Why I Wrote Two Star Starter
I wasn't the biggest, fastest, or most highly recruited player. I was a two-star recruit with a few Division I offers, surrounded by players with more natural ability who received far more attention than I did.
But I learned something early that changed the trajectory of my career:
I didn't have to be the most talented player to become the player coaches trusted most.
I couldn't control how many stars were next to my name, how many schools offered me, or whether someone else was more talented. I could control how I practiced, how I responded to coaching, the effort I gave, whether I knew my assignment, and whether my teammates could depend on me. None of those things required more talent. They required better daily choices. They required better habits.
Those habits took me from a two-star recruit to a four-year starter at TCU and eventually to the NFL. Two Star Starter is the story of what I learned along the way and why I believe the things that take no talent can change the trajectory of any athlete's life. IF you have the discipline and mental toughness to avoid complacency and the trap of a comfortable life.
Long before I was a two-star recruit, I was a coach's son growing up in Waller, Texas. That's where I first learned that the things that eventually separated me as a player weren't always the things people called talent. Showing up. Working when nobody was watching. Taking coaching. Being accountable. Doing your job. Those weren't recruiting measurables. They were habits, and I was learning them long before I understood how important they would become.
The things that ultimately determined how far I went were the things that took no talent at all.
Culture Doesn't Fail Because Nobody Talks About It
Every program talks about culture. Accountability. Discipline. Effort. Toughness. Being a great teammate. The problem isn't getting athletes to understand those words. The problem is getting them to live them out when nobody is reminding them to.
A standard made up of words on walls isn't a culture. A standard repeated by a coach isn't a culture either. Culture is what your players actually do every day. How they practice. How they respond to coaching. How they handle adversity. How they treat teammates. What they tolerate from each other.
The challenge isn't teaching athletes what the standard is. The challenge isn't teaching athletes what the standard is. It's getting them to live it.
STARS & RANKINGS
SAY NOTHING ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER
OFFERS & ATTENTION
wON'T HELP YOU EARN YOUR ROLE
FOLLOWERS & STATUS
CAN'T DEFINE YOUR VALUE
pOTENTIAL jUST MEANS YOU HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING YET
You can't control every opportunity you receive. You can control the habits you're building for when it arrives.
The Athletes
Athletes are being measured earlier than ever. Stars. Rankings. Offers. Followers. NIL value. Every one of those things can create opportunity, but none of them tells you whether you're becoming the kind of player who will be ready for that opportunity.
The danger isn't wanting offers, attention, or a chance to play at the next level. You should want those things. The danger is spending so much time chasing what gets you noticed that you stop developing what will make coaches trust you once they notice.
Getting noticed can create an opportunity. Your habits determine what you do with it.
The Parents
Every parent wants their child to succeed. But in trying to help them reach the next level, it's easy to remove some of the struggles they need to experience. Disappointment, competition, criticism, and failure aren't always obstacles to their development. Sometimes they're the reason for it.
The goal isn't to make their path easier. It's to prepare them for whatever that path demands.
The Coaches
Coaches have more influence over young athletes than they sometimes realize. But too much of their time is spent correcting attitudes, demanding effort, handling accountability issues, and reminding players of standards they should eventually learn to hold themselves.
The goal shouldn't be to create athletes who only do the right things when a coach is watching. It should be to develop players who learn to hold themselves and each other accountable.
Great coaching isn't just preparing players for the next game. It's preparing them for the day they no longer have a coach.
The Athletic Directors
An athletic director is responsible for more than wins and losses. You're responsible for the culture being built across every program in your department. But when every coach has their own language, their own expectations, and their own way of teaching character, it becomes difficult to know whether the same standard exists from one locker room to the next.
The goal isn't to tell coaches how to coach. It's to give every coach and every athlete a common language for the things that should never change: accountability, discipline, effort, attitude, respect, leadership, and the way we treat the people around us.
Different teams can have different identities. They shouldn't have different standards for character or culture.
THE RESULTS
When athletes build better habits, parents stop removing every obstacle, coaches develop players who can hold themselves accountable, and athletic departments create a standard everyone understands, sports become what they were always supposed to be: a training ground for life.
BE M.A.D.E. gives programs a system for turning the things we say matter into the habits athletes actually live.
THE GAME GIVES THEM OPPORTUNITIES.
THEIR HABITS PREPARE THEM FOR WHAT COMES NEXT.