The American Dream isn’t a dream at all.
Dreaming is easy.
Realizing your dreams is not.
If the American Dream is anything, it’s an open try-out.
No matter who you are, you get a shot.
How you’ve prepared for that shot is everything.
Because a try-out is exactly what it sounds like: Let’s see what you’ve got.
If that’s just the deeply held belief you deserve to succeed, it’s not gonna go well.
No, the American Dream isn’t dying.
America’s conception of how to achieve it is.
Meritocracy. Self-determination. Teamwork.
This stuff is table stakes for The American Dream. It always has been.
But if you look at the way we’re preparing Americans for the future, you’d never know it.
With one big exception.
Not hidden in plain sight, but spectacularly there, everywhere you look.
On fields, pitches and gridirons. Courts, diamonds and tracks.
Inextricably linked with schools from K-12 to higher ed.
Invariably embedded in communities of all sizes, in every neighborhood in America.
Unequivocally human, now and forever.
Sport.
Never have the Webster’s people gotten a definition more wrong.
Sport is not “a pastime, recreation, or physical activity engaged in for pleasure.”
It’s perpetually unfolding proof that meritocracy, self-determination and teamwork are the means by which human beings succeed.
The context where “everyone deserves a shot” isn’t a killer soundbite, but a truth so patently obvious it goes without mention.
Where “hard work pays off” isn’t an insight, but the price of admission.
And where “taking one for the team” isn’t performative martyrdom; it’s business as usual.
More than anything, it’s where we learn that success in any worthwhile human endeavor is not handed to anyone, distributed by default, or guaranteed on any level whatsoever.
That includes this endeavor. The one we’re undertaking right here, right now.
What exactly are we doing?
This unlikely assemblage of leaders, luminaries and interested parties, from disparate enterprises, if not different planets?
The answer is, we’re behaving a lot like athletes.
A heterogeneous group of human beings, setting out to do something where success is decidedly uncertain.
Pursuing a common interest not by posturing, proselytizing or pulling rank.
But by pouring ourselves into the job at hand.
Rebooting the American Dream through Sport. Reweaving the fabric of American community. And restoring values that are non-negotiable for the next generation of American leadership.