The Redskins Blog

Doc: Success = Opportunity + Hard Work

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Former Redskins great and current sidelines reporter Rick ‘Doc’ Walker was paid to play football, but he was born for events like this afternoon’s Coca Cola sponsored “4th & Life” football forum.

Not only does he have a delivery style that’s impossible to ignore, but he had a message for students on and off the field: carpe diem.

Seize the day.

But you’ll have to take off your headphones and listen, in order to be able to do that, or you just won’t get it:

And teach them, is exactly what he did, along with the help of Redskins players Lorenzo Alexander, Ryan Kerrigan and Darrel Young.

Walker and the panelists congratulated each of the players that could call themselves football champions.  But he made everyone give a round of applause to those that could call themselves “academic champions.”

“This, is what it’s all about,” he said.  ”On the academic side, that’s on you.  Aspire to be the best that you can academically.  I cheated myself academically in high school.  I held talent hostage.  I thought I knew it all, I talked more than the teacher did, and didn’t know anything.  I was an idiot, masquerading as an 18-year-old, who thought he was something special.”

“I talk to you this way, because I’ve been there, and I know what it takes to overcome that.”

Walker and the Redskins panelists spent nearly two hours with the 500 students from 23 school districts (from as far away as West Virginia) discussing what it takes to be a champion.  As Walker continually reminded the students, “It’s not just a champion on the football field, but a champion in life.”

“No one can define who you are in life, unless you let them,” he said.  ”You can be who you want to be, as long as you approach it the right way, legally, and doing what it takes to get the job done.”

More to come from today’s event…