Focus on America

Athletics, Politics Offer Shared Lessons on Life

Competition and leadership are among the common threads tying great athletes to successful second careers in politics, several former U.S. standout athletes tell America.gov.

Competition and leadership are among the common threads tying great athletes to successful second careers in politics, several former U.S. standout athletes tell Myamerica.be.

Former quarterback Jack Kemp, who in his 13-year professional football career played for the Buffalo Bills and other teams, says being a star athlete “really helped” him win election in New York to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1971 to 1989.

“Quarterbacking [in American football] involves leadership, accountability, and transparency and these are qualities that are transformational in terms of politics and sports,” said Kemp, who retired from professional football in 1970 to run for Congress.

Kemp said jokingly that one of his best lines during his first campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives was that if “they didn’t elect me to Congress, I’d come back and play quarterback for the Bills.  So I won by a slim margin.”

The former congressman described himself as being an “activist my whole life, as captain of every football team I played for,” who helped organize a players’ union in professional football.

“As an activist,” Kemp said, “it was not too difficult to think about what I might want to do to help preserve the American Dream and expand it to people who have been left behind.”

Kemp ran for vice president on the Republican Party’s ticket for the White House in 1996, a ticket that lost to Democratic incumbent President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.  Kemp served as U.S. secretary of housing and urban development from 1989 to 1992, and now leads a Washington consulting firm called Kemp Partners.  His extensive charitable work includes involvement with a nonprofit group called Habitat for Humanity that aims to eliminate homelessness worldwide.

Playing quarterback, said Kemp, prepared him for politics and for taking an active, leadership role in “the great issues of the day.”  Kemp said being booed by 70,000 fans in the opponent’s home stadium served him well as a politician speaking before a potentially hostile audience.

The former congressman said football represents the essence of equality in American life.  “There are no differences” in skin color or religions when “you’re in a huddle [a brief, closely packed meeting to plan the next play of the game] -- no black, white, or any other” color.  “The huddle removes all artificial barriers,” said Kemp.

EX-WRESTLER JESSE VENTURA WEIGHS IN

Jesse “The Body” Ventura says he transferred the competitive skills he learned in professional wrestling to win office as Minnesota’s governor from 1999 to 2003.

Ventura said sports involves “competition and if you shift it to politics, it’s just competition in ideas as opposed to physical competition.” 

Ventura said gaining notice as a wrestler gave him “name recognition” when he ran for governor. 

“With most politicians, probably two-thirds of the initial money they raise is to get people to know who they are,” said Ventura.  The ex-wrestler became widely known as an iconoclastic politician who won election as Minnesota’s governor running on the Independence Party ticket.

Being a professional wrestler “also made me comfortable in front” of microphones and cameras, he said, and allowed him to “ad-lib on my feet” as a politician. Ventura has collaborated with writer Dick Russell on a new book called Don Start the Revolution Without Me! due out at the end of March.

BASKETBALL STAR TIES SPORTS WITH POLITICS

Former basketball standout Tom McMillen says politics and sports “have lots of similarities,” such as in “dealing with pressure, the press, a peripatetic lifestyle,” and in “working with people from all backgrounds.”

To succeed in both fields “requires lots of teamwork -- to win games or pass legislation,” McMillen said.  McMillen was a top player at the University of Maryland from 1972-1974 before going on to an 11-year professional career in the National Basketball Association.  McMillen served three terms as a U.S. congressman from Maryland (1987-1993).

McMillen, now chairman and chief executive officer of the Virginia-based Homeland Security Capital Corporation, said advancing from athletics to politics reflects “our upwardly mobile country that an athlete could become a senator or congressman.”

“The fact was that while I was an athlete, I never viewed myself just as an athlete,” McMillen said.

WASHINGTON POST WRITER CITES BENEFITS OF SPORTS

Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins told America.gov that “I don’t know that sports necessarily can equip anyone with the ineffable qualities of political leadership, but they certainly do teach composure, command of oneself and how to surrender self-interest to a larger goal.”

Jenkins, author of several books including the best-selling, Its Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life with Tour de France cycling champion Lance Armstrong, said sports teach the important lesson “on how to lose.  By which I mean, games teach you how to accept disappointment, how to correct a mistake and remedy a personal failing.  All of which breeds a unique self-assurance, which I suspect would serve someone pretty well in political life.”