Bill Courtney:

You don’t have to be part of the media and you don’t have to hold a public office, and you don’t have to be the CEO of some multinational corporation to affect change in your world and your community. And I think the remedy is an army of normal folks.

Jay Ruderman:

Bill Courtney is perhaps best known for his work on the football field. Coaching the Manassas Tigers in Memphis, Tennessee earned him a claim in the Oscar winning documentary Undefeated. But for Bill, coaching is more about what happens off the field.

Bill Courtney:

We are all bruised in this life and it requires persistence, courage, and integrity to keep getting off the ground and keep facing the day, not only for yourself but the people around you. That is what is character to me. It is not about the numbers on a scoreboard at the end of the game.

Jay Ruderman:

Bill’s own character was forged in the fire of a rough childhood.

Bill Courtney:

I experienced unconditional love for my mother, but I also experienced an enormous amount of trauma. And so I grew up and became a very young man with a whole lot of insecurities. And it took me a long time and the love of my wife and my four children to start understanding the value of fatherhood from being a father, having never experienced the value of fatherhood from having a father.

Jay Ruderman:

Understanding that value made Bill keen to pass it on to others.

Bill Courtney:

It is a blessing, Jay, because it also serves to help me really understand the plight of fatherless kids in the inner cities that I coached, broken men that come to me in my business looking for a job after having spent the first 30 years of their life screwing up.

Jay Ruderman:

All of Bill’s lived experiences served to solidify his guiding philosophy that the only thing any of us normal folks need to do to affect change is to find the opportunity to do so.

Bill Courtney:

You do not have to be part of an NGO. You do not have to be part of a faith-based organization. You do not have to be part of some foundation or anything else. You have to look at yourself and say, “I’m blessed. I want to give back. This is what I’m good at. This is what I’m passionate about, and there’s an opportunity,” and stick your head in it like filling a hole in a. That is it.

Jay Ruderman:

Thank you, Bill, so much for being my guest on All About Change. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Let me start off by asking you there’s a through line in your life about helping people and where does that value come from?

Bill Courtney:

Jay, that’s a fair question and I don’t think any of us are exactly alike, but I think we are parts of a number of people that mentored us coming up, and those parts make up our own whole. Despite the fact that my dad left when I was young and mom was married and divorced five times, and I grew up with a lot of trauma, there were a lot of people along my life, my grandfathers, one of my grandmothers, coaches, teachers, people along the way who always showed me kindness and service that I think really impacted my life. And so bits and pieces of each of those experiences I think have culminated into what is my ethos regarding service.

Jay Ruderman:

Well, for those who have not seen Undefeated, I’d suggest that they see it, but there’s something in it that really stuck with me, where you talk about your dad not being there when you were growing up, that you would leave the football games and you’d see all the other dads carrying their son’s shoulder pads and helmets and helping them off the field and you were walking by yourself. And it’s poignant because towards the end of the movie, you are carrying your son’s pads and helmet. So what was it like growing up without your dad?

Bill Courtney:

I had a mother who worked hard and loved me unequivocally. She did her best. My father left when I was young and mom was married, divorced five times. My fourth dad took out a 38 caliber pistol one night after drinking a half gallon of usher scotch and shot the house up. I had to dive out a window that night to live.

So what was it like growing up? I experienced unconditional love for my mother, but I also experienced an enormous amount of trauma, really. And what happens along the way after your dad doesn’t have anything to do with you, and then more men come in your life and leave your life, what you start to do as a young strapping 14, 15, 16-year-old guy lettered in six sports in high school and tried to keep decent grades. And despite all of that, nobody stuck around. And so what you do is you develop this odd sense of something must be wrong with you.

So how I grew up, I grew up with a loving mother who tried really hard and worked hard to keep me straight. I grew up with a lot of trauma and a revolving door of people in and out of my life. And so I grew up and became as a very young man with a whole lot of as a result of that stuff. And it took me a long time and the love of my wife and my four children to start understanding the value of fatherhood from being a father, having never experienced the value of fatherhood from having a father. But it is a blessing, Jay, because it also serves to help me really understand the plight of fatherless kids in the inner cities that I coached, broken men that come to me in my business looking for a job after having spent the first 30 years of their life screwing up.

Jay Ruderman:

You would think that growing up as you did and feeling, as you said, worthless, that you’d be angry, that you’d be angry at the world. But when you see you, when I see you on film, I’ve never seen someone so loving to kids from a very different background who are going through some really tough stuff in life and you’re there for them, and to the extent that you’re giving up time that you could have with your own family to be with them, not just for football, but to help them through their problems in life. How does someone who basically felt that they were worthless become such a loving person?

Bill Courtney:

First of all, that’s really kind. Second of all, I was really angry for many, many, many years into my 40s. And that anger went away when I started to understand the value of grace and forgiveness. And the fact is, in my opinion, it’s more important for the forgiver than the forgiven. But it took me four decades to figure that out. But I always had a sense that even though I did not have an earthly father, I had an heavenly father and I felt that love even in my most desperate times. And whether you’re Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Muslim or whatever, and even agnostic, I am what I am and you are what you are, you plural.

And I am not a person who says, believe like me or you’re doomed. I think faith is a very personal thing and I have many friends of many different religions and some with no religion, and I respect them equally. So I don’t want to evoke some type of moral superiority when I say what I say because there’s nothing about me that is morally superior. But I will tell you my sense of love, I really do think comes from my belief that despite all of my transgressions and despite all of the problems I’ve had, I’ve always experienced love from a father even though I didn’t have one on earth.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s beautiful. I think spirituality plays a very strong role in many of our lives, and yet we live in a world where we’re afraid to talk about that. In civil society, we don’t want to talk about that, but it is a big part of many people’s lives.

Bill Courtney:

I think not wanting to talk about is part of the problem. I mean, the truth is I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care who you love, Jay. I don’t care who you worship. I don’t care how you vote. None of that stuff ultimately matters. But the problem is we’ve become so polarized in our categories that seem to define groups of people as who they are based on those categories. And we’ve started villainizing and canceling one another if we didn’t belong in the right groups or categories for particular conversation that now we’ve started to be afraid to actually have conversations about the stuff that matters. And I think it’s high time that we drop our egos and sensibilities at the door and start having civil, non-threatening conversations about the stuff that matters. I think one of the things that’s hurting us the most is the unwillingness to talk about it.

And so I think when you operate in a vacuum, when you surround yourself with people that look like you think, like you vote, you love, you worship you, every conversation you have, it’s just going to be circular and there’s no growth. So I think we got to get out of that vacuum of thought. We’ve got to get out of that place and experience a little discomfort, but trust another human being’s ability for discernment and have civil non-threatening conversations outside of that vacuum about the stuff that matters so that we can grow.

Jay Ruderman:

I really love the way you’re approaching the world, but it seems like our world is so broken, our politics are broken, our civil discourse is broken, and yet I believe in the American people. I believe that people are good at heart. I know this is a big macro question, but why are we such a broken society made up of people who are basically good people? What the hell happened here?

Bill Courtney:

Jay, do we have a four-hour podcast? I read a ton. I mean, I read a lot. I read too much. It drives my wife nuts. And history is a very interesting indicator of the future. And I will share with you something I was just reading this morning. When our culture starts questioning one another’s belief systems, that’s a good thing because you start to learn why somebody believes and thinks the way they do, and nobody is 100% wrong and nobody is 100% right, absent a sociopath. So if you’re willing to listen and hear another person’s perspectives and thoughts on an idea and you’re willing to be open to it and then the person that’s speaking is willing to be that open to you, you’re going to find going to find common ground, you’re going to find conciliation.

My son is the chief of staff in Washington DC for a sitting member of Congress. And I was with that member of Congress and my son at a dinner about a year ago, and he repeated something that we’ve all lamented on, which is 30 years ago, politics has always been a full contact sport, but 30 years ago, people would hammer it out till five o’clock. But those two, that Democrat and the Republican, at 5:30 would be at the pub having a beer together. And more importantly, their wives would have drinks and dinner together. And a Democrat and his wife, a Republican and his wife would go out to eat. And so what happened is even though you had different policy belief sets, you respected one another’s people and you understood the decency behind one another.

And then that dynamic started breaking down as a result of our political discourse because if I was running against you in a primary, I could use the fact that you’d have friended somebody across the aisle against you to try to beat you in a primary. So you started withdrawing from that. And so little by little we’ve disintegrated politically this willingness to reach across the aisle to save our own political lives. And then the media and social media get involved. We start polarizing and surrounding ourselves with only people that like us and only getting our information from the people that are like us. And little by little we start pulling more and more apart and then people’s lives start getting destroyed. We start attacking people personally. We start attacking people about their children or about who they love or how they worship or whatever. And more and more we start beating them up.

And so then, about 15 years ago, some really quality people started saying, “You know what? I would really like to do some good for my city on the school board or the county commission or be the mayor or work as the county trustee, or I would like to be a state representative or a state senator or a governor or a house… Pick any level of municipal, state or federal elections, I would like to do that and I think I could do a good job, but I’m not willing to drive my kids and wife through what it takes to get the job. And I don’t want to play that gross game because it’s gotten so divided.” Well, all of this is to say that I don’t think this is anything new.

Plato said one of the major penalties for refusing to participate in politics is you end up being governed by your inferiors. Plato said that. So clearly this has been going on since the beginning of time, and the reason all is, in my belief set, is that human beings are clannish. We always have been.

And I would like to think a progressive, developed, evolved society of people would have the temerity and the wisdom to break from their clan in order for the greater good. And I do think our country did that for many, many years. And I think the advent of social media, the advent of CNN and Fox and a altruistic attitude toward covering politics and society and social issues has started to revert us. And I think it’s dangerous. And I think the remedy is an army of normal folks, people like you and me, regardless of… I think you’re Jewish, aren’t you?

Jay Ruderman:

Yes.

Bill Courtney:

So you’re Jewish, I’m Christian. You’re from up in Boston or the Northeast. I’m from Memphis in the Southeast. I mean our demographics are pretty different, but I absolutely love the work you’ve done for folks who are disabled or have challenges. I celebrate that. I think that is phenomenal.

Jay Ruderman:

Thank you.

Bill Courtney:

And so you obviously appreciate what I’ve done for coaching kids and some of the other stuff. Well, here we are, two guys from two completely different walks of life that can celebrate one another. That can’t happen when the media is destroying one another and our politics’ destroying one another. So fine. What we need is just an army of normal folks, hundreds of thousands of people in this country like you and me coming from different walks of life and different viewpoints coming together to celebrate one another and having civil non-threatening chats about the stuff that matters and we need to retake the narrative.

Jay Ruderman:

I want to dive into that a little bit more, but I’ll tell you a quick story. First of all, when I was in high school, going way back into the ’80s, I do remember the times of Republicans and Democrats sitting down together, socializing together. But fairly recently, I was on Capitol Hill meeting with a Democrat from Massachusetts on disability issues and a Republican literally across the hall from Mississippi also working on disability issues. Both great people both had done so much for the cause. And I asked each of them, “Hey, do you know your colleague across the hall?” And like, “No, I’ve never met him.” And literally you could walk 12 feet across the hall and I just left there saying something is terribly wrong to have good people just because they’re from different parties don’t even say hello to each other. But how does this army of good people break through the ossified political system, the terrible social media that’s like a garbage dump. How does that happen?

Bill Courtney:

I own a business I started in 2001. I started with $17,000. I now have 135 employees. I did business in 42 different countries. We’ll do about 80 million in sales this year. Not saying that to brag. I’m saying to make a point. I am a very realistic, pragmatic human being, and I have to be. Any business you run, it is what it is, all right? Data, analytics, all of that. It really is an idealism that I have, but I don’t want somebody to hear that and say, “Oh, he’s just an idealistic idiot. He doesn’t understand how the real world works.” I know how the road works. I live in it and work in it every day.

But in answer to your question, even though I do realize it’s a little bit idealistic, I also think it’s workable is so simple to me. We have got to have the courage to just have conversations and celebrate the things that we can all agree on because if you create a basis and a foundation of celebration and respect around the things we can agree on, that opens the door for us to discuss the things we don’t agree on, but in a respectful, learning, understanding way.

So when a Jewish gay father of two surrogated by a lady who lived in Washington who is a TV producer living in Beverly Hills and his partner and my wife and I, who are Christian southern people, you can’t come from two different walks life than that. When those two couples come together around a simple philanthropic project that we both agree we see a place that needs help and then we become friends around that basis and that foundation, now we do talk about LGBTQ rights, we talk about my faith and we talk about those things. And all of a sudden, it’s not threatening and scary, and it’s not a place that you recoil and it doesn’t turn into an argument. It turns into a discussion, an open, honest discussion to learn. And I’ve learned so much from them and they’ve learned so much from us.

And one of them, when he heard the word Christian or Jesus would immediately run because he just thought it was the most horrible thing on the face of the planet. And now he embraces people from my faith because he understands a different viewpoint. He doesn’t embrace the faith, but he embraces people from the faith, and that’s all that really matters.

So that’s a microcosm of what I have seen over the last year of literally tens of thousands of people coming around rallying around a certain project or societal ill or issue that they can agree on and work together to fix that then creates a foundation of basis to have the conversations about other stuff and grow together. It seems simple and it seems idealistic, but in a very pragmatic sense. I’ve just watched it work for the last year and I believe with everything I am that it is just normal average. You don’t don’t have to be part of the media and you don’t have to hold a public office and you don’t have to be the CEO of some multinational corporation to affect change in your world and your community. And people that do that together, grow together, learn together, it breaks down barriers, these barriers that we’ve created for ourselves these last 30 or 40 years. And I’ve watched them crumble.

Jay Ruderman:

Yeah. Well, that’s beautiful. Bill, I want to bring you back to football. Talk about your love for football and your love for coaching, and what do you think sets your coaching style apart?

Bill Courtney:

What I love about football is there’s one guy that scores, but there’s 10 others that are bleeding, sweating and beating themselves up, and their name will never be in the paper and nobody’s celebrating them, but if they don’t do their job, that one guy can’t score. That is quintessentially teamwork. I also love football because it teaches you the difference of being hurt and being injured. If you’re hurt, get your ass up. If you are injured, go to the hospital, but don’t be a victim of a bruise. We are all bruised in this life and it requires persistence, courage, and integrity to keep getting off the ground and keep facing the day.

People say tough times build character, football builds character. This stuff builds character. I think that’s crap. I think the character is revealed during the tough times. I think the work you do in preparation of the tough times is what builds character. And then when the tough times hits you, it reveals whether or not you’ve done a good enough job giving yourself the proper foundation and principles to handle those tough times. And that’s when your character’s revealed. And I think football is just a game, is a microcosm of life in that regard and that you’re always, no matter how well you coach, no matter how well you practice, no matter how well you plan, no matter how well you scheme, something’s going to happen to test your resolve and you have the character to continue on in the face of all of those obstacles, not only for yourself but the people around you. That is what is character to me.

The second part of your question about my coaching philosophy is this, players win games. I have never seen a coach score touchdown. I’ve never seen a coach make a tackle. It just doesn’t happen. Players win games. Coaches win players. And I believe if you teach that fundamental ethos and the tenets of commitment, integrity, perseverance, the value of showing up on time, civility, dignity, forgiveness, grace, if you coach that is the paramount building blocks of your program. I think you win your kids because they understand they’re playing for something bigger than themselves and they’re growing for something bigger than the win on a Friday night.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s great. Talk to us about how you became the coach of Manassas in Memphis. How did that come about?

Bill Courtney:

When I started my business in 2001 in a really dilapidated, crappy area of Memphis, because that was the only property I could afford, there was a school called Manassas that was about a mile from my property that had won four games in 10 years. They had 19 kids on the team and their equipment was dilapidated and their facility was crap, and they needed a coach. And they knew I coached, they knew who I was and they reached out to me. And I was really only going to go over there for a couple weeks during the spring practice to try to just get them started. And I fell in love because what I saw in those kids, even though they were from the hood and even though they were from a different part of the city that I grew up in, I saw me. I saw kids without dads, I saw brokenness. I saw a very, very tough, hard outer shell with an enormous amount of insecurity in the middle, and I could feel where a lot of it came from.

So I fell in love with them. So I stayed. The reason I went there is because it was convenient. It was only a mile from work. I could make work and coaching happen because of the proximity. And then when I fell in the kids, I stayed. And that turned into a seven-year bit of work there at Manassas.

Jay Ruderman:

Let’s talk about some of your challenges there. I’m thinking about a young man, Chavis, who had a tough background and you developed a very strong connection with him.

Bill Courtney:

Chavis was a freak athlete and was good-looking, big when he was young. So he was the in-crowd guy. And because he was an in-crowd guy coming up in an area of the city that in-crowd guys tend to get in a lot of trouble, he was in it. And he was angry at the world and a very good football player. And again, I saw me in him. I saw insecurity masked by aggression. I saw toughness manifest itself in a way that was meant to elicit fear among his peers. And I saw, when nobody was else around, a immature, self-conscious, hurt boy. That’s what I saw. And I identified with it.

And so I started having conversations with him about that and I called him on it. And he didn’t like it at first, but he knew I was right. And we developed a relationship and eager to trust me because he trusted that I understood who he was. And he spent some time in jail, but little by little we started breaking some of that stuff down, held him accountable. I mean, every time he screwed up, he was not playing that week. And by the end of his junior year, he was not only a leader on the field, he was a leader inside because he grew to understand that he did have value. And his value was not in his street toughness and his willing to fight, but his value was in his ability to lead. His value was in his ability to make good grades. His value was in his ability to have a positive measure of change on the people around him. And he started to embrace that.

And incidentally, he’s a grown man now. Well, he’s 29, but about five years ago he started a thing called the North Memphis Steelers Youth mentoring program where he had 80 or 90 boys and 80 or 90 girls playing on three or four football teams and three or four cheerleading squads, one of which won the national championship and on the back of all the uniforms with the word school first.

So even in a youth thing, he made all the kids bring their report cards and if they didn’t have Cs, Bs and As, he didn’t kick them off the team and he made them practice, but they could not play in games or cheer on the sideline until their grades were Cs, Bs, and As. And this is in an area where an 18-year-old male is three times more likely to be dead or in jail by his 21st birthday than he is to have a job. And he took in 180 kids over four years and had them concentrate on school first, held them accountable and got their young lives head in the right direction. And that’s the very guy that you were introduced to in a movie that you saw as a gang banging, fighting jackass. We as humans have the ability to change, to learn and to redeem ourselves. And Chavis Daniels is living embodiment of that.

Jay Ruderman:

How did you get these kids to understand the character and building character was central to their future success beyond football?

Bill Courtney:

The first year and a half, the character stuff wasn’t sticking. I was just another dude with another program giving away more stuff and eventually I’d be gone. And so yes sir, no sir, I’ll take what you got and we’ll see you when we see you kind of thing. But over the course of time, being consistent on a daily basis, continuing to come back despite any difficulties or obstruction, talking the same stuff consistently over and over again and illustrating it in your own life, eventually, it starts to take hold, but it takes… It’s very simple. It’s just time. It’s time, commitment, effort, consistency, and accountability.

Jay Ruderman:

I want to talk a little bit, Bill, about your podcast, An Army of Normal Folks. First of all, what are some ways that normal folks can get involved? How can they have a positive impact on their community? And what are some of the first steps they need to take?

Bill Courtney:

Shameless plug, listen to the people on my podcast. That’s first. Every week, we highlight a story of someone who is really very normal, their beginnings, Jay. I’m talking about people who don’t come from any wealth, anything. And the magic is this, when discipline and passion… And I don’t mean discipline doing the right thing. I mean discipline is in your discipline. I think you’re an attorney. That’s your discipline. I’m a lumberman and a football coach. That’s my discipline. When your discipline, when what you’re good at and your passion meet at opportunity, amazing things can happen. And what I mean by that is I’m a football coach. So my opportunity, my discipline as a football coach and my passion about football met at an opportunity at Manassas and amazing things happened.

I think the symphony is gorgeous. I love going to the symphony. Lisa dragged me the first time I thought I’d hate it, and I love it. I can’t play a musical instrument and I can’t carry a tune in a pale, okay? So I will never, ever teach anybody or mentor to young upcoming poverty kids that are interested in that stuff. I just will never do it because I may be passionate about it and I may see the opportunity, but I don’t have that discipline. So the first thing we got to do is ask ourselves, what are we good at? What are we passionate about? And where’s an opportunity in my corner of the world to use that passion and that discipline to affect some measure of change? That’s it. You do not have to join something. You do not have to be part of an NGO. You do not have to be part of a faith-based organization. You do not have to be part of some foundation or anything else. You have to look at yourself and say, “I’m blessed. I want to give back. This is what I’m good at. This is what I’m passionate about. And there’s an opportunity,” and stick your head in it like filling a hole in a. That is it.

I had a guest on the show probably four or five months ago, I guess. Her name is Stacey Horst. Her daughter was autistic, loving, loved to cook, loved animals, and her daughter’s name was Erin. She was unmercifully, bullied and ostracized. She once had a birthday party that no kids came to, which means parents of fifth graders wouldn’t take their children to another little girl’s birthday party. When she was 17, she killed herself because of her disability, because of her bully, because of her being ostracized.

And as Stacey and her husband, Darren, sat in Erin’s bedroom bawling three days later, four days later, trying to figure out how are we going to summon the courage to clean our daughter’s room out? What are we going to do? They decided that no other parent should feel the helplessness and the gut-wrenching loss, they felt. And so they just said, “There’s other kids around the world like Aaron in our community, and there’s other parents like us who are worried sick about their kids. If Erin had just had one friend, she would be alive today, just one.” So they started Erin’s Hope For Friends. That’s what they called it. And the very first weekend, they found other parents of kids with autism and other disabilities and simply met in a room and let these eight kids that first showed up, hang out, video games, pizza, whatever. And the parents left the room, said, “Y’all be kids like all your friends are. All the things that you want to be doing with the people that are ostracizing, y’all do.”

And from their pain and from their passion from their daughter and their discipline gained by understanding what autism is by raising a 17-year-old girl and they saw a need, they now have e-clubs and Erin’s Hope For Friends chapters all over the place, and there are thousands of kids every single week in our country with autism that get to go sit down with other kids and go bowling and play and have friends because their passion and discipline met an opportunity even in one of the most gut-wrenching times of their life. And through it, they’re saving lives and changing both parents and children’s lives. Nobody invited them to do that. Nobody asked them to go do that. They saw a need and they filled it with their discipline and passion.

Every single week, we highlight a story like that. I only tell you that story because I know that disability in children is something near Dear your heart. So I’m just sharing it with you, but it’s so simple. What am I good at? What am I passionate about? Where’s my opportunity? I’m not going to wait to be invited. I’m going to have the temerity to go do something.

And here’s the thing, Jay, back to what we just first started talking about, in that situation, do you give a crap who I voted for president for?

Jay Ruderman:

Not really.

Bill Courtney:

Do you give two dodos about whether or not I’m gay or straight?

Jay Ruderman:

No.

Bill Courtney:

Do you care about any of that?

Jay Ruderman:

No.

Bill Courtney:

No. It’s above it. It’s greater than that. It is our humanity. And then, when in that world, we grow to love in one respect one another as a virtue of the work we’re doing, now we can talk about that stuff and come together over it because we’re joined by a much bigger thing.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s beautiful. Bill, first of all, I appreciate you and what you’re doing to make our world a better place. And I’m going to give you a blessing that comes from the Jewish religion that may you go from strength to strength. So thank you, Bill Courtney, so much for being my guest in All About Change. I really enjoyed this discussion. I think people get a lot out of listening to you.

Bill Courtney:

Jay, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And one last shameless blog, I hope people keep listening to you because I know you do good work, but I hope some of your listeners will check out an Army Of Normal Folks and maybe get inspired to do something in their world.

Jay Ruderman:

Thank you. I hope so too.

Many, many thanks to Bill Courtney for joining All About Change. His commitment to change at every level for everyone is admirable. That’s it for today’s episode. Join us two weeks from today for my conversation with environmental activists, Erin Brockovich. Today’s episode was produced by Rebecca Chaisson with story editing by Yochai Maital and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We’d really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation in partnership with Pod People. That’s all for now. I’m Jay Ruderman, and we’ll see you next time on All About Change.