REFLECTION
Growing up in the Bay Area in the 1980s, the San Francisco 49ers were an incredible team. Under Bill Walsh, they were innovative and precise and dominant, with a bunch of high-character guys. The team became such a big part of the fabric of the community that they defined a lot of people’s connection and loyalty to the area, more than their area code, or their neighborhood, or the high school they went to.
Then I went to Michigan, which has such a robust community of fans in Ann Arbor that support the team. And because it’s a huge public university, the community extends across the country as part of the larger alumni network. As a player, surrounded by 107,000 people in The Big House on Saturdays, all wearing maize and blue, you can’t help but feel connected to something bigger than yourself and responsible for upholding what those colors represent.
Then I got to the Patriots, and for the first time I got to be a part of a team that was responsible for cultivating community and creating change that had a lasting impact. Don’t get me wrong, there was definitely love for the team before I got there, but it was mostly based on an overall love of Boston sports rather than anything that had been consciously developed over the years by the Patriots inside the building, on the field, or out in the community.
My entire life has been shaped by these incredible teams and the communities around them. The reciprocal relationship between them was incredibly potent. It propelled our teams to great heights while deepening and broadening the communities’ connection. Joining Birmingham City has been a chance to be a part of something like that again, but on an even bigger scale.
LESSON
One of the great books I’ve ever read is “The World is Flat” by Tom Friedman. I read it a long time ago, but its central idea is truer than ever. With the advent of streaming video and social media in the digital age, especially, the world has gotten really small, really fast. The world is so flat now—meaning that we're all connected in many different ways—that it’s possible for anyone to find success, however you choose to define it.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the business of sports. People all over the world are obsessed with their national sports and fanatical about the teams and players they love. Technology has made it as easy to watch a soccer match in Europe or Africa or South America, as it is to watch an NFL game in the US, or a cricket match in Asia. It doesn't matter which continent you’re on or which sport you want to watch. And if you’re interested, the algorithm will serve you scores, news and clips about any team or sport on a near-constant basis through your social feeds.
This is an incredible opportunity for any team, in any sport, to build a community of supporters that extends far beyond the physical footprint of their stadium or the postal code of their local fanbase. And the best way to build that community, in my opinion, especially for smaller teams in lower divisions or less popular sports, is to focus on telling people, wherever they happen to live, what you care about. It’s to share your mission and your values with them.
Think the Savannah Bananas baseball team. Think the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. They’re both from small places, in a secondary league and a secondary sport, respectively. But they’re wildly popular nationally and internationally, because they do an amazing job of letting people know exactly what they’re about.
What I’m about is winning. When I got done playing football, I came to think that the highest and best use of my time is talking about what it really takes to win and teaching people the values necessary for sustained excellence over time. Bringing that into a team like Birmingham City has been an amazing experience, because I have tremendous belief in teams and organizations that do things the right way. I love being involved with people who understand what teamwork, commitment, hard work, dedication, perseverance and resilience can do for a team, and how that can impact their community.
Built in Birmingham is an effort to reach the world beyond BCFC’s incredible, hardcore blue collar fanbase, and show people what we’re all about. Show them what it takes to win and what we’re doing inside the team to make winning a permanent part of the culture. Birmingham is a city with a team that has seen better days, but is full of people who have shown themselves to be willing to reach down and find within themselves the will and desire to struggle and strive on a daily basis in pursuit of success. Those values are contagious. Our hope with the docuseries is that they will rub off on everyone who watches it and inspire them to both join our community and make their own communities stronger.
APPLICATION
To build the team and the culture that fans of Birmingham City FC deserve, and that sports fans all around the world might be drawn to, requires finding the right people to come in who have the right values. This is true for any kind of team looking to get better, and to broaden and deepen their fanbase. Because when your values are fully embodied, they become your priorities. Then your priorities inspire your actions, which become your habits, which become second nature. And with time, what was second nature becomes who you are. The team becomes sturdy and reliable, with a strong identity that like-minded people can hold onto and trust.
The true joy of sports, as a player or a fan, is the journey toward victory with a group of individuals who you care about, who you believe in, and who you share a set of values with. Winning is always the ultimate goal, and it is undeniably awesome, but it loses some of its meaning when you lose sight of the team and community that were a part of that victory. Because it’s not the wins themselves that you will remember in the end, it’s how you won and who you won with. And when you do things the right way, the winning that happens along your journey—whether it’s in football or business or relationships or art—doesn't just shape your own life, it positively affects the lives of everyone around you, of your entire community. You make them better, and they in turn lift you up, to make you better.
With the documentary, I’m glad we’re getting a chance to show the world a glimpse of what Birmingham City is like as we move forward into a brighter, winning future. Going into this season, we've had a lot of changes, but we believe we're building something very special with many better days ahead of us. You know, Birmingham City has a great song called “Keep Right On.” I’m confident that if we continue to “keep right on” finding people and players that value winning, who want to do it the right way, with the right mindset and motivation, and the right values, we can build a global community around the team that rivals organizations like the Savannah Bananas and the All Blacks, and maybe one day soon eclipses what those fancy Hollywood actors are doing over at Wrexham AFC. That would be the true definition of success! 😉
