your day is going to come, Jeff. You'll get your chance. Think like a starter." His optimism left no room for my shortsighted pessimism.

Vision is what has led me and my teammates to make sacrifices gladly. When I was playing for the 49ers, Coach Bill Walsh took special care to explain a certain play-action pass to the entire offense. More than one player grumbled, "Why do I need to learn what the other guys are doing?," but Walsh knew exactly what he was doing. He was giving a vision of a play that would demand a great deal of us. We were to fool our opponents into thinking it was a run.

Walsh warned the linemen that they would have to fall forward, right into their opponents' knees. If they were lucky, they would only suffer swollen, bloody hands from the cleats of their opponents' shoes. He told the halfback that he would have to dive over the line of scrimmage, holding his hands to his stomach and leaving his head completely unprotected, in order to make the other team believe that he had the ball. He told me that after I faked the handoff, lured the free safety two steps forward, turned, and passed the ball to Jerry Rice, I would end up flat on my back when the 260-pound unblocked defensive end hit me, after realizing it was a pass.

That's exactly what did happen--five times in six weeks. We scored a touchdown on every derivation of that play during the 1986 season. For most of the players involved, this play did not add one yard to their stat sheets, but that didn't matter. The vision Walsh provided led them to trust one another and to make sacrifices.

Perseverance. Vision has helped me develop appreciation for the value of perseverance in the face of adversity. For 19 of my 20 years in amateur and professional football, I was not the starting quarterback going into training camp. As a pro, I was a fifth-stringer, a fourth-stringer, a third-stringer, a second-stringer, and a first-stringer, but it was not always a matter of forward motion. Sometimes, I was set back, traded, or cut. I persevered, however, trusting my vision, rather than my sight.

My last game as a professional football player was the season finale against the Washington Redskins in December, 1991. The Redskins (who would go on to win the Super Bowl in January) had lost just one game all season. My team, the Eagles, trailed 19-7 in the final quarter. The Redskins were stopping our runs, batting down my passes, and beating me up. I had been sacked twice and knocked down at least half a dozen times. At one point when I came off the field, the offensive linemen apologized to me for the lack of protection. The offensive line coach, stymied and demoralized, also apologized. I responded, "This is ridiculous! Let's get down to work and play to win. We aren't going to lose."