WHEN Rocky Bleier was winning the first of his four Super Bowl rings in 1975, the largest player in the National Football League weighed 290 pounds and the average salary was $60,000.
As Bleier surveys the scene now — 21 years after a glorious career with the Pittsburgh Steelers — he sees a 350-pound defensive tackle (Tony Siragusa of the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens) and an average salary of $1.1 million.
Things change.
That was his message to NATM members as the convention kicked off at the Adam's Mark in San Antonio on Feb 23: Things change, and you have to be willing to adapt.
“We put ourselves in boxes, and that's where we exist,” he said. “The question we have to ask ourselves is, ‘Are we truly being the best we can be?’ We have to take a step out of the existence and take another point of view of what we can do.
“We don't like change. We say, ‘Don't ask me to change. I've been in this business too long. I don't have to change. Just leave me here.’ But if we're not being the best we can be, we truly owe it to ourselves to take a step out and assume some risks.”
Bleier cited the famous quote by William Jennings Bryan: “Destiny is not a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for. It is a thing to be achieved.”
Coming from Bleier, it seemed to resonate powerfully.
Even though he starred at Notre Dame, he wasn't highly regarded by NFL scouts. They were turned off by his 5-foot-9 frame and his ordinary speed. And after he was drafted in the 16th round in 1968, the scenario took an even harsher turn: He was drafted by the Army and sent to Vietnam. Bleier was wounded in both legs by AK-47 gunfire and grenade blasts. He spent three weeks in a hospital in Tokyo and another nine months in a hospital in the US.
Not only did he walk again, but he completed a two-year rehabilitation by making the Steelers' taxi squad in 1971 and, ultimately, becoming the starting running back. All of it became the inspiration for a book, Fighting Back, and an ABC-TV movie of the same name.
The perception was that he'd never play again. And yet he ended up in four Super Bowls.
“We all have preconceived ideas of what it takes to be a success: ‘If the good Lord had given me a higher IQ, I could've been a big success. … If I had gone to the right school and gotten the right education. … If I were 6-foot-2, 240 pounds and ran the 40-(yard dash) in 4.2 seconds …’
“If we take all the information that has been written through the years on success psychology and boil it down, all it says is that successful people are ordinary people doing ordinary, everyday things in a committed, extraordinary way. Ordinary people who have a resolution of purpose, who have set a goal and are willing to work toward it.”
Bleier said the most daunting barriers we face are self-imposed. Self-doubts creep in. We believe we can't secure that contract with a customer or we can't reach the sales numbers.
“We need to have goals and turn them into dreams and crystallize them into a vision,” he said. “Because if you can't see yourself being a success, then it's not going to happen.”