The BEAUTY of EXCELLENCE

The beauty and excellence of a beach. 

 

 

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."* 

—John Keats

I love EXCELLENCE.

Just as there is beauty in nature, there is beauty in excellence... and human excellence is always beautiful.

For more than four hours Monday night, I had the privilege of watching a uniquely American brand of excellence on display at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana... and it was a beautiful thing.

The occasion was the College Football Playoff National Championship featuring the Alabama Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs in the biggest game of the year, and arguably one of the biggest games of all time. 

Now I know what some of my readers are thinking right now. An article about College Football? Yeah! Sign me up! And I know what some others of my readers are thinking right now. Football? beautiful?? Are you kidding me???

I don't have to ask my football lovers to stay tuned for the rest of this article. As for the latter milieu, I merely ask you to give it a chance with the promise that this article will touch on more than just football.  

Football, and athletics in general, provide us
with endless opportunities to learn about life and SAL.

For me, the beauty of Monday night's game was not who was playing in it. As a FLORIDA Gator fan who married a GEORGIA TECH Yellow Jacket, I'm about as far away from being a Georgia fan as you can get. In fact, I once accompanied my beautiful Ramblin Wreck inside Bobby Dodd Stadium in downtown Atlanta where we both cheered enthusiastically against Georgia. 

As for the Alabama Crimson Tide, let's just say that I fully support the recently trending social media topic #NeverBama.

Nevertheless, I was able to transcend my typical aversion to both teams for this particular occasion for one very simple reason: In virtually every aspect of their respective programs, the 2021 Alabama and Georgia college football teams personify EXCELLENCE and everything that creates it (i.e. vision, focus, dedication, discipline, hard work, consistence, persistence, determination, etc.). And the stark reality—evinced by both team's convincing wins in their respective Playoff Semifinal Bowl Games—is that no other team currently comes even close.

Because of the veritable goldmine of knowledge and insight available therein, this Self-Action Leader guy has little choice but to pay attention to organizations like Alabama and Georgia Football, regardless of my personal affiliations or inclinations as a fan.  

What creates the kind and degree of EXCELLENCE presently on display in Athens and Tuscaloosa?    

Jeff Allen is the Head Athletic Trainer for Alabama Football. He has been with the Crimson Tide since the early days of legendary coach Nick Saban's tenure at Alabama, dating back to 2007. Allen says people often ask him what it is about COACH SABAN that has made Alabama so great, as if there was somehow ONE special ingredient to his mystical personality and magical formula that led him to be so much more successful than everybody else. But according to Allen, "It's not [just] one thing. It's a thousand little things. [Coach Saban's] in tune with the little things, not just the big things, and that's imbedded in our entire program."**

"It's not one thing.

It's a thousand little things."

—Jeff Allen

Head Athletic Trainer

Alabama Football

Those thousand little things are all part and parcel of what Saban refers to as "The Process"—an intentional and methodical formula that has steadily brought about his team's extended dominance over the past decade-and-a-half. That dominance has brought the Tide an unparalleled string of success that includes SIX (6) National Championships and three National Championship runners-up. That means in the past fifteen (15) years, there were only six years in which Alabama was not playing in the National Championship game. Such a string of success has never occurred in the sport, and few other sports can boast of an analogue.

Overcoming the daunting legacy of this unparalleled Goliath would prove no small feat for the Georgia Bulldogs, who had lost seven straight games to Alabama dating back 15 years to Nick Saban's first season (2007) in Tuscaloosa. But Georgia is no David. Nay, a Goliath in its own right, the Bulldogs program had been meticulously built by Kirby Smart—one of Coach Saban's former Assistant Coaches—after the Alabama model he himself had been a part of for eight years from 2007-2016.

After many years of painstaking planning and
unrelenting effort, Georgia finally hit the bullseye.

Despite having achieved this lofty status, which paralleled Alabama in many aspects, Saban had outdueled his protégé in all four previous attempts, including a last-second win in overtime in the 2018 National Championship Game. The pain of these losses increasingly smarted for Smart, who could not seem to get over that one, last, elusive hurdle preventing him from summiting the mountaintop. 

But Monday night, led by the most unlikely of heroes—walk-on quarterback and small-town journeyman Stetson Bennett—Georgia finally exorcised its demons against the Tide to win their first National Championship since 1980.

The game itself was not particularly beautiful, although it was highlighted at key moments by some very pretty plays on offense. For me, the BEAUTY of the game was ironically found in its defensive ugliness (effectiveness). 

Here were two teams who had mostly cake-walked their way through their respective schedules, dominating almost everyone they faced throughout the regular season—and even their semifinal games in the playoffs. Both teams averaged over 40 points per game throughout the season. Alabama's quarterback, Bryce Young, won the Heisman Trophy and set single season passing records as a freshman. Georgia's defense was touted as one of the best of all-time.

The Tide's only loss was a narrow slip-up on the road to SEC West rival, Texas A&M (Kyle Field is a hostile environment where victory does not come easily to visitors). Georgia's only loss was to none other than Alabama in the SEC Championship game—a poignant experience and wake-up call for the 12-0 Bulldogs that seemed to significantly influence their reversal of fortunes when it mattered most five weeks later in the Natty. With such sparkling offensive resumes, only the sky (and clock) had limited their ability to score against everyone else. But against each other, their otherwise prolific offenses were largely stymied by equally excellent defenses, leading to an astonishing single-digit score (9-6) nearly three-quarters through the game.

EXCELLENCE  is  BEAUTIFUL

"The Process" of the game was so incredibly ugly that it was, in fact, astonishingly beautiful. And the beauty arose in the remarkable determination and absolutely unrelenting effort, passion, and energy that every athlete insisted on investing up through the last seconds of the game. That kind of complete investment of one's heart, mind, and soul into a cause worth driving for is indeed a beautiful thing. I will never forget watching it. 

EXCELLENCE is and always will be BEAUTIFUL. 

That is why my wife Lina, who has always been physically stunning in my eyes, became far more beautiful to me as I learned about her incredible intellectual capacity, formidable academic achievements, emotional resiliency, social deftness, professional potential, and spiritual strength and faith.

That is why I get chills when I hear a polished musician create aural magic with her instrument or behold an experienced artist in the throes of his best performance. It is why we—like Stetson Bennet Monday night—tear up when an especially difficult obstacle is surmounted or an unusually monumental accomplishment is finally realized.

It is why we are inspired by that vigor of mind and vim of heart and soul that fuels greatness in every aspect of the human experience. And it is why we feel reverent when we are in the presence of those who have honestly achieved authentic greatness.    

That is why things like TRUTH, virtue, kindness, eloquence, polish, refinement, maturity, respect, honest achievement, and anything thereunto... are so incredibly BEAUTIFUL. Because EXCELLENCE is BEAUTY, and authentic beauty is always a form of excellence.  

This beautiful and precious little nugget makes me
want to be a better husband, father, and man.

It is also why my heart melts into joy as I gaze upon the adorably innocent perfection of my little boy as he slumbers peacefully in his bed... and then muse upon his limitless potential in life, a potential made possible through Grace (Serendipity) and the principles and practices of Self-Action Leadership.

In the words of Emerson: If eyes were meant for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

"If eyes were meant for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being."

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thus it is that EXCELLENCE—in all of the beautiful forms that it takes—is beautiful indeed, and why authentic BEAUTY will always qualify as a form of excellence.  

As self-action leaders, we have the opportunity to strive after and towards EXCELLENCE in all that we do. We aren't perfect people, nor are we expected to be, at least not right away. But we are—and always will be—seekers after the BEST, and more importantly, after our BEST. Along the pathways of this ever-noble quest, may we continually draw and derive much inspiration from others who so majestically portray and personify it—like the 2021 Alabama and Georgia football teams. 

Congratulations to the Bulldog Nation!

And Go Gators... we (and everyone else in the SEC East) certainly have our work cut out for us in 2022 and beyond! 

—Dr. JJ

January 12, 2022

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA

Author's Note: This is the 247th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013. 

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Notes:

* The opening line of John Keats' famous extended poem, Endymion.

** Lowe, C. 9 January 2022. ESPN Online. How Jeff Allen Became Invaluable to Nick Saban and Alabama Football. URL: https://www.espn.com.au/college-football/story/_/id/33019887/how-jeff-allen-became-invaluable-nick-saban-alabama-football