Below Is The Text To The Speech That
NFL Fox Sunday Analyst and 1987 Coe Graduate Curt Menefee
Gave At The 2010 Coe College Commencement ~
Thank you Dr. Dave, President Phifer, faculty, staff, students, friends, family, you name it...I thank you!!!
You know, this morning, I'm reminded of a song from my parents' generation that everybody knows...it goes, "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day....when it's cold outside, I've got the month of may"...
Well, only in Iowa can you get all of that, sunshine, clouds, cold, and may all at the same time!! But that's alright, because it we're all feeling "great" today, aren't we???...and we should be!!
Especially those of you sitting in those chairs wearing caps and gowns, and why shouldn't feel fantastic?? "you" are about to become Coe College graduates!! This is the greatest day of your life!! I know you feel it!!
It'll probably get even greater the faster I can finish this speech, give you a couple of minutes to blow off your family, so that you can then "really" celebrate with your friends!!!
Hey-let's be honest, that's what we do on special occasions, and trust me....as an alumnus of the Coe College class of '87, this "is" the greatest day of your life-so far.
Now despite that fantastic introduction from Dr. Gehring, I know there are still plenty of you out there wondering, just who is this guy?
No worries....heck, I know when I was a student here at Coe, I had a hard enough time making it over to gage hall to get to the cafeteria before lunch ended on Sunday, forget making it up in time to watch an NFL pregame show!!
But I think it turned out alright. Now I'm the host of "Fox NFL Sunday....the # 1 pregame show in America"---along with Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan, and Jimmy Johnson---not just the number one NFL pregame show, but the number one pregame show in all of sports television!!
Not bad for a guy who liked to sleep in on Sundays when he was in college, huh??
The point is, "that guy" didn't define who I am today.
But it was the skills "that guy" learned on this very campus, the skills that you gather as part of a liberal arts education, that "laid the foundation" for who I am today.
It's all part of the evolution of you. From where you are now, to where you're going to wind up.
Look, the "only" two things in life you have "zero" control over are:
1. Where you're born, and
2. Who you're born to, or who your parents are.
Other than that, everything else involving "your life" is in "your" control.
You know, when I speak to young people, I'm often asked-"how do I become successful? Or what's the secret of success???
Ahh, young student, the secret is, you already have the answer!!
It's simply a matter of putting the answer---or actually---"answers" to use.
All you have to do from this point forward in order to grasp control of your life and make it the success that you want it to be, are 3 very simple things:
1. Work hard
2. Be passionate
3. Enjoy life
That's it!!
Now I'm not Oprah, nor Dr. Phil, but I know that if you (in Dr. Phil voice): "work hard, be passionate, and enjoy life", you "will" define yourself as the person you wanna be . And being the person that you want to be???: "that!!" is what "will" make you a success in life.
When I came to Coe as a freshman, I'm not sure I had any of those traits!! Well, I guess they were somewhere in me, but I didn't know how to tap into them.
Heck, I didn't know much of anything!
That naivety probably explains why I went from the big city of Atlanta to a small midwestern town to go to college....all while knowing that I wanted to be involved in television somehow... Yet, here I was heading off to a school that offered no degree in journalism, and that at the time had no campus radio nor tv station.
Still to this day, I know that I wouldn't be where I am were it not for the skills I learned over in Hickok Hall, or Stuart Hall, or even in the dorms of Greene Hall---notice I didn't mention the library...skills that were not only learned, but fine tuned and honed by a liberal arts education...the first being hard work.
Like a lot of so called "smart kids" I'd skated through high school, I came to Coe on an academic scholarship.
But then I got-I believe-two "d's", a "c", an "incomplete", and a dropped class in my first semester.
That's when, knowing I was here on scholarship, and that there was no way my family could afford to send me to school, I got a quick lesson in hard work.
Sociology professor Allen Fisher was my faculty advisor and he could not have been more perfect in telling me I'd better "shape up, or I'd be gone".
Now if any of you ever had Dr. Fisher, you know that he speaks to you in a calm, gentle, almost shy manner-in fact every time I see the movie "Good Will Hunting" I swear Robin Williams is playing Dr. Fisher!!
Anyway, he probably didn't realize it, but his words at that time had a profound impact on me, and i thank him to this day.
With his help, academically, I turned it around and got a 3-point-0 next semester and stayed "around" that level the rest of my academic career.
That summer after my freshman year I went home to Atlanta where, another Coe College alum, Fred Hickman, at the time was an anchor at CNN sports. He helped me get an internship there as one of a dozen or so kids who watched games and suggested highlights to the producers. After we were done each night at 11pm, while the other interns went out for a beer. I'd often stay and ask the editors to teach me how to do what they do.
Well, after a couple of weeks, the "one" paid intern there, who worked on the morning show, left because he needed to earn money for school. You had to know how to edit in order to get that gig, and since I'd been the only one staying late at night learning, I got it. "I was then the paid intern"!!! I got paid 5-dollars for every 3-hours I worked!!!
So, in order for me to make money to bring back to school, I interned at CNN from 3 in the morning until noon, went home and grabbed about 90-minutes sleep, worked on a truck loading dock from 3 in the afternoon until midnight---in the Georgia summer heat---home again for another hour and a half, or so, and back to CNN. I caught up on my sleep on the weekends.
But I didn't care at that point, I had gotten just enough of a taste of being in television to know that that was what I wanted to do.
In what capacity, I wasn't sure.
So when I got back to Cedar Rapids that fall, I called up every local television station. I thought that my CNN experience would be an automatic "in". Instead I was "out" of luck.
No one needed interns that fall, but that following April, I received a call from John Campbell at KCRG, channel 9. John had kept my number all those months.
Now you may say, "ah-ha!! You had no control over that".!!
And I would tell you that..."ah-ha!!".... I took control by working hard enough at CNN that summer to get the experience...that was after working hard enough in the classroom to keep my scholarship. Then by having the passion to reach out to the stations locally in order to keep my fledgling dream alive.
Well, John, whom I still keep in touch with to this day, asked me if I would be willing to carry gear for him at the University of Iowa spring football game. "you don't get to be on tv, you won't get famous, and you won't get paid". It was an offer I couldn't refuse.
So I was his pack mule that Saturday at Kinnick Stadium! I did well enough that he asked me if I'd do it again the following week for Iowa State.
What I later realized was that john's questions for me were more a test of my committment to wanting to be in this business than they were a quest to get someone to carry equipment for him.
He took me under his wing and was the first to encourage me to put my voice down on tape and think about working in front of the camera rather than behind the scenes. From the middle of my sophomore year at Coe until after graduation, I worked as a reporter at channel-9.
Eventually this career path, as is the case in local television, took me from Cedar Rapids, to Des Moines, to Madison, Wisconsin, to Washington D.C., Jacksonville, Florida, Dallas, and eventually to New York. Where at the age of 29 I became the #1 sports anchor on the number-1 10 o'clock newscast in the number-1 tv market in the country. I continued to work for the local Fox affiliate there before joining Fox sports nationally as an NFL announcer.
And now I stand here at the age of 44, on the same stage that I walked across as a 21-year-old, giving a commencement address and receiving an honarary diploma.
Bt the way, when I did this as a graduating senior, I might add, I opened up the folder that they hand you when you cross the stage, and instead of having a diploma in it, there was a note saying that I owed $600 for something or other, and wouldn't get my diploma until it was paid!!! So make sure you double check yours when they hand it to you.
But now I'm back! Not defined by the fact that there was no diploma in my folder, but by the 3 simple rules of success, hard work, being passionate, and enjoying life.
At all of those professional stops I mentioned along the way, I became successful not because I was working in Des Moines to get a job in Madison, or to get one in Dallas. I was passionate about working my tail off because I wanted to be the best sportscaster in that town at the time I was there. I knew that about myself, for sure.
In fact, every successful person I've ever met, whether it be an athlete, coach, musician, or actor, every single one of them will tell you that the reason they are successful is because they knew it was what they wanted to do. It had nothing to do with fame, or money, it was all about their passion.
In our time of reality television, and you-tube, people that wanna be famous may become famous, but they're not successful, ask Sanjaya!! People that wanna become rich can become rich, but they're not successful, ask Bernie Madoff!! Success comes from a place deep within "you".
Whether that's a quest for a career, a big family, whatever the achievement you're seeking, only you can define that level of success, and the only way to do that, and achieve that goal is to know who you are.
Knowing who you are doesn't just mean whether you like strawberry ice cream versus chocolate, or that you love Jay-z or u2, it means knowing what makes "you" tick, what makes you wake up in the morning happy to go about another day. What causes you to be passionate!!
Look, you're graduating into one of the toughest job markets this country's seen in decades. After you find a job, working hard is not going to be an issue, but a requirement. But as you look for that job, just as employers will be checking you out to make sure you're the right fit, you do the same with your choices of jobs and careers. Make sure that whatever you do, since you're already going to work hard at it, make sure it's something that you are passionate about.
Because doing what you're passionate about makes hard work seem---like no work!!
And if you're truly passionate about what it is that you're working at, then it makes it easy to step back and enjoy life!!
Dude, always remember that life is a journey, not a trip.
A trip is going from point a-to point-b, like getting on an airplane in Chicago and landing in London. A journey???---well, that's experiencing the plane ride, the glass of champagne, and the different accents when you land. All take up the same amount of space and time, but they're totally different perspectives.
I've seen so many people that are looking so far down the road toward there end game, that they can't enjoy the journey, not realizing what a blessing it is to get a chance to "keep" enjoying the journey.
There are a million different ways I can illustrate this point for you: I could tell you about living in New York City, less than a mile from ground zero and what it was like to be there on September 11th.... I could tell you about flying out of Afghanistan last November after doing our broadcast from there and flying on a c-17 military transport plane "literally" next to the flag draped coffin of a 23-year-old soldier who'd been killed in action that very day....there are many examples I could give you that illustrate how important it is to get the most out of life while you can.
But instead of one of those illustrations, I'll turn to the simple words of....an internet chain letter!!
Unfortunately, it doesn't involve the "47-million dollars that you've been left in Nigeria if you'll only send me your bank account number to transfer the funds"...no, the origins of his chain letter may be "just" as dubious, but I totally believe in it's message.
It was supposedly from an 87-year-old woman who'd just gone to college named "Rose". She was "supposedly" speaking to a football banquet when she said, quote, " we do not stop playing because we are old, we grow old because we stop playing....the elderly usually don't have regrets for what they did, but rather the things they did not do"...endquote.
Bottom line, go out and enjoy life.
Some people like to play music, others enjoy pickup sports, some love to just hang with friends...find whatever it is that allows you to enjoy life, and embrace it.
Me...travel's my thing. Since graduating from Coe, I've been to almost 60-countries and all 7 continents. As a matter of fact, 3-weeks ago I just got back from a month and a half in Argentina and Uruguay. And in 9-days I'm off to Spain and Italy. I thoroughly encourage each of you to travel outside of your home state, your region of the country, outside of America, as much as you can. ...get out of your bubble!! You'll learn as much about yourself, as you will the world.
You see, to me, the enjoyment that I get out of seeing the world is the difference between "living life" and just "living".
Your thing is out there too, don't be afraid to find it, and embrace it.
Hey---you'll need stories to tell when you come back 20-years from now to speak at commencement...
In the meantime, celebrate today...."your" graduation day... The greatest day of your life, so far.
As long as you work hard, you're passionate, and you enjoy life, trust me, the days will get even greater because you will define "yourself" as a success...in both who you are "and" the person you will be.
One last note about success....
There's a famous joke in sports tv about how a father teaches his son to throw a football...the father takes him to games, dad coaches his high school team, etc....the kid beats all the odds and makes it to the NFL...he scores his first touchdown as a pro, the tv cameras get close to him on the sideline afterwards and the first thing he says is: "Hi Mom!!"
I say this as a reminder of how joyous this graduation day is, not just for you graduating seniors, but for all the parents and guardians who sacrificed time, and money---lots of money-to help us all get to this special moment in time....I can't think of any better gift on this Mother's Day.
Senior's this is "your day", but you should all take a moment now to applaud your parents and family for the role they played over the last two decades in helping you get here.
Now that you've done that, get ready to hug them, then blow them off, and go party with your friends...you deserve it!!...congratulations!!!!
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