Young and Lott inspire former college players
Ronnie Lott and Steve Young were scheduled to speak for 30 minutes.
They went for more than an hour with messages that will probably have the audience buzzing for decades to come.
Addressing a group of more than 100 former Campbell Trophy nominees Friday morning at Stanford, Lott and Young shared indelible stories from their careers and offered motivation to the recent graduates making the transition from the college football field to the workplace.
“You wouldn’t have gotten here if you had let people outwork you,” Lott told the group. “Let it show up in your life. Let it show up with your family. Let it show up with your kids. Let it show with your friends. Let it show up in everything you do. …
“If you made it to this room, you have the capability to make the transition. You’re breathing greatness. I can smell it. Let’s go.”
The room was filled with some of the brightest players college football has to offer. The Campbell Trophy — the “Academic Heisman” — is given annually to the player who best combines academics, community service and on-field performance.
Attendees represented 79 colleges in careers including medicine, engineering, law, physics and business. The Campbell Summit was organized for the first time last year as a tribute to the award’s namesake.
Bill Campbell played (195961) and coached (1974-79) at Columbia before becoming one of Silicon Valley’s most influential people as the CEO and Chairman of Intuit and a board member of Apple and Google. The summit was expanded to four days in its second iteration and includes opportunities for the recent graduates to attend a career expo, network on a dinner cruise and listen to panel discussions on a wide range of topics.
Lott and Young, who have backed up Hall of Fame football careers with successful business lives, barely needed a moderator to riff from subject to subject and captivate the audience.
“Dreams are great. You should have dreams, but those aren’t plans,” said Young, the co-founder and managing director of private equity firm HGGC who completed his law degree while still an NFL player. “A plan is something that’s 80 or 90 percent executable. A plan is going to get done.
“I want a dream, and I want a plan.”
Lott, the CEO of Lott Auto Ventures, took on the role of motivator while stressing the need to continue learning, developing and seeking the input of experts.
Lott and Young were 49ers teammates in 1987, when they saw something that provided a theme running through everything they would say 31 years later.
During training camp that year, a video crew was following head coach Bill Walsh. It was documenting his every move, recording his coaching, speeches and play-calling — even following him walking to the lunch room.
“I thought: ‘That’s kind of weird. Does this guy think he’s so famous that people want to know everything he does?’ ” Young said. … “How humble was I when I found out? He was giving everything he had to his assistants to go on and become head coaches, and on the way out, he’d say: ‘I’ll see you in the championship game.’ …
“At his height, Bill Walsh was two generations ahead of everyone in the league. No one was doing what he was doing, and he knew it. He packaged up all of his plays, all of his speeches into one unified toolkit. … If you can have the spirit of Bill Walsh, the spirit of abundance, you can build relationships that will last generations.”
Rusty Simmons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rsimmons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Rusty_SFChron