When you think of the NFL, your mind probably jumps to images of big tackles and raking passes. You may start daydreaming about your fantasy line-up or begin to consider the odds on the latest NFL player props.
What likely doesn’t spring to mind is the word ‘education,’ which is at the core of the NFL as an organization. The media are keen to lambast sports stars when they make mistakes by haughtily pointing out that they are ‘role models’ for youngsters.
In reality, sports stars are young people themselves, which means that the league, rather than individual players, is better placed to provide education and mentorship. In this article, we take a closer look at how the NFL is doing just that.
The NFL Character Playbook
Talent is one aspect of becoming a professional athlete. Another is physicality. One often overlooked, though, and is, if anything, the most important, is mentality. No elite-level sportsman or sportswoman has gotten there by chance.
Instead, they have gotten there by maximizing their talent through hard work, dedication, and consistency. Then, above that level, come the ones that have maximized their talent, physicality, and mentality and mastered themselves and their emotions.
Tom Brady, for example, has spoken about how the philosophical ideas conveyed in The Four Agreements became a mantra for his life and allowed him to push on to the next level.
The NFL’s Character Playbook is an initiative that seeks to bring that level of personal understanding to children nationwide. To combat bullying, the playbook teaches kids how to build healthy relationships, set boundaries, and communicate their needs.
In addition, it provides much-needed support and guidance to allow kids to understand their own mental health, recognise the interplay between thoughts, behaviours, and emotions, problem-solve, manage their feelings, and overcome adversity.
It’s an initiative that brings some of the best and most fundamental aspects of an elite sports star’s arsenal to a large audience of children, equipping them well for the later challenges of life.
(Infomercial on the NFL Character Playbook.)
Fighting Educational Equality
We do not all have the same opportunities in life. The best example of that comes from over the pond in the United Kingdom. Well, actually, it begins here in America, with the birth of Boris Johnson in Manhattan.
Born to wealthy parents, Johnson’s education at the world-renowned Eton and Oxford was perhaps taken for granted. When he became Prime Minister in 2019, it was no surprise, really, as the entire circumstances of his life seemed to have been building toward that moment.
Angela Rayner, the current Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had a completely different upbringing. Born into abject poverty to an absent father and mother who suffered from bipolar disorder, Rayner’s life could have gone down a very different path to the one that it did.
Unfortunately, her rise to success from such lowly beginnings is exceedingly rare. Typically, those born into poor backgrounds do not go on to become the second most powerful person in their country. Only a tiny percentage of those people go on to tertiary education.
The NFL Foundation is looking to right that, both here in the United States and in the United Kingdom, with its educational equality initiative. The main thrust of this initiative is to provide far greater resources to those in low socio-economic standing, to somewhat bridge the gap between them and the Boris Johnsons of this world.
In Summary
The initiatives explained above are wide-ranging and impactful. They tackle areas that are incredibly pertinent to our current world and will improve the lives of many millions of people.
There are a number of other initiatives not covered in this article, ranging from large scale ones like those discussed above to smaller ones run by individual teams or, even at times, individual players.
In modern day America, a country widely acknowledged as the current home of capitalism, it’s great to see one of its biggest cultural exports taking such a keen role in almost socialist pursuits.
