All right.
So, our next presenter will be Derrick Gragg,
presenting on “40 Days of Direction: Life
Lessons From The Talented Ten.”
Okay, go ahead.
And also, those of you who are interested
in going to the Student-Athlete Breakout Sessions,
they are meeting in the hall.
And, those will start at three o’clock.
All right, everybody, don’t leave now.
All right, I’ll go ahead and get started.
Again, I’m Dr. Derrick Gragg.
I am the Vice President and Director of Athletics
at the University of Tulsa.
And, before I get into the book that I wrote
about some of our experiences as student-athletes,
I always get asked about how I got to where I am,
because it is a very exclusive fraternity.
And, I want to recognize a couple of people.
First of all, Kevin Anderson, who has just
been a mentor to me, someone I can call on
over all the years.
And, he gave a great Keynote.
And, what I liked about it is that, in a setting
like this, we can talk about God a little
bit because I’m where I am because I understand
that it’s not really about me.
And, I’m not going to preach to you.
But, I’ll just walk through my career really
quickly.
At twenty-three years old, I flunked out of
law school.
At about two or three months after that, I
was offered a position, back at Vanderbilt,
at my alma mater, to basically be an academic
counselor for guys that I played ball with.
That just didn’t happen by happenstance.
That doesn’t just happen.
When I was twenty-five years old, I got to
work for Joe Castiglione, who I didn’t know,
at the time, was Joe Castiglione.
And, I know there’s a University of Missouri
contingent here.
He was the youngest athletic director in the
country, like I had been before.
And, they used to call me “Hot Shot.”
I was so young on that senior staff.
Sarah Reisman, I actually worked for
her.
I’ve seen her, since I’ve been her too.
By the time I was twenty-seven, I worked at
the University of Michigan, dealing with the
Chris Webber situation and remnants of the Fab Five.
By the time I was thirty, I was working for
Jay Frank Broyles, who was, by far, one of
the most powerful individuals in college athletics
that’s ever know, in this business.
Fifty years in the business and I was his
right hand guy for six years, between the
ages of thirty and thirty-six.
And, when I became thirty-six, I became the
youngest African American Athletic Director
in the country.
Now, I held onto that title, fortunately or
unfortunately, for ten years because no one
followed me.
And so, that’s changed because, when you
look at this.
Now, what’s interesting at this collage
of pictures is that you can fit all of the
African American athletic directors, in the
country, on this level, onto one slide.
But, it’s still an extraordinary situation.
And, I really look up to these men.
These men are my heroes.
I mentioned Kevin, David Williams, who has
done so many great things at Vanderbilt University.
When I went to Vanderbilt, and I’ll get
into that, we only won ten football games
in four years.
So, to see the growth and the things that
have happened under his leadership has been
extraordinary.
But, I really look up to these men.
And, some of the younger people in the room,
you talk about mentors.
What I did with Gene Smith, I met him when
he was the Athletic Director at Iowa State.
And, that was a long time ago, 1998.
He was actually at a sports bar, at the NCAA
Convention, out in San Diego.
And, he was watching Iowa State playing a
basketball game.
And, I think I ran over five waitresses to
get to this guy because I wanted him to mentor
me because, at that time, I had never seen
a black athletic director.
And so, Gene Smith has a lot of years in the
business, as you know.
And then, you go right down the list: Gene
Craig, little page at UVA, David Williams,
I mentioned Ray Anderson-Arizona State, Stan
Wilcox-Florida State, H. Michael Williams,
who’s a new athletic director at Cal Berkeley,
who’s a former student-athlete, Kevin Anderson
at Maryland, he’s also been the A.D. at Army
and some of us have been athletic directors
more than one time, Roy Mayo, great friend
of mine who I worked with at Michigan, he’s
a Michigan man, UConn, myself, I’ve been
the Athletic Director at Eastern Michigan
and Tulsa, the last couple of years, Bernard
Muir-Stanford, Sean Frazier-NIU and then the
last, the baby of the group now that I’m
not the baby anymore, is Allen Greene at the University
of Buffalo.
And, those men are the reason that I’m where I am today.
Now, second group of men that helped me get here is about the guys that I wrote the book about.
It’s called “40 Days of Direction: Life
Lessons From The Talented Ten.”
People ask me why I wrote it.
First of all, it took me forever to do it,
when you have a job like this.
I was just talking to Gene Wood about writing and how long it takes you to do something like this.
I commend the sister who wrote twenty books
because that’s outstanding.
I really wrote it because I came up like a
lot of former student-athletes.
I came up without my biological dad.
So, now, I have teenage sons of my own.
And, a lot of things in the book are, not
only things I learned from these guys that
are on the book with me, we all play football
together at Vanderbilt, but it’s things that
I didn’t get from my own father that I’m
telling my kids now, and also things that
I transfer to our student-athletes.
I get to present to our student-athletes and
I do this with football, men’s and women’s
basketball every year.
With them in particular because they’re
a little bit more high profile than everybody else.
So, I go in and I talk to them.
And, Frank Haith, who’s our basketball coach,
who has a lot of experience, he said, after
I got done, and he’s been in Miami, he’s
been in Missouri, he’s been coaching for thirty years.
He said, “You know, that’s the best student-athlete
presentation I’ve ever seen.”
And, that made me feel good because that made me know that what I was trying to do was really,
really resonating with everybody.
Now, with the book, we’re just trying to
touch as many people as possible.
We’re trying to put this book in as many
student-athletes’ hands as possible: black,
white, or whatever because there’re a lot
of lessons to be learned in it.
The Fellas, this is who it’s patterned after.
Some of the old-timers, older people in the
room, more mature, like myself, you remember
the movie “School Days.”
And, there was a group of guys, in this movie;
they were the renegades on campus.
And, with us, we weren’t intentionally renegades
at Vanderbilt, but we were guinea pigs.
And, we didn’t know it.
And, since I’ve been in athletics for a
long time now, now I know.
We were actually brought in, the twelve of
us in this class.
It was the largest number of African Americans
that had ever entered one class at Vanderbilt
University football: 1988.
And so, we feel like we’re pioneers.
And, we feel like we’ve helped lead to what’s
going on now because we proved that guys like
us exist.
And, that picture was taken in 1993.
Those were the last four of us, the guys who
got red-shirted, were left behind.
The other six of us had already graduated.
This is when we started.
And, it’s amazing, the transformation that
these guys have gone through over the years.
“Show me your friends and I’ll show you
your future.”
Now, Maurice Clarett said that.
He said that last year.
And, don’t be down on Brother Clarett.
All right?
We need that.
And, actually, he’s coming onto our campus
to speak to our student-athletes, in the second
semester.
I’m not going to pull the plug on that.
Those student-athletes need to hear from this guy.
And, I have that quote in the book.
“Show me your friends and I’ll show you
my future.”
And, one of the men that I’m very proud
of that I was able to bring along with me
is, you see the guy in the uniform, Lieutenant
Colonel William Brown.
And, we’ll talk about him in a minute.
The guy in the middle, Dr. Derrick Payne,
he was so poor, when we came to college, his
mom actually stayed in our dorm lounge, for
a few months.
We used to take her food from the table, so
she could eat.
And then, when she finally moved off campus,
she took a job right off campus.
And, she said, “Derrick’s all I got.”
When he came to college, she came to college too.
And, guess what?
In the past few years, in his two dental practices,
she’s been working for him.
So, that is a true testament for a brother
like that.
The guy in the ascot, we kid, down at the
bottom, one of my fraternity brothers.
But, here’s another man, who came to college
from New York.
He has a twin brother, who went to Morehouse.
And, unfortunately, right after we pledged
the fraternity, you know how this happens;
he failed out of school, went back to Brooklyn to raise his young daughter that he had with his girlfriend,
who, by the way, has been his wife for the
last 24-25 years.
That little girl, now, is a Penn State graduate.
And, this guy started working in some of the
buildings and cleaning up at night, went to
junior college, ended up going back to St. John’s.
Now, he has an MBA from St. John’s.
And, he’s one of the highest-ranking executives,
and surely African American executives, at
JP Morgan, to this day.
So, these are the types of people, the guys
in the corner, behind the computer, one of
the youngest black CEOs of a hospital in the country; he’s on his third hospital right now: incredible.
Dr. Carlos Thomas, upper left, who is actually
the godfather of my first child.
That’s how close we are.
He’s at Southern University, used to lead
their IT division, faculty member there.
And then, you always get into, “We all went
to Vanderbilt.
We all could have gone into different places.”
But, we knew it was an intellectual institution.
But, we still wanted to play pro ball, just
like the rest of these guys did.
And so, we did have one player.
And, the statistics hold up all the time,
no matter how you slice them.
Corey Harris played in the NFL, for twelve years.
What I point out about him: he was an extraordinary,
extraordinary player.
And, I tell players all the time, “If you
think you want to play in the NFL, this guy
was Offensive Back of the Year: SEC, our senior
year: all SEC Mr. Everything, Back of the
Year: Birmingham Club, went to the League,
and was so gifted and talented, athletically,
he played twelve years at Defensive Back.
Everybody can’t do that.
That’s just athletic genes.
The thing about is: now, he’s been retired
longer than he was in the League.
And, he was in the League.
Jamil Northcutt mentioned earlier, the average
is only 3-4 years.
So, he played twelve years.
He’s probably been retired twelve or thirteen.
So, life goes on.
And, he’s a living testament to that.
And, the man that’s standing in the middle,
unfortunately with us, he was our entrepreneur.
And, he died over twenty years ago, actually down in Atlanta, doing some business, trying to make money.
And, if he were here right now, he may be
one of the few black billionaires in the country.
And then, lastly, we have Marcus Wilson, who
is a great entertainer.
He’s in grad school, right now.
A great, talented singer: he’s toured with
two Grammy winning artists, was in the
Bobby Jones Choir.
And, it’s amazing.
Now, that didn’t just happen.
There’s no way that that just happened,
that we just all came to school together.
Some of the sample chapters in the book, pretty
simple, you’ve heard it a lot.
"NFL: Not For Long."
"NBA: No Boys Allowed."
"Just Talking About The Statistics."
"Remember, She’s Someone’s Daughter."
And, I grew up with my stepfather, one of
the strongest men that I knew, in life.
And, he was born with a bad kidney.
So, by the time he came into our lives, he
was already a very sick individual, ill.
He died when he was fifty-four years old.
But, I learned from him work ethic.
This guy got up and he was a handyman.
He wasn’t educated, but he could fix anything.
He went to work, all the way up to about two
weeks before he died.
The doctors had to pull him off being at work.
But, what I thought about was: here’s from
that generation where men, in particular black
men, they didn’t talk.
So, I can’t really remember one really thoughtful,
meaningful conversation that we had.
And, I didn’t want to transfer that to my
own children.
And so, I’m telling them things that they
should know.
And, remember, she’s someone’s daughter.
You don’t want to build a harem of women
around you is basically the point to that,
regardless of what you hear from your friends and some of the things that you see on TV.
"Chase Your Dreams: Go Hard or Go Home."
"You Came To College To Graduate."
"College Is No Place For A Gangster."
And, we’ve talked a little bit about that.
"Drugs and Alcohol Are Undefeated."
And then, what I did was, each one of the
individuals, the young men that are on the
book, I built a chapter around them and a
life lesson around them.
And, that’s why I want to talk about Lieutenant
Colonel William Brown, who, after Vanderbilt,
we knew he was going to do great things.
Because, as a lot of you know, transitioning
into being a “big time student-athlete,”
especially in the SEC, coming from some of
the backgrounds we came from, and I was an
honors student in high school, but I got involved
in engineering the first semester, I had a
1.06 GPA, my first semester.
And, see I tell student-athletes that because
they think we came here this way.
They think I was born Dr. G. and that I was
born with all these credentials and all this
stuff that I’ve done, since I made the 1.06.
But, William was always dedicated to academics
and everything he touched.
And, that’s why his chapter is the leader.
And, in our fraternity, he’s not a member
of something: he just takes it over.
And, that’s why he followed in his stepfather and his father’s footsteps, going into the military.
But, I knew he was going to rise.
He became a lawyer.
And, he is, right now, one of the top ranked, highest ranked African American men in the Army, in
particular for lawyers.
And, we did a little research.
We think he's the only former African American college football player who was ever
awarded two Bronze Star Medals for service
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And, what he’s accomplished, over the last
six years, in the military, has taken great,
great sacrifice.
And, he wasn’t born like this either.
And, that’s what we want to emphasize, with the book.
And, before I bring him up to talk, we do
have an introductory video of the Army.
So, please help me welcome my brother, my
best friend, my fraternity brother, Lieutenant
Colonel William Brown.
Well, I’m certainly humbled to be here today
and to represent, one of the Talented Ten that
are a part of the book that Derrick Gragg wrote.
And so, what I want to do is talk about is how I transferred what I learned, as a student-athlete,
on the playing field to the battlefield and
to be one of those brave men and women, who
humbly serve our country, to defend the freedom
that we all enjoy.
And so, first, there have been a hundred and
forty-four military deployments, in the past
forty years, since selective service began.
And, to this day, less than one half of one
percent of Americans wear the uniform.
Just think about that.
We’re in a room of three hundred and we
may have one person in here to defend everybody
in this room.
And, we’re in a country of over three hundred million.
And, you have less than one half of one percent
serving and defending our country.
And, some of those, like myself, have been
college athletes.
And so, we’ve been able to transfer our
skills, knowledge, and abilities that we learned
in athletics into leadership roles to defend
our country’s freedom.
I didn’t join the Army because that was
my way out.
I joined the Army because that was my way
to serve.
And, I learned that lesson very early in life.
I had a father, uncle who served in Vietnam.
And, their welcome was not as ceremonious
as my welcome home from Iraq or Afghanistan.
But, my stepfather, after my father passed
away, stepped into my life.
And, I don’t know how many of us have been
raised by a stepparent, but I give all deference
to a stepparent, who steps into the light,
of a man or a woman to fill that gap because
my stepfather was a man and he was a strong
black man.
When he returned from Vietnam, he was a cab
driver in St. Louis.
That’s my hometown.
You see negative things in the news about
Ferguson or St. Louis.
Well, I want representation of St. Louis and
of Ferguson.
And, my son, who’s here today, I’ll talk
about him in a second, is also a representation
of the positive impact that you can have on
your community.
Mr. Anderson spoke earlier about the Good
Shepherd, going to get the sheep.
But, once the sheep is gotten, the sheep has
to make a contribution back to the community
and show gratefulness and humbleness for what
has been provided to them.
So, when I was in high school, a gentleman
by the name of George Warhop: he was a football
coach at the University of Vanderbilt.
He had come, just like other Division I coaches,
to see me play.
Everything I’m saying today: it’s all
by the grace of God.
It’s not because of me and what he’s done
for me: he’ll do it for you.
He’s no respect of a person.
But, George Warhop, like other recruiters,
came to my house and sat down with my dad,
my stepdad, that same stepdad who served in
Vietnam, who came and drove a taxi cab every
day, so that I could go to school and get an
education and have an opportunity to go to
a world class university, like Vanderbilt,
who was pulled out on the streets of St. Louis
by a police officer, who said he had disrespected
him and beat him on the side of the road.
This is a man, who was willing to give his
life for his country, but, despite all of
that, he taught me to love this country and
to serve this country and to standup for what was right.
And so, when Coach Warhop sat across that
kitchen table to my mom and dad, and said,
“Your son will have the opportunity to excel
at whatever he decides to do, if he comes
to Vanderbilt,” my father and mother believed him.
And, I followed through on what they asked
me to do, when I left to go to Nashville.
So, there has to be a bridge, not just an opportunity.
There has to be a bridge built, so we can
walk across.
And, that bridge started with my parents and
then with Coach Warhop, who gave me the opportunity
to go to Vanderbilt.
And, he helped me open my first bank account.
We talked about, earlier, how coaches need
to be involved in the kid’s life.
They’re not just an asset on the football field.
And, we’re not in the shoe business.
Okay?
This is not a factory cutting business.
We’re in the people business.
And so, he helped me open my first bank account:
the same bank account that I saved enough
money, after I got my first job at Pitney
Bowes to use to buy an engagement ring to
my wife, Marilyn, who’s a doctor and who
has helped me raise three beautiful kids.
So, the bridge started there.
After I graduated from Vanderbilt, I worked
for a company called Pitney Bowes.
Some of us may have heard of Mr. Pitney and
Mr. Bowes.
If you look on your envelop of your letters,
that little orange stamp, or red stamp, that’s
the postage [inaudible] company, right?
So, I went over to Fisk University, which
is historically black college in Nashville
and speaking was a judge.
His name was Adolpho Birch.
He had just recently been appointed to the
Supreme Court of Tennessee to serve out a
term of a judge, who, I believe, had retired..
And so, after he gave his speech, I asked
him, “Was there anything I could do to help
him” because he said he had to run for retention
to hold that job.
So, he had to be retained on the bench.
And, he said, “Yes”
And, he allowed me to travel across Nashville, Clarksville, Knoxville campaigning, grass
root campaigning.
And, he was retained.
And then, later, he became the first African
American Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
of Tennessee in the history of that state.
And, his son, who also attended Vanderbilt
Law School, Adolpho Birch, Jr. is the general
counsel for the NFL.
Small world, right!
This picture in the middle: CNN, when I was
in Afghanistan, interviewed me from Kabul,
Afghanistan.
And, my family was back here in Texas at Fort
Hood, Texas.
And, they gave me an opportunity to speak
to my family on Christmas.
And, they asked me, “What am I doing today, in Afghanistan, to celebrate Christmas?”
And, my answer was, “I’m on that wall,
defending the freedom of my country.
So that my family can enjoy Christmas and
so that other families, in our country, can
enjoy the freedom and liberty that we have.
And, we will continue to stay on that wall.”
And, that’s me in Afghanistan, with some
other young lawyers.
And, part of our job, when we are deployed:
we advise commanders on the rules of engagement:
targeting, kill and capture type missions,
detention operations, making sure that we
comply with human rights, also court martials.
As litigators, we do that.
And, if I can pause here, about the litigation
piece, and about a term that I’ve heard recently.
And, that is “truth fears no question.”
So, as we sit here today and we’re challenged
to ask the question “why,” we need to
ask ourselves, “Why are we here”?
And, the truth is a truth that fears no question
is that we’re here today because we’re
underrepresented and that those opportunities,
like Coach Warhop provided me, are not just
there for the taking, in every aspect.
But, once we do have those opportunities,
we have to perform, okay, because we’re
in different industries, but we’re all in business.
So, you have to perform.
And, you have to have measures of effectiveness
in what you do, in order to excel and be excellent
in what you do.
That’s what’s respected, in our country.
You have to excel.
You’ve got to perform.
No one’s going to give you anything.
You can’t ask for a handout.
Yes, there are folks out there that will give
you a hand up.
But, you have to perform.
And, you have to also reach back and help others.
And, my life has kind of gone full circle,
from the inner city of St. Louis to Vanderbilt
and playing college ball to law school to
being an officer in our fine military to my
son, who is here today, named after me, William
Brown, graduated with his engineering degree
from Missouri S&T, outside of Rolla, Missouri.
And then, after he played college football
there, he signed an NFL contract with the
Tennessee Titans, playing in Nashville, the
same city that I played college football at.
So, he’s here today.
And, not only did he complete his engineering degree, but he’s also finishing up his Master’s in Business.
We spoke earlier about people model what they see.
And, what he has seen, he is trying to model.
Okay?
And so, it’s not a 
lack of hope in our communities.
It’s, in some communities, they haven’t
seen hope.
And, that’s where we go back to what Brother
Anderson said, “You’ve got to go back.”
You have to be that shining light.
You don’t, necessarily, physically have
to be there all the time.
But, you have to make a contribution.
Ask yourself, “What have I done today, last
month, last year to help someone other than myself?"
Okay!
We have to create the pipeline, fuel the pipeline,
and create opportunities.
Not only create opportunities, but put people
in a position where they can succeed and be
that support system.
So, with that, I’m going to pull it back
over to Dr. Gragg.
See, when you roll with guys like that, you
can’t help but be successful, right?
It’s about whom you surround yourself with.
And, we talk about that.
And, just to close up about the book and The
Ten Powerful Principles.
And, we’re looking forward to going back to Vanderbilt.
We’ve been invited to go back to our alma
mater, in February, to talk about the book
and do some other events around that.
We’re really excited about that.
And, everything’s come full circle.
Nashville’s our home base.
And, the things that we want to hit on, throughout
the country, and, again, we want to get this
book out to every student-athlete that we
can get it out to, not just males.
Females, you belong at the table.
Because, a lot of times, we don’t feel like we belong.
We’re out of place.
We can’t find our place.
"Realize The Power of Goal Setting.
We all know about that, but writing goals down.
"Go Pro".
And, it’s not going to be in football, most times.
And, you have to find a profession.
And, these are things that a lot of you have heard.
But, it’s amazing how, a lot of times, a
student-athlete can come through an entire
system, four or five years, and not hear these things.
"Become Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable"
Our Coach DiNardo, our senior year at Vanderbilt, used to always say, “Get out of your comfort zone."
If you’re always in your comfort zone, you’re not going to succeed, you’re not going to grow.
"Select Your All-Star Team."
And, we talked about the all-star team that’s
built around me.
"Show Me Your Friends, I’ll Show You Your Future."
"Stand Alone, If You Must."
"Pure Pressure."
And, there’s something else.
I have two teenage sons, now.
And, I know what they’re going through.
And, I preach to them.
And, just like William said.
And, it was beautiful to have a conversation
with William and his son last night, along
with another young man, who he’s known that went to the University of Missouri also, who just
graduated, who lives in San Antonio.
Just to hear the issues that they face because,
again, I didn’t have those types of interactions
with my own dad.
So, it’s special.
NFL: we talked about that.
"Recovery From The Fumble."
Because, again, we didn’t come in this package.
A lot of fumbles to get to the goal line and score.
“You Started From The Bottom.
Now, You’re Here.”
That’s Drake, of course.
So, the student-athletes know about him.
But, that is just basically epitome of,
not only myself, but a lot of people who have
risen through the ranks, who’ve gone on
to do great things.
And, again, for me, it’s not about me.
That’s why I’m standing here.
I’m grounded.
I know who I am.
I know why I’m here.
I know what my purpose is.
And, I’m just looking so forward to talking
more about this book.
We do have some with us.
People are asking about that.
So, we did bring some with us.
They’re fifteen dollars, if you’d like
to purchase one.
If not, there’re available on amazon.com
or createspace.com.
And, the second piece too: we’re working with a major book company to get out the second piece.
But, we really wanted to get out the first piece.
We self-published this because, when you're working with those companies, as you know, it takes
a long time.
And, sometimes, we don’t have a long time.
We want the student-athletes to get this information now.
So, with that, I just want to thank you.
I thank everybody here, at the University
of Texas, world class institution.
And, it’s great to be here.
Thank you.
