A Comet’s new look at life

Former KU great Sayers finds perspective on visit overseas

Watch Gale Sayers run with a football under his arm and you won’t learn anything you can apply. It was his gift, not ours.

Listen to Sayers talk about more important matters and you learn plenty. This is only fitting since his master’s degree from Kansas University is in education, not football.

Sayers came to town with wife Ardythe for the weekend to receive a Fred Ellsworth Medallion for distinguished service from his university Friday night. He will be at Memorial Stadium today to watch KU play Louisiana Tech in a game that will raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

At the moment, dinner is cooking in the Lawrence home of John and Audrey Novotny. The couple chats with Ardythe in the kitchen as Gale is being interviewed in the living room.

This time, the questions center neither on the Kansas Comet’s 99-yard touchdown run against Nebraska during his sophomore year at KU nor on his six-touchdown day against the San Francisco 49ers during his Rookie of the Year season with the Chicago Bears.

The conversation is about death and destruction and his recent brush with it in a different part of the world in the days before Hurricane Katrina crippled New Orleans.

General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a 1965 graduate of Kansas State, asked Sayers if he would accompany him on a tour of 18 military bases, including some in Iraq, to boost the morale of troops. Sayers, who owns a computer business in Chicago, rearranged his schedule to make the trip.

Former Kansas University football standout Gale Sayers visited 18 military bases during a goodwill trip overseas last month. Sayers received a Fred Ellsworth Medallion for distinguished services from KU on Friday and will attend today's football game against Louisiana Tech.

The newspaper near Sayers in the Novotny living room had a headline that read: “More than 160 killed in war’s deadliest day.”

Sayers reads the same headlines as the rest of us. The difference: He can put faces to the numbers. Very young faces.

“A lot of young kids over there, 19, 20, 21, 22, so young,” Sayers said. “They believe in what they’re doing. That’s one thing that I’m glad that I saw because you hear so many reports that the kids aren’t trained, that they’re mad because they’re over there. We visited 7,000 troops. Every one I talked to said: ‘We’re happy we’re over here, we’re doing a job and if we don’t protect them, who’s going to protect them?’ I was glad to see that.”

The death counts don’t begin to capture the tragic effects of war, Sayers reminds us.

“You hear about the people dying,” he said. “They killed 10 over here today and three over here, but the sad thing about it is you don’t hear about the people who are injured. Some of those kids have no legs, no arms, half a head. That’s the people we should be talking about.

“I imagine some of those kids, they probably wish they were dead. They go down there to take supplies to the troops and they get blown up. Some of them are probably married and they go back home, no arms, I can’t pick my kid up. That’s the hardest part, seeing those kids. They have to retrain themselves over again and a lot of them, it’s going to be a tough go for them. It’s going to be a tough go for those kids.”

All of which made Sayers all the more impressed with the commitment of the troops.

“Every base we went to, all 18 stops, between 30 and 50 soldiers were re-enlisting into the service every day,” he said. “That shows you how strong they believe in what they’re doing.”

Gale Sayers, shown here during his playing days at Kansas University.

In Kuwait City, Sayers said it was 140 degrees, so hot that, “if the wind blows it burns your skin.”

“I’m in a T-shirt, burning up, sweating from head to toe, and these kids are fully dressed, wearing flak jackets and carrying M-16s, 24/7,” he said. “I don’t know how they do it.”

For security reasons, the Sayers were told in a letter to keep the visit quiet. Too late. Five days before receiving the letter with those instructions, Ardythe had asked her church congregation to pray for Gale.

He said he will go again.

“We went to some places that nobody goes and told the kids: ‘We love you. You’re doing a great job. Come home safely.’ They get tired of the Sergeants and the Generals yelling at them to do this and do that all the time. They like it when somebody comes over and tells them ‘Thank you for the job you’re doing for us.'”

Those familiar with Sayers’ contribution to his university, in time and service as well as cash, would not be surprised to hear he visited the troops without calling attention to it. Sayers partakes in an annual golf tournament that bears his name in Lawrence to raise scholarship money. If he didn’t do so much for the school, few would notice, but he does it anyway.

“I didn’t do it to be noticed, No. 1,” he said. “I did it because I appreciate what the university has done for me. I have two degrees from the university. There are a lot of people out there who thought I would get none.”

He was 12 credits short of graduation when he signed with the Bears. Upon returning to the athletic department at KU, he finished his degree and kept going.

“When I got my master’s degree, I walked down the hill,” Sayers said.

Proud moment?

“Damn right it was,” he answered. “It was a great one. A lot of people didn’t think that, hey, Gale Sayers could do it and I did.”

He said he would help recruit football players for KU, if only the NCAA didn’t ban alumni from doing so. If he could talk to recruits, what would he tell them about KU?

“KU’s a great university, but that’s not my message,” he said. “My message is less than 1 percent of college football players ever get a chance to play pro football. The gap between college and pro is Grand-Canyon wide. You better get your education.”

And if they didn’t listen, he’d tell them some more.

“You can dream about pro football, but what if you don’t play?” he asked. “I’ve always said, if you prepare to play, you have to prepare to quit. How do you prepare to quit? Get your college degree. That’s how you prepare to quit because you’re never going to play in the pros.

“There are a whole lot of good football players who never play pro football. Look at (Maurice) Clarett from Ohio State: ‘Oh, I’m so great I’m going to play some football.’ Hey, nobody picked him up when he got cut from Denver. He never got his degree. What is he going to do now? Go to Europe and play football? Probably so, so he can make some money. And that’s sad. That’s really sad. He thought he was so good and he couldn’t do it.

“I’m going to tell you right now, the game is big. Pro football is big. If you’re a lineman and you don’t weigh 300 pounds, you’re not going to play. My message is prepare to quit. Get your education. That’s going to prepare you for your life’s work for the rest of your life. Nobody tells these players that. They tell them: ‘Football’s great. You’re going to be great. You’re going to make a lot of money.’ No you’re not. You’re not even going to play. And it’s sad.”

Sayers’ playing days are long over, but the forum his greatness as a running back lends him endures. His learning days never will end, and when he talks, he teaches.