Win at sports and life: 5 tips from an NFL Hall of Famer for parents, young athletes

If you tune into the Detroit Lions vs. Green Bay Packers game on Thanksgiving, you might catch a rare glimpse of Hall of Famer and Lions great Calvin Johnson at Ford Field. Then again, you probably won’t.

“I don’t necessarily go to games a lot,” Johnson, now 38, told USA TODAY Sports during an interview in August. “I go to like one or two a year, maybe, if old teammates are in town or if we got an event or something. I’m usually watching from our comfy couch.”

Johnson was never all about football, despite having a unique blend of strength, speed, size (he was 6-5, 240 pounds), athleticism, agility and soft hands that allowed him to become one of the NFL's top receivers of all time.

He broke Jerry Rice’s single-season record for receiving yards with 1,964 in 2012. Three years later, he walked away from his playing career, near the height of his powers at 30 years old but feeling spent from the pounding his body and senses had taken.

Football wasn’t where he wanted to be “physically, mentally, emotionally” anymore, he said. And he valued the life he had — and his future — off the field, too. He wanted to get the best of both.

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Now, the core values he learned through the game and other sports continue to guide him through his life while raising his own kids, who are just beginning their sports careers.

He learned these fundamental lessons long before he reached the heights of his physical prowess, and he said they've helped him achieve a high standard but also stand grounded as a sports dad. Here are five of them that you can share with your own athletes:

1. Remove the pressure

Johnson grew up in the Atlanta suburbs, one of four kids raised by Calvin Sr., a railroad conductor, and Arica, an educator. The family was academic-driven — his brother, Wali, is a general surgeon and his sister, Erica, has a Ph. D in biomedical science.

“Books first and sports second,” Johnson said his mother always told him. “You don’t come home with a B and above, you’re not gonna be playing any ball. …  So, for me, sports was definitely second to making sure I had my grades right.”

You might think Johnson himself was a phenom from the time he was 10. He wasn’t.  Like many of us, he was just a shy kid trying to figure himself out.

“I would say, honestly, it wasn’t until my high school years where I really got an understanding for where I could end up or be,” he said. “My coach really didn’t know, and my body didn’t catch up to where I wanted to be … physically or mentally because of the growth spurts for myself. So I needed to catch up.

“It was like my sophomore or junior year, really, when I gained confidence in my body and movements.”

Calvin’s games were ingrained in his life, but they were just a part of a period of self-discovery of what he could be. He takes a similar approach with his young sons Caleb, Calvin III and Carter.

He puts no pressure on them to play sports, he said, especially football. He won’t let them play tackle football until middle school.

“Too soon for that, honestly,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t want to force it on ’em or anything like that. They already gonna have a heavy weight.

“I haven’t done any coaching for them. I don’t necessarily think I will want to. … I’m not gonna push the kids. I’m gonna let ’em play what they want to play … But they’re gonna play team sports because I know that you earn great characteristics for just the rest of your life that you can use.”

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2. You can always work as a team, no matter what game you play

When Johnson watches the Lions, who were 8-2 and atop the NFC North entering Thursday’s game, a top ingredient for their success is apparent.

“They’re playing as a team,” he told USA TODAY Sports earlier this week. “They’re playing complementary football. All three phases might be hitting each time, but they’re taking care of each other if one of them isn’t.”

College and professional teams are judged by wins and losses, and pro athletes are evaluated by individual statistics. Before then, your athletic career is more about developing yourself as a teammate.

“I would 100% recommend having your kids play multiple team sports, not just multiple sports,” Johnson said. “I think there’s something to being in a team sport — not that you can’t be great at individual sports, nothing’s wrong with that — but team sports tell you a little bit more about yourself than I think you can learn from individual sports because you’re working with other people. So 100% my kids will play multiple sports, team sports, and whether they take it all the way or not, they’ll be better off for the lessons learned during that time.”

So don’t bribe your kid to score the most points or grab the most rebounds. Instead, when you set goals for a sports team as a youth parent, coach or player, make them team-driven. Shoot for a high number of assists in basketball or to stay within one goal of each opponent in a competitive soccer league where your team isn’t expected to win.

"Everyone won’t think the same,” Johnson said, “but as long as we have a goal that we’re all trying to accomplish together, we can move in the same direction. And when you’re able to do that with multiple people, it’s truly satisfying.”

As is often the case in sports, the team that plays together the best might win anyway.

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3. The best players don't need to talk trash

“Johnson is the player who may return humility to elite wide receivers and who may sooth Commissioner Roger Goodell’s soul,” The New York Times’ Judy Battista wrote ahead of the 2007 draft, in which Johnson was selected No. 2 overall.

If you watched Johnson throughout his nine-year NFL career, he never trash-talked opponents like you routinely see other football players do.

Humility is a virtue. If you are the player who goes about your business without inflating yourself, you will stand out to coaches.

As you get older and want to play at the high school and college levels, those coaches will expect you to perform. Trash-talking opponents only elevates the pressure on yourself to perform, and it often motivates an opponent to get the better of you.

Let your play do your talking; not your mouth. When you win, act like you’ve won before and respectfully shake your oppoenent’s hand. When you lose, tell that same opponent “good job” and move on to the next game.

Keep your “talk” internal, reinforcing to yourself that you can do better. (If you have ever closed your eyes and visualized yourself having success, you know it can work.) When you speak, encourage your teammates to do well.

Lions coach Dan Campbell, Johnson’s teammate from 2006 to 2008, is fiery but his message is usually about his team — not the opponent — and what potential it can achieve.

"The offense took a step up and defensively we took a step back," Campbell said after the Lions gave up 38 points Nov. 12 in a win over the Chargers. "But I know that we’re about to take three steps up again, I believe that. (Defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn is) going to get this thing right."

4. Understand struggling is part of growth

During Johnson’s second season (2008), the Lions finished 0-16. During his last, he fumbled at the goal line near the end of a game and the Lions lost.

He performed consistently well, though, throughout his career, in which the team went 54-90 and made the playoffs twice.

“Nobody builds anything great without going through a struggle first,” he said. “So just continuously getting up to perfect your craft, being able to persevere due to hard times, I think that’s one of the biggest things that I think that came from sports to me.”

You’re likely to be at plenty of games where your kid’s team loses. You’ll be defined by how you emerge.

Think about that final game, or final season, you put everything into as a kid. Having sons who play baseball, mine was the 12-year-old Little League year. It’s the one where your son or daughter is likely to be one of the stronger players as one of the elders in the league and you have chance for your town to reach the Little League World Series.

Two lasting memories stand out to me about that year for kids in our community, and neither of them have to do with a team that won the championship. Both instances involved a 12-year-old player who made a mistake that cost his team his last Little League game.

In one case, a player yelled loudly at his distraught teammate: “What are you doing?!” In the other, a player walked over to the kid who made the mistake and simply put his arm around him.

Your sports career is temporary and life will have its ups and downs, but you are always yourself.

5. Don't ever give up. No matter what you do, persevere

“The game is such a physical game, but it’s not as hard core as I feel like it was when I was playing,” Johnson told USA TODAY Sports this week. “As a receiver, I’m sitting here watching them throw these flags when the DB is touching the guy downfield. He might barely bump into the guy but they’re throwing flags all the time when everyone’s getting contact beyond five yards.

“I’m like, ‘Where was this at when I was playing?’ I was dragging guys up and down the field like 20 yards.’ ”

It was a show of emotion from Johnson, a man who defines himself by keeping his cool. The statement, and the hard-nosed way he played, also reflects one of Johnson’s favorite qualities: Perseverance.

It’s a characteristic in people he likes to highlight when he speaks to kids who are part of his foundation about chasing their goals, not matter how unattainable they seem.

He witnessed the importance of that message during a September visit to the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center in Atlanta. 

"It’s like a reality check for us that don’t have cancer because when you’re able to hear those stories of the comeback from those people that are stuck with it and what they’ve done," Johnson said at the time. "So, perseverance and the ability to keeping pushing and getting back up is definitely something that’s translatable on and off field.”

One of the children Johnson met with during his hospital visit, 16-year-old Riley Nutt, recently had a long-awaited bone marrow transplant. Her father, Brian Nutt, told me Wednesday the cells she received from her younger sister, Mackenzie, are working. Riley is recovering.

“We are having a small Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Brian told me, “but hope for an even better one next year.”

As Johnston says, there’s nothing like perseverance.

Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for a high schooler and middle schooler. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.

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