Curtis Martin

Curtis Martin gave the most honest, revealing, heartfelt acceptance speech I have ever seen, at the NFL Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
The speech itself belongs in its own Hall of Fame.
Apparently he had notes which he left in his pocket, deciding to wing it, to speak from the heart.
That is usually a disaster. He turned it into a supreme moment. He took an institutionalized moment and made it raw and human.
He punched you in the face right off the bat by saying that he was never a big football fan. People laughed when he said this. They thought he was joking. He wasn't.
This from one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. He said he could count on one hand the number of football games he has watched from start to finish. Said he hates running. He boxes now to keep in shape so he can avoid running. He couldn't identify with the passion of the other players, the players to whom football meant everything.
When the opportunity came up for him to get serious about football as a kid because of his talent, he wasn't too interested. A pastor he respected told him to do it for God; to use football to do good things for others.
That's what motivated him all these years; the love of football was not in his heart but he played for a purpose bigger than the game.
Then he began talking about his childhood and his mother. He said he grew up in a bad neighborhood and a worse family. His father tortured his mother with hot water; he burned her hair, he burned her body with cigarettes, he beat her and threw her down the stairs.
Curtis' mother was in the audience and he looked directly at her as he spoke. Fought hard not to lose it.
His father was gone when Martin was five. His mother had to work multiple jobs, she gave him a key and when he got home from school he waited alone for her to come home at night.
Late at night. He was terrified because it was a terrible neighborhood.
When he was nine his mother found his grandmother murdered. When he was thirteen his aunt died painfully; he didn't get into the details.
At the age of fifteen a punk in the neighborhood put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger seven times. The gun didn't go off. The punk pointed the gun away from him and pulled the trigger again; it fired.
His mother pleaded with him to get involved with something after school, anything to keep him out of the neighborhood. Didn't matter if it was sports or the chess club or the band.
She said "if you die they might as well kill me."
Curtis believed he would not live past the age of twenty one. At the age of twenty he wandered into a church and made a deal with God. He promised to live right, to live for a higher purpose, if God would let him live past twenty one.
Curtis Martin said his greatest achievement in life was nurturing his mother back to physical and psychological health, and convincing her to forgive his father.
Again he was looking her in the eye when he said this.
He said he hoped at his eulogy, if his daughter was the speaker, she would not emphasize football. Hoped she would say he was a good man first and, oh yeah, he was a pretty good football player too.
In the overall scheme of life, getting inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame means very little. For Curtis Martin it means everything.
Not for the award itself but for the recognition of his fight to save his life and that of his mother and to dedicating the fruits of his success to helping others. Doing something he had a talent for but is not passionate about. Excelling at it with a higher purpose as motivation; helping other people to live better.
It has always been obvious that Curtis Martin is a classy guy. Anybody who follows football knows that.
That speech revealed what an amazing human being he is. Somebody everybody should look up to and learn from.
YouTube it. It's twenty eight minutes long. You have the time.
It took guts to do that in front of that audience. A football audience. An audience used to joking around and false humility and easy acceptance of riches and accolades.
I bet his mother was the only one that was not surprised.