Transcript from My Miami Commencement Speech

It's a tremendous honor to be here as your commencement speaker. About 20 years ago, I sat in those exact seats that you guys are in, and my family was up in the crowd, and The Rock was our speaker. So, tough luck — you guys are stuck with me. Your parents are like, "This is what half a million dollars gets me. I get this guy."

A lot of you know me maybe from my playing career. Some of you now know me being on television calling NFL games with Fox. But it's just really special to be back at a place that means so much to me like the University of Miami. A place where I really started my journey to adulthood — but also a place that I almost never experienced. I'll touch on that again in a little bit.

This is also the place where I met a pretty girl at the freshman dorms, followed her around campus. I had this really uncanny ability to meet her outside of her classes at the Dooly Memorial Building and the Learning Center. I convinced her to do some movie nights. We watched The Bachelor and I kind of just eased my way a little bit more into her life. Early in the month — this was pre-NIL, so no one had any money back then — we're going to Monty's, we're going to The Grove. We couldn't go to South Beach. End of the month, we're at the Wendy's, which I know doesn't exist anymore. Chicken Kitchen. All the classics.

She happened to miss my first ever career touchdown. So here's this beautiful girl. I've finally convinced her to go on a date with me. And she missed my first ever career touchdown at the Orange Bowl because she was out with her girlfriends in the parking lot tailgating. I saw her after the game. I was like, "Did you see my touchdown?" and she's like, "No, but I'm sure you were great."

Well, I say all of that now — that young girl is now the mother of my three kids. She's my wife of 17 years and a fellow University of Miami graduate. She's actually here alongside her sister and our brother-in-law, all also Miami Business School graduates. So we're keeping it in the family.

We all see these commencement speakers — really famous people giving incredible advice. I don't think I'm that source of unparalleled wisdom that's going to propel all of you into success and fortune. But if there's one thing that I hope I can embody, that I can represent, it's this idea: just get better forever.

Finish lines, pace of improvement — all of these things are very unknown. And I think my life is an example that if at any moment we just took a snapshot and we were forever compared to where everyone else was in that picture, at no point would I have ever been in the lead. It's just something that I've really tried to embody in all that I've tackled. And a big part of that preparation was here at the University of Miami.

It was these four years here that I experienced the lessons that changed my life forever. On the Greentree practice field, I really got an up-close look at what greatness looks like. What does competitive spirit look like? You break the huddle and you look across the line of scrimmage and every single guy on that defense — here I am, a freshman scout team player that had no business even being on the field.

And I know you guys were all young, but my junior year in high school, we beat Nebraska for the national championship. My senior year, we lost to Ohio State in overtime. Bad call. Exactly. So that was the era I was entering into the football world. I stepped on campus and learned very quickly that there are levels to this, as my kids like to say. And I was pretty low on that level.

The thing that stuck out about those guys — they played every single day like their lives and their careers were on the line. And for a lot of them, that was their reality. And you learn sacrifice. Everyone talks about sacrifice a lot. You know, you say, "All right, I'm not going to go to the Sandbar twice. I'm just going to go once a week." And that'll probably be my sacrifice.

But really, for the first time in my life, I started to experience doubt. Did I make the wrong decision? Before I walked the campus of palm trees and joined the most premier football program in the country, I chose to spend a little time at a small school up in Indiana. And over the course of one week, I went from an old, rundown dorm room at the University of Notre Dame — and like that Friday, I was at a foam party in Coral Gables. So I can say confidently that decision worked out really good.

I remember early in my days, I sat in my dorm room and I called my dad and I said, "Dad, I don't think I'll ever play here. These guys are just so much better than me." And he responded as only a loving father could. He said, "Well, you're going to have to figure it out because you can't transfer again." And I was like, "Sick talk, Dad. That was awesome. Glad I called."

I also met a guy by the name of Mario Cristobal.

I learned that Mario eats sushi with brown rice. I learned that Mario was the first guy that I ever met that had unlimited text messages — this was like the early 2000s. That blew my mind.

But more importantly, I learned what it was like to really, for the first time in my life, be pushed and demanded of by someone who was outside of my family. Here we had this young, intense, but incredibly caring and motivating position coach who saw in me what maybe I didn't see in myself. When that doubt started kicking in that I'm probably never going to play here, there was something about Mario that could just bring out the best of every one of his guys.

And it wasn't that I wasn't used to high standards. I was the son of a high school football coach. A dad who later in my NFL career, following a Monday Night Football game — this is prime time, this is as big as it gets, the whole world is watching — and I had over 180 yards in that game. You walk back out of the locker room after the game and everyone's high-fiving you and you're feeling pretty good about yourself. Your mom gives you a hug, your wife gives you a hug, your kids give you a hug, and then my dad walks up to me and he's like, "What happened on that third down?" Spoiler alert: I dropped it. And we lost the game.

A quick aside — my first ever game that I started at the University of Miami, 2005. We debuted on Labor Day night, prime time ESPN, whole world watching. We kicked off the weekend of major college football that year. We're at Florida State. Top 10 rivalry, one of the biggest rivalries in college football. And the first two passes of the game that are thrown to me on third down? I dropped them both.

Came to the sideline. Safe to say Mario was not thrilled, as you guys have probably seen him do to a few other guys over the years. But it ended up actually being the best game of my entire college career. My first ever start. Couldn't have started worse. Ended up having a career game that I was never able to match. So apparently I just needed to start out crappy and things were going to get better.

More importantly, I think Mario really taught me what it meant to play football and what it meant to be a member of the University of Miami. A relentless pursuit of one's potential. This motto of get better forever just continued to resonate in my brain and continue to serve me well with all things that I took on, especially at a younger age. As a result, that foundation really laid the groundwork for what my career would eventually become.

And now we all — as fellow Canes and fellow alumni alike — we've gotten to watch what a relentless pursuit of perfection and greatness looks like on the national stage. We all got to experience it together this past year. We've been tiptoeing around it for a couple years. But it's nice to finally be able to stand here together and say: the U is officially back. And it feels good to be able to say that again.

We all like to pretend that life is just some linear journey. For me, it was quite the opposite.

Following my days here at Miami, I graduated in 2006. I was fortunate to be selected in the first round of the NFL Draft in 2007 to the Chicago Bears — just a few months earlier, they had competed in and lost the Super Bowl. So here I am joining a team fresh off of a Super Bowl, and I have grand visions that it's going to be nothing but playoffs and Super Bowl appearances.

Well, after four years, we finally got back to the playoffs. We lost in the NFC Championship game to our rival, the Green Bay Packers. We brought our first child into the world in June of that year. And six weeks later, after thinking I have my entire life figured out — I've reached everything that I wanted to do career-wise, my family is set up, we've bought our first home, we're living in one of the greatest cities in the world, we just brought our first son home from the hospital — six weeks later, I get a call that not only am I being traded, I'm being traded to what was the worst team in the NFL, in a city that I couldn't tell you if it was in North or South Carolina. I grew up in New Jersey. I didn't even know where Charlotte, North Carolina was.

So just when I thought I had it all figured out, just when I thought that my life was going to take a path that I had laid out before me, it immediately flips upside down on its head.

But it turned out to be an organization — the Carolina Panthers — where I spent the best nine years of my career. NFL records, Super Bowl appearances, lifelong friendships. But most importantly, a city that just six months after I got there, after not being able to pick it out on a map, I would find out holds one of the top pediatric cardiac programs in the entire country. And my unborn son — son number two — he would end up having four open-heart surgeries before he was two years old, a heart transplant at eight, and now, a place that 15 years later, we still raise our kids and call home.

And I think the lesson as we look back is this: sometimes it's okay to just let life happen and be along for the ride.

They say life happens a lot in transitions. And no bigger transition for me than when my football days came to a conclusion. There I was after 14 years of really having a singular purpose in my life — one goal from the time I could process it as a young boy. It was over. I was 36 years old. They told me I couldn't play anymore. I told myself I couldn't play anymore. And you start asking: now what?

President Echevarria talks about how reinventing yourself is okay and transitions are okay. Well, one of the greatest transitions I've been fortunate to have — shortly after I finished my playing career, Fox Sports gave me an opportunity to be one of their top broadcasters and call high-level NFL games fresh out of my playing career. I had no idea what I was doing. I still to a degree don't know what I'm doing. But I loved football and I loved the idea of chasing something where I could just again see how good I can get. Let me just get better at it forever. Whether I'm the best now or I'm the best next year or I'm never the best, that quest never changes.

It's been one of the most positive, invigorating things that I've ever done in my life — this late in my journey, learning something that I really knew nothing about.

In just my second year in the business, I was promoted to the top crew at Fox. There are about five crews across the landscape of the industry that get to call the Super Bowl. So in only my second year, we call Super Bowl 57. I'm on top of the industry. I have the rest of this new chapter — my second career — in front of me. Just as always, you think you have everything mapped out.

Well, I lost that job. I lost that spot to some quarterback who retired named Tom. He doesn't live far from here. He's actually giving a commencement speech at Georgetown here in the next few weeks. So I think what they're saying is, when it's all said and done: widely regarded as the best NFL football player of all time — second best commencement speech. Just so we're clear.

But out of that situation, I developed a really close friend. Not only a guy that I can talk ball with, not only a guy that I can talk to about the evolution of the NFL, modern offense and defensive structures, but a guy that I can talk to about what it's like raising a teenage daughter and the challenges that come from that. And the notion of my daughter one day walking down this aisle — it makes me emotional. She's only in seventh grade.

You see, the world wants the two of us — and it wants everybody — to be enemies. My success must mean your failure. And in my experience, I just don't find that to be the case.

There's nothing wrong with this concept of being great. Everywhere we turn, there are people preaching, giving advice — hell, I'm doing it right now, I guess — about the notion of go out there and be great. Find something you love and chase it and be great. I think that's awesome.

But I think so often along the way of chasing greatness, we forget the idea that sometimes to be great, don't forget to be good. There's a lot of value in being good. And I think of all the lessons that I've learned, that's probably served me the most.

In closing, I'd like to leave you guys with a personal story.

Earlier this year, I had the honor of speaking in front of a large group — not quite this big. It was both the greatest honor of my life and also one of the greatest challenges. I spoke at my older brother's funeral.

He got diagnosed at 41 years old with brain cancer. Didn't make it to his 42nd birthday.

This was my best friend. This was my roommate. I'm a rising sophomore, he's a rising junior. My dad brings us down to this place in Coral Gables called the University of Miami and we were on the doorstep of starting to get college interest. The two of us come down here for the 2000 Butch Davis football camp — he's the quarterback and I'm the young tight end. At the time there was a guy here named Jeremy Shockey, so it was kind of cool to be a young tight end. And that was the first college offer me and my brother ever got — from Butch Davis and a GA named Mario Cristobal. He wasn't even a position coach at the time. He was our offensive GA.

And here he was, gone at the age of 42.

Over the last couple days of his life, as we went down to spend time with him and his family, we watched countless hundreds and thousands of photos go across the television, really telling the story of his life. Holidays, tailgates, golf trips, a lot of shotgunning beers. The guy was a champ. He was a good time.

But it really dawned on me, sitting there in his family room those last couple days — how fitting is it that the person I knew who lived life to the fullest also had lived one of the shortest.

In a world where we want to know what our future is, the reality is we don't. And that's okay.

Go live your life. Go make mistakes. Go chase that dream. Start a business. Travel the world. Ask the pretty girl out — even if she's got to drive because you don't have a car.

Thank you.