Video Coach Curry Published: April 2, 2021 Play Pause Volume Quality 1080P 720P 576P Fullscreen Captions Transcript Chapters Slides Coach Curry Overview So, without further ado, I am so excited to introduce our keynote speaker this morning. Coach Bill Curry. Coach Bill Curry has been married for over 50 years to his beautiful wife, Carolyn, who was this great school sweetheart. He has two incredibly accomplished and successful Children, one of our very own Bill Jr and Kristen, as well as seven grandchildren Alex Elliott, Evelyn, Claire, Brett, Jack and Jamie. Coach Curry has had an astonishing career. He has played in three Super Bowls. 12 of them was the head football coach at Georgia Tech, Kentucky and Alabama. An ESPN analyst for 10 years, a public and motivational speaker for many and has authored the book The 10 Men You Meet in the huddle. He has played for Vince Lombardi and Don Shula and has the most experience stories and advice on life when listening to coach Curries. BSE podcast lessons from a football life I have been so drawn to his energy, honesty, learnings and passion, and I am so excited and honored to be here today to introduce Coach Bill Curry to you if you could please roll the video. Mm. The football huddle is a metaphor for our culture. Imperfect, like all metaphors in that huddle is a bunch of folks that are black, brown, white, liberal, conservative, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu. We are slim, fat, short, tall, fast and slow. We are analytical people, and we're impulsive people. We have some of the finest men on earth, and heaven knows we got a few rounders. The men who are in a place in the huddle have experienced the miracle of team. The training camp experience is unbelievable. It is day after day, week after week to a day, three a day practices in the heat, often in £14 of equipment. Many dropout number stand and everybody thinks about quitting. Trust me, everybody. For those who do stay, there is the opportunity to participate in the greatest team sport ever devised. It is the only sport in which every player needs every teammate on every play just to survive. We learn ever so slowly that our differences do not matter in the huddle. When we trudge in after each interminable workout, we know that sweat smells about the same on everybody's body. When we get busted in the mouth, that blood that trickles is the same color. Everybody's tired. Everybody's hurt. It is in this process that the miracle occurs. Men who've been raised to hate each other's guts become brothers. I've seen Racists reformed. I've seen the most unlikely hugs after victories or losses. I've seen inner city kids invite country boys from the mountains to go home with them for Thanksgiving dinner. And I've seen those invitations accepted and reciprocated. Thus changing parents' lives. Our players become brothers for life. It is what America is supposed to be. Could be. Might be in our best dreams. Yeah. Welcome, Coach Curry. Thank you so much. Such an honor to be here and to be with you today. Um, I can tell you that, Um after what we just saw, I really don't have to say another word, but I'm committed to do the best job I can to elaborate on exactly what that miracle of team includes and what it is that we have to do to improve as a team. And that's what has been put forward for me by our son and by Lauren for you today. And I'm in the time that I'm allotted, I'm going to do the best I can to do that. I'd like to respond to Bill Curry Junior and the privilege he's given me to address you people today, his very first football practice. I did not want him to go out. He was a gentle, nice young man. I wanted him. We got him piano lessons. We got him a basketball go. We got him golf clubs. He used the golf clubs on his mom's lamps in the house when he was about to. That was not a popular thing, so those had to be put up for a while. But he also put on his football helmet every day from the time he was about three years old and he was determined to play. So sure enough, he's gonna go out to his very first practice and I coached him up. Okay, Now you've got to bend your knees. You gotta tackle hard. You gotta keep your head up and you got to strike a blow with your shoulder pad and all those kind of things. So he comes back after that first day and I say, um, Billy, how do you go? He had a little tears trickling. He had a big bruise on the side of his face and I said, He said, Dad, it was really hard. I said, Well, what happened? He said, They made us lie down with our feet together on our bags and they blew a whistle and we had to jump up and tackle each other. I said, Well, that's football. You start on your back sometime. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm crazy about the drill, but you're going to have to go through tough drills like that. So this I saw my opportunity to coach our son so that he would get tough quickly and learn how to hop up quicker than the other guy. Bend his knees, move his feet quickly, get his pads down, keep his head up, strike a blow and deliver the blow to the other guy that that the other guy had delivered to him in the first practice. So he's getting ready to go to the second practice, and we're walking up to the lunch room at Georgia Tech. I was coaching it tech at the time. I said, Well, Billy, you're going back to practice today. Yes, sir, I am. I said you know what? You gotta do. Yes, sir, I do, I said if you decided, how are you going to handle this? He said, Yes, sir, I have. I said, Well, tell me what you learned and I just knew he'd give me back all that wonderful coaching that his father had given. He didn't hesitate. He said, I want to have that guy on my side. He had already learned that recruiting is the key to the whole deal. He was a lot smarter than his old man, Even at age 10 or 11. He's loved football. Ever since then, he's done things in his adult life. He's overcome the kind of tragedy that most people would be destroyed by. He probably doesn't like me talking about that, but Boston Scientific gets a huge assist in that situation. If he wants to tell you about it, he can. But I'm so proud of him that I can hardly articulate how I feel. He and his wife, Kelly, have five beautiful boys. Alex, the oldest, just graduated from the University of Virginia last spring. The youngest is six years old, and they are all perfect in every way. Don't even talk to me about any flaw whatsoever with any of them. Um, he is most importantly and selfishly for his old man. He's forgiven me for the foolishness of our earlier life when I was too busy running around trying to coach everybody else's Children. I didn't spend enough time with my own, and Bill has forgiven me, and that is an ultimate treasure. Your parents will understand what I'm talking about. My wife, Carolyn, is a scholar. Our daughter Kristen is a scholar, and I could talk at great length. I've been in love with Caroline for 67 years. What that means is I was 11 when I fell in love with her. Because we're 78 now. We've been married 58 years. Um, she's been in love with me now for almost five years, started doing the dishes, and it's amazing. Guys just try. It works really well. I think she actually likes me now, but we got these incredible grandchildren, and they educate us almost every time we're with them. Beautiful. Evelyn, Kristen's oldest daughter, is going to graduate from high school this year. When she was about three, I used to get to keep her a lot because I was working for ESPN and I had some afternoons free and we'd take walks and go down by the pond and that sort of thing. And then I'd rock her and put her down for her nap. And one day I'm whispering Sweet nothings. Evelyn, I love you so much. There's so much I'd like to tell you. The grandchildren call me Bo because the first grandchild names you. Alex decided I was going to be Bo. We still don't know why he doesn't know why I asked. You don't know. So Evelyn says in that precious little voice. Well, Bowie, there's some things I'd like to tell you. I said, Go ahead, honey, you can tell me anything She said. Your breath is terrible. So don't ever ask your grandchildren anything unless you want to hear the truth. Billy's now 12 year old bread. When he was about seven, I walk in Billy's house, Billy and Kelly and Brits there. He's waiting for me because all the grandchildren send me as a large toy. So when I walk in, Brett shots through. By the way, Brett already had two teenage brothers, so that will explain some of this rhetoric he says, Hey, Bo, get your ass upstairs. Let's play video games I said, What did you say to me? What'd you say? He said, Get your ass upstairs. Let's play video games I said, Don't ever speak to me like that. Don't speak to anybody. Don't talk to anybody with profanity. Don't use those kinds of words. I knew exactly where he had learned him. I was going to talk to the big boys later. I said. Now what we do is we're polite. We say the right things. We say please and thank you all those things your mom and dad teach you. Do you understand? He said, Yes, sir, I understand. I said, All right, let's try it again. He said, Get your ass upstairs, please. How's that? So I haven't done a very good job of educating our grandchildren on etiquette. But I do want to talk to you today about building a team because all the weaknesses that we have and we certainly have them the curry family as a team, What does that mean? These we trust each other. We communicate honestly. The grandchildren feel like they can say things to their grandparents, even like the things that I just shared with you. The reason I just shared them is so you would understand that and that they still feel that way as they mature and they tell us things that we wouldn't learn anywhere else. And Bill Curry Junior has become a mentor and for his forgiveness, I have tried to express to him how deeply I love him, admire him beyond the fact that he happens to be our only son. But the fact that he's become a real leader because he understands the power of forgiveness, it's unmerited, and it's undeserved in this case, and that is the most powerful of all. And that's going to be a primary element and what I talk about today, because what I have done through no merit of my own, except to try hard and to get in shape. I have been on some of the greatest football teams of all time with the greatest coaches, by record, the greatest coaches of all time. Bobby Dodd, Vince Lombardi, Don Shula. You can look it up. As Casey Stengel used to say, You can look it up. It's right there in the record book, so I was the privilege of being in the presence of those great coaches and understanding what it was that they did that gave us an advantage over our competitors. Yeah, the metaphor you just saw of the huddle was shaped in my mind by the events of September 11th, 2000 and one. If we could see each other and God knows, I wish we could. I'm sorry, but Zoom has got to do for now. I wish we could see each other. I would ask for a show of hands because virtually all adults know where we were. September 11th, 2000 and one. Most of us do not know where we were in September 13th, 2000 and one. I was driving to an ESPN assignment a strange assignment because ESPN has decided to not to put any of the commentators on airplanes. So our assignments have been changed so that we could go to a game that was close to where we live, close enough to drive, and I was driving to the Alabama versus Southern Mississippi game in Birmingham, Alabama. If the game were to be played, the N. C. A. Was meeting to decide whether or not to even play the games. I stopped in a talent. Alabama forgets I'm working, filling up my gas tank and I'm walking around the station and the guy recognized me. He said, Coach, are we going to play these games? I said, Well, I don't know. The N C. A s meeting at this cell phone in my pocket here rings while I'm in your station. You may be the first fan in America to know whether we're playing or not. Well, sure enough, two or three minutes later, the phone rang. I was told to go home. We're not playing good decision. So I walked back up to the front of it front of the station. I said, Uh, we're not playing. And I'll never forget the response. Those eyes bulged out. Those jugglers popped up. He looked me right in the eye, and I said, Well, let me tell you something, Coach, Come Friday night in a tower, Alabama, we're gonna play football because it means a lot to us. I felt like I've been slapped in the face. It was not what I expected. So I'm driving bag. We were all terrified. We didn't know what the war was. We didn't know what we've gotten into. We didn't know when the next explosion was coming, so I began to pray. I'm not always good about that, but I was certainly good in those circumstances. Lot of us learned to pray better under those circumstances, didn't we? God, please help me to understand what's going on here. Why does it matter if somebody's gonna play a football game in the midst of it? Obviously, we're in a war. Why does it matter in Attallah, Alabama? Why does it matter in Boulder, Colorado? Why does it matter in Los Angeles, California? Why does it matter? In upstate New York? It began to come to me Friday night in America Football, for all its woes and all its problems, and certainly we've got a lot of problems in football right now, but that's when we huddle as a community. We sit with people that we don't sit with any other time of the week, that little metaphor that you just saw, that happens all the time, but most people don't see those practices. Most people don't see the fact that you can't even get your jersey on and football without an assist from your teammate who's next to you. He has to smell your sweat. He doesn't have any choice because he's got to pull your jersey over your shoulder pads. You can't even get dressed alone. In football, you've got to have your teammate. There's something beautiful about that. Besides the fact that it's a pain in the butt because you learned I've had guys say I'm not addressing next to that guy. I hate that guy. He's from South Central L. A. I said, Oh, yes, you're dressing next to him He said, No, I'm not coaching so well, He said, You can't do that. I said, I can do anything I want to. I'm the head coach. You can go home, give up your scholarship. That's up to you. But you're gonna dress where I'll tell you. I can't. I hate that guy. No, you you may not give him a chance to Years later, those two guys walk in my office. I guess. What? Coach? We love each other. We hate to admit it, but you're right. You're right. He's not such a bad guy. All the craziness in our culture comes from sources other than inside us. We don't We're not born hating somebody because of the color of their skin, because their gender, because of the way their eyes look or because because of any of those factors were taught that stuff. And when that gets in your organization, it is deadly. I've experienced it. I've handled it well at times that I've handled it very poorly at other times. So September 13th, 2000 and one was a very important day for me and that that was the produce, the production of the huddle metaphor that you just watched that's still out there, and people contact me about it all the time because you see each of us, and if you get a pencil and paper handy, or if you can get your computer or whatever you're using, I want you to ride this word down. I worked at Baylor School in their leadership program in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a beautiful, wonderful private school, and as you leave the premises, Ed Stone Stone, 12 letters, five syllables, one word magna, new impetus, and I didn't do very well in Latin, so I ride back up the mountain one day and I said What's that? Magna. Whatever down there, etched in stone in our gate as you leave as you exit. The premise is not when you come in, but as you exit the word magnet tomatoes and said, Oh, that was Dr Balers. Favorite word. He used to write that to his graduates, and he would say this if I could give you just one word with which to monitor your future. It would be from the Latin. Magnanimity does. It means greatness of spirit. You have greatness of spirit. Your greatness of spirit is unique and beautiful. It's not like anybody else's. You may become a great philanthropist or a great philosopher or a great teacher. A great mom, Dad, whatever is that you become. But you will never be the creation that God made you to be until you locate your magnanimity, Hoss, and develop it and give it to a cause greater than yourself. Dr. Baylor's message and it struck me right in the heart. I never had another football team. I never had another lecture that I didn't use those words because we are living in a jungle. Don't kid yourself about the difficulties we face. They are difficult, but they are surmountable. Roger Kipling understood. One of my very favorite poets. Listen carefully now. This is the law of the jungle as old and as true as the sky and the wolf. This shall keep it may prosper and the wolf it shall break. It must die as the creeper girdles the tree trunk, the law running forward and back. The strength of the pack is the wolf. The strength of the wolf is the pack. We need each other all day, every day. You want to improve your team. Boston Scientific, Billy says. Let's improve our team. We need to improve our marketing team. That's how you improve your team. You understand that you need each other and you treat each other. You are affecting each other every single time you touch each other. Now I'm going to do a youth worker thing here. I'm a youth worker. That's what I've done all my life. So bear with me just this one time and take a look at your hand. I know it's silly, but just look at your hand. You don't look at it very often and understand this. I know you know this there are a lot of people on this call a lot smarter than I am. But if we had the capacity scientifically to do fingerprints over the roughly seven billion people on the face of the earth today, there would not be another set of fingerprints like the one you're looking at. There's nobody like you. There has never been anybody like you. There will never be anybody like you. We need you with your unique gift to give it with all your heart. If you're a Boston Scientific teammate, we need you to give it to our team all the time with all you have, and we're counting on you to do just that. That's what great teams have. How do they develop it? Different ways. But there are some things in common that I want to share with you. And Kipling was right. We need each other. We need the team. Every time we touch each other every time we're in. The presence of another human being were either an inspiration. We either lift up the spirits when we walk in a room. The energy changes when, when Don Shula walked in a team meeting, the energy in the room changed, changed, changed and we were encouraged. We felt better even if he was in a bad mood. On the other hand, there are other people who walk in a room and they drain the energy with their negativity with their expression with their negative remarks. But the way they look at you, the way they touch you, I call that group the Fellowship of the Miserable. The Fellowship of the Miserable loves to see you so that they can tell you every day if they can. This is going to be another rotten day. And I hate the whatever the political or the religious or whatever is going on. I hate that, and you should, too, and they love to get in the back of the locker room. And every time the coach has a plan and says, this is what we're gonna do and this is gonna work, whether it's Boston Scientific at the Green Bay Packers doesn't matter. It only takes one in the corner of the locker room to say Coach is stupid. It's a bad plan. That's all it takes. And that spreads be careful that you're not recruited into the Fellowship of the miserable because they are very clever recruiters. They don't want to see you succeed. They don't want you to beat the odds, because when you do, you point out how putrid their lives are. God bless him. I talked about it so much at Georgia State because we started a football team at Georgia State. Everybody laughed at us. You can't have a football team at Georgia State. Billy Currie came down and washed his practice. He laughed at us, too. He said, Pop, you got to do better at this I said, Okay, we'll do better. Then he helped. He told me what we need to do, and I appreciate that and we did it. We did what he said he was happy about that Fellowship of the Miserable wants to see you failed, so you can be just like them so they can say, See there occurring. He's no different rest of us just cause he tries all that stuff, they can't do it. You can't pull that off. So we made up our mind. We're going to do it and I've had guys come back to me in the last couple of years and say, Coach, what about the fellowship. What about the fellowship of the Miserable? Do we just? I used to say We pray for them. We love them. We avoid them. I had to change that. They said, Coach, we can't do that. That's not that's unchristian. That's not a good faith. Okay, we pray for them. We love them. We try to help them. I've got members of the fellowship to contact me. Now I try to help them. I hope I can. I hope God can. But you can't have them in your huddle. You've got to either change them or you've got You've got to either have an attitude adjustment or you've got to find somebody else to do the job. And I'm really sorry about that. But I think back on the teams and where I could have done so much better job because I had a chance. When guys are 17, 18 years old, you can make a difference. And you can change from the member of the fellowship to a member of the positive tribe, the positive team, the positive togetherness. People trust each other. So you move somebody every time you see him. Who molded you? I want you to think today about the people who really touched you, who really made a difference. Some of mine were really famous. You heard of Willie Davis, the great defensive end Hall, Pro Hall of Fame, Green Bay Packers. When I reported to the Green Bay Packers, I was the 20th draft choice. They only have seven rounds these these days. They had 20 when I was playing, and I was guess what? Dead last? Pat Peppler was the personnel guy, and he had turned to Lombardi at 2 a.m. He said, Vince, uh, 2 a.m. And we drafted 19 players. We got one choice left. Lombardi turned a pet Peppler and said Peppler, Yeah, it's 2 a.m. I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed, do something humorous with the 20th selection. So they did. And there I was. That was not my biggest problem. I had been playing for the Southern gentleman Bobby Dodd, who just was just this wonderful guy who dressed just the right boy with muses jackets on an expensive ties. Just look beautiful all the time. And now here I come as Vince Lombardi, who was not Southern, your religion, your family the Green Bay Packers. That's all you'll think of while you're here and those will be your priorities. And he was a Yankee and he talked funny and he talked like this year and he used profanity and somebody said He goes to church every day I said, There ain't no way nobody goes to church every day. So I went to Bart Starr, one of the great friends I've ever had in my life and another one of the real positive leaders that I've ever known. I said, The bar, There's something wrong about the coach. Lombardi. There ain't no way he goes to church every day. He said, Bill, don't be judgmental. Great lesson from a great man. Don't be judgmental, Of course, Coach Lombardi is not perfect, but he goes to Mass every single morning. He's very devout. He confesses his sins. You need to think about that and not be thinking about how you're going to judge him. What a lesson. But Lombardi was not my biggest problem. My biggest problem was that I'd never been in a huddle. Except for a couple of All Star games. I've never been in a huddle with an African American person had grown up in College Park, Georgia, and I thought, and Lombardi was way ahead of his times. He gets he gets credit for a lot of things. But it doesn't get credit for his best attribute, which is that he would not tolerate racism so other teams would have one or two African American players or none and brag about it. We had 10 African American players on a 40 man roster, and he didn't care. He cared a lot. If you could play football and if you were a decent guy and nobody could beat us, by the way, nobody, it's unbelievable. So I figured these guys are gonna hear my Southern accident. They're gonna hurt me and send me home, and I don't blame them. So I'm walking out of the dorm in that state of mind one night and I hear this voice come out of the darkness. Bill, I thought it was God. I just sat down in the grass. It was Willie Davis, defensive captain Grambling State University, working on his master's degree in business at the University of Chicago while being captain of what was already being called the greatest football team of all time. Why does he want to talk to me? He's gonna tell me to get lost. Go home, right? Wrong. He said. Bill, I've been watching you at practice and I really like your effort. You've got a chance to make our team. I'm going to help you. I said, You're gonna help me He said, Yeah, when you can't take it another minute when the body is screaming profanity and spitting in your face And he damn sure did. And when Ray Nitschke in the middle linebacker, smashing your nose and breaking your face mask. And he did. He said. When those things happen, you come find me, I'll get you through it. I'll get you through it. So what the great man do for the terrified white kids? He didn't just help me to play for 10 years in the NFL and go to four world championship games. He changed my life. It was an unexpected, undeserved, un rewarded act of kindness from a great man. That's what leadership is. That's what builds trust. That's what builds teams. You want to improve your team, that improves the team. And so when I made that team It wasn't just me. I was right there. Arm in arm and we call him with his nickname was Dr Feel Good? Sure enough, Lombardi would be all over me, and I would be about to cry. 22 year old stand in the middle of the Green Bay Packer practice. I was about to sob and I'd run Fine, Willie D. I see how you feel, Old man. His nickname was Dr Feel Good. He said, Feel good, man. Feel good. You can do it. You can do it. I went from a terrified white kid to a guy that had a chance in the NFL had the privilege of playing many, many years, much of it because of Willie Davis. And there were others. He wasn't the only one. There were others that took me and Bart Starr took me and love me when I didn't deserve it. And all of these things come, um, when their undeserved. So I had some famous guys that were great to me, and I had some guys that weren't so famous. When I was a sophomore Georgia Tech. I just got married. I'm sorry I was a junior and I had never started a game. So I went to one of my coaches and say, Coach, um, what I gotta do to play so it doesn't matter what you do, Curry. You're not good enough and you'll never be good. I'm sorry he wasn't a bad guy. He just was doing his job. He thought crushed me. So we go to spring practice and another coach comes to my locker. His name was John Robert Bell. God never forget him in 1000 years, he said, Bill, I know you can play unless you and me go to practice a little earlier and work on your footwork said You can't improve only played 12 more years after he said those immortal words to me. John Robert Bell loved me and pushed me and made me do things I never dreamed I could do. Yeah, I wanted to get out of some of those scrimmages in Atlanta, Georgia, in August. I look over Coach Bill, I said, Coach at, I just need to go get a drink Water so you stay right here. So it wasn't easy, but it mattered because John Robert Bill said to me, I know you can play I could not let him down. By the way, he went on to become a head coach and won a national championship. Sack Terry Bradshaw 10 times in the national championship game. I just love to brag on John Robert Bell leaders. Create a culture. Leaders, create a culture. You either create a culture of the fellowship of the miserable if you're the leader or you create a culture of excellence and you will not accept anything other than the excellence that you demand. The greatest halftime speech I've ever heard in my life lasted about 10 seconds. We're in Detroit, 1965. I'm a rookie with the Green Bay Packers. There's one team in the league that's not intimidated by the Packers. It was the Detroit Lions, and we're playing in Detroit and they're killing us. Not only is the score 21 23 at the half, their ridiculing us, one of the Detroit players, and I'm not going to call his name, and I'm not going to use the words he used. But he walked by our bench just so he could look at Lombardi right in the eye and he says, How do you like that you're fat. Bleeping bleeping bleeping bleep. I couldn't believe it. I thought God is going to strike that guy dead right here. A coach. Lombardi is gonna tear him up verbally. I turned and looked at Coach Lombardi. He's smiling. It's 21 23 at the half. They're killing us. We got no chance. I'm a rookie, Lombardi smiling. So we run in the locker room, terrified. What's he gonna do to us now? He could destroy your life with his rhetoric. It was it was the most scathing. He had the capacity had this. He had this verbal. He when he would go, really go off on somebody. Sure enough, next day or two, he'd come put his arm around you just to try to save your life. It was so we were all sitting there dreading this halftime lecture. He didn't show up. NFL halftime is 12 minutes. So for 11 minutes and 30 seconds, we suffered wondering what was going to be descending upon us at length. He walks in the locker room. Somehow he established our contact with all 40 men on the roster. This is what he said, Yeah, with the Green Bay Packers and he turned around, walked down. I will let you guess what happened in the second half. We ran them out of their stadium. We destroyed them. It took me years to figure out why Lombardi smiled at that Detroit lion player, but I figured it out. I was scared to ask him. He smiled because he knew that the lion players thought the game was over, and that was just what he wanted. We had them right where we wanted them, good guy, and we were world champions again. That here. So it takes that kind of. You see, he didn't have to shout at us. He didn't have to say, Well, find physical conditioning, makes keeps, keeps us in shape to win games or fatigue makes cowards of us all. Or your religion, your family, the green. But he didn't have to give any of those principles to us because he had hammered them into our hearts and souls all day, every day, all year. He knew they were living in our hearts. He didn't have to reiterate them Every time we got in trouble. All he had to do is remind us of who we were And if you stand up and say I know this from Bill Curry Junior, if you stand up and say Boston Scientific micro vases, endoscopy, that's a big deal. Maybe that's all you got to say to folks that are getting discouraged. Whatever it is that you've got to say to remind us of who we are, then you'll be a better team instantly because you've got the talent, you've proven it, you've dominated. You can dominate again. Those values that Lombardi cars. He didn't articulate it in just this way. But I'm going to close with this. There are five values that are appreciated by every culture, every religion, every political system, every economic system on the face of the earth. Research by the Institute for Global Ethics out of Portland, Maine, established decades ago. These five values and the great originator of this turn to me at breakfast one morning, he said. Bill, best way I can describe this for you so you won't forget it. This is what every mama wants for her baby. Fairness, honesty, respect, responsibility, compassion, fairness, honesty, respect, responsibility, compassion cannot trust you to tell me the truth because you see when those five principles are present on the team when those five principles are lived out and become habit. Then there's 1/6 cultural factor that becomes reality, and it's called trust. Can I trust you? Are you going to tell me the truth when we're down and out? Are you going to tell me the truth when we're flying high? Can I count on you in the fourth quarter? You see in our business And I used to brag about this. I'm not so sure this is a healthy thing anymore. But this is how it feels when you're watching the Super Bowl or again. That's really important to those big old guys. And by the way, if somebody from my era tells you we could play in this era, he's out of his mind. They would kill us. I'd be a water boy in this era. They are so fast and so big and so good. It's unbelievable, but they still have to pay the price. What you saw in that little film before we started today, that stuff is real and it's a year round now. These kids get up at five in the morning. They had to go run up and down stadium steps and then go to calculus tutoring and pump iron and get ready to try to be a football player. Because when it comes down to is in the fourth quarter, there's a minute in 18 seconds on the clock. You got one time out your down before you got to have a touchdown. Let me tell you what's running through my mind. It is not another Super Bowl ring. It is not another contract. It is not. I got to feed my family. It is not. I'm a hero. I'm going to block it back to some more. Or Joe Green or Alan Page. It is. I want to quit. I'm dying, I guess. Or Bart Starr. I don't want to protect anybody. I want to go to the sideline and suck on the oxygen and drink water. That's all. So if none of that stuff you've heard about the rings and the diamonds and the publicity and the money, if that doesn't make us go, what does? I turned to this poor guy next to me. That's my brother. That's my teammates. I had this little voice deep inside. It's my Magnum photos And that magna nematodes is saying to me, Don't you dare quit. Don't you ever quit. You suck it up. You move your feet. You keep your pad square, you keep your head up. I don't care how much it hurts. You protect your quarterback. I turned to my brother next to me. I know what he's going to do because we've been there together so many, many times and I cannot let him down. I have found my motivation. I guarantee you, it doesn't matter what color his skin is. It doesn't matter who he voted for. It doesn't matter where he goes to church or if he goes to church or mosque or synagogue or what. I don't care about any. That's my teammate. I love him. I'm not let him down, whatever it costs. So at the end of that drive, which, by the way, last an eternity. We can look at each other. We don't have to say anything. We don't have to hug. Probably will. But we don't have to. We can know this day. We were the best that we could be. And maybe we were the best in the world. Wow, Wonderful thing mhm. What lasts is not the best in the world or the rings. What lasts is the relationships. It's all about the relationships. You never forget those people that didn't let you down when you knew how they felt, how much it hurts. So when we reach across those barriers and we join hands or we sit in the stands on a Friday night with somebody that's different from us, somebody will never sit with any other time. When we join hands in our project, in our huddle, in our endeavour, in our business that our capacity to excel does not increase arithmetically. It does not increase geometric. It increases exponentially. And it does so in an instant so that we don't just change Boston Scientific. We change everything around us. We changed the rooms we walked into. God bless you. Boston Scientific. Thank you for listening to me. I love you all very much. And thank you. Bill Curry. Junior Coach Curry. I mean, I'm still sitting here at the chills. I'm sure everybody is. That was so amazing. And we are so blessed and honored to have you don't even know if you could see you probably couldn't But the comments in the chat throughout your entire talk are just people are in all over you and just your motivation and your team work that you've brought this morning. Um, we have a few minutes. So I was hoping you wouldn't mind if there are a few questions from the group. Please feel free to either put them in the chat or, um, even just take, you know, off mute in your camera. And we would also love to hear from your son, Bill Curry. Junior. That's joined us today in some of his comments as well. So I hope you don't mind sticking around to Coach Curry. I'm sure you might have a couple of comments and questions that people would like to ask you. That'd be great. I'd be glad to. Great. Okay, so can you. Can everybody hear me? I'm assuming on my microphone is working. Um, one of my favorite questions. I think it's remarkable. So So my first memories of Dad literally were his practice jersey and Green Bay as a kid going to practice and sitting on his shoulder pet. And, uh, it was a pretty pretty trippy, you know, thing to identify. Um, you know, the $6 million Man Lee Majors played a character on a TV show back then, and pop kind of looked like And so I was pretty convinced that, you know, my dad was a sideboard. But having said that, I think one of the cool things is pop, if you could talk about when having, you know, coached and, uh, you know, in huge games and and played in huge games when you dream about the sport, what do you dream about? This is going to blow your mind. Um, haven't dreamed about sport in a while, but Billy and I when he was 14, um drove over and got a golden retriever. And we named him after our line Coach Mac McWhorter, who was a great line coach and called him Mac. Of course, um, he was heroic and wonderful. Incredible golden retriever dog energetic, beautiful, loved us unconditionally. If you want to understand an unconditional love, you gotta have a golden retriever. But Billy and I also had to, um, take him to the vet when he had a brain tumor and we lost him. We had 11 years with him, but I I dreamed about him three nights ago, I was lost. This won't surprise you. Ability. Billy has great billion. His mom have great instinct for finding things and directions. His sister, Kristin and I are helpless, so we're usually lost somewhere in Billy and Caroline have to find places. But I was lost again and Matt came to get me, and he and I took off toward a lighted pond. I don't know what that meant, but one thing that it does resonate with is that his partnership was unconditional. His commitment to you and me and the rest of the family didn't depend on anything. He would do anything that he thought would make us happy. And I think maybe somewhere deep in my soul and probably yours, too. There is a Mac chip that says, This is this is 100% total commitment. I wish I could dream about specific players. I I'm at an age right now where I'm losing a lot of my teammates, and, uh, that's that's a very difficult thing, but it makes me remember a lot of the wonderful moments when we were able to give each other all we had. It wasn't always enough to win, but it was all we had. But I don't I don't dream about, um I don't dream about coaching. If I dream at all, it's some sort of fuzzy thing about playing or something about mayor. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I always think about the fact that especially in the context of what we all do here, is just that element of being a player in the game. And, uh, you know, having a had a career playing career myself. That's my dream. Usually includes being unprepared in being thrown back into a situation where I knew I was going to play. But to me what I've always taken away from that, it's just that we don't dream about being Spectators. We dream about being in the game, and that's, you know, the opportunity to compete is such an amazing thing. And candidly, the culture on the best teams that I've ever been on has never has never exceeded the culture of this organization. When we're at our best, and what an incredible honor and opportunity it is every day to get to work in a culture like that, so I don't want to hijack it. But I want to brag on the group that you're speaking to you today along those lines, because there's nothing else like it. And I think that every time we have an opportunity to support each other, to get thrown into awkward situations together, to get thrown into horribly uncomfortable situations together with a customer where we have to deliver news that we don't want to deliver and the part that you talk about just telling the unvarnished, unmitigated truth and it's and owning it taking 100% responsibility is something that you taught me and something that is a hallmark of this organization. That's just as good as it gets. And so I'm super proud of the group on the Col um, for things like that, because there's just so many great people that have taught me so much here. And so it's just a real honor to be able to do that on behalf of this organization. And that's it out of me. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Does anybody else have any questions that they would like to ask a Tory or Bill Curry? Junior, I think everyone is probably still stunned. Is that they're asleep. No one is asleep. I promise you that. Yeah, well, with that Coach Curry, like I said from from the bottom of our heart from the marketing organization here at Boston Scientific, we couldn't have asked for a better individual to kick off today. Um, your motivation and your inspiration have definitely hit home. Um, And our motto, I think for the rest of the day will be greatness of spirit. And just that teamwork that that you've really embody and that you've shared with us this morning. So thank you so much again for your words this morning. Um, and we are so excited to continue this motivation for the rest of the day. So thank you. Thank you so much. Just remember, everybody's got it. Thank you. Created by
