By Jordan Hansen
On Wednesday, Joe Ehrmann, a former professional football player and current activist, spoke at Englert Theater as one of the University Lecture Committee’s events.
Before his lecture, Ehrmann was kind enough to answer a few questions from The Daily Iowan and student radio station KRUI.
Austin Brantley, KRUI: How did you get from playing in the league to what you’re doing now and what led you to it?
Joe Ehrmann: Right in the middle of my NFL career, my sixth year, I watched my little brother die of cancer over a five-month period, during the entire course of an NFL season and that rocked my world.
Two years later, I went to seminary, and I was trying to answer the question that if there is a good, loving God, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? After my brother’s death, I had a lot of fame in Baltimore, I was a Baltimore Colt at the time. We ended up building a Ronald McDonald house in Baltimore dedicated to my brother. I saw that I could take my own pain, and turn it, and find meaning in it and add value to others.
So I started a long journey for me. I started working on issues of masculinity. Started to see sports as a tool for social change … I started figuring how to hook up sports plus masculinity. That led me down a long trail that I’ve been riding for a while now.
Jordan Hansen, Daily Iowan: You’ve mentioned in the past how these perceptions of masculinity form at an early age. When did you first start to notice that?
Ehrmann: When I went to seminary, I wanted to figure out why I was there. I went up to the counseling office, and the counselor got me in touch with my own father wounds. Father wounds are one of the biggest issues in this country, the absence, and the application of that worldly responsibility.
That got me starting to think about the culture and how we raise boys. The two biggest influences on our masculinity are … those who have power and authority over us. I just started to think about how boys in this culture are defined and the role that the parent and coaches in my world, how they had changed my self-concept of masculinity. I started to look at cultural messaging, how all of us are men and how we’re all under this tremendous pressure from this social construct of masculinity.
KRUI: When you talk to coaches, talk to them about how they develop their program, what’s your main message to them?
Ehrmann: I have a large national initiative funded by the NFL Foundation. I work through states and NFL teams, and the goal there is to reclaim sports in the name of education. The goal is always to win, but the purpose is to connect kids to learning communities and caring adults who ought to be coaches and then promote the human development of young people.
Coaches have so much power and influence in this society over young boys. We need to think about that as a tool for healthy masculinity rather than the repetition of negative cultural messaging.
My challenge to most coaches is to think of their own narrative. I think all of us as men and women have to do our own self-definition. You can’t let this culture define you based on your race, or ethnicity, or sexual orientation, any of those issues.
DI: What’s the response been like?
Ehrmann: It’s been tremendous. I’ve been doing coaches education, coaches training, for 25 years but realized many coaches were set up for failure because many of them walked back into a department that was only concerned with wins and losses. Only the record and not the human development of young people.
We started in Colorado with the Broncos and then Texas with the Cowboys. The first year has been tremendously, tremendously received. I think everybody in America realizes how broke youth sports is. We have this youth-sports industry that has popped up overnight. It’s now a $6 to $8 billion industry that’s all about performance and about promoting this false concept of masculinity.
The recent activity has been terrific and if we ever gather the heart of coaches and reclaim sports in the name of education, use it as a tool to help to help boys move into a better sense of self, healthier sense of masculinity, it could really impact this whole culture. Sports is the largest men’s club in the world and boys at a very early age are either included or excluded. That leaves all sorts of negativity for the boys that are pushed to the edge of the playground.
DI: Recently, a couple Nebraska players kneeled during the national anthem, and obviously it started with [49ers quarterback Colin] Kaepernick, is this a step in the direction of serious social change?
Ehrmann: I would like to think it’s a reclamation of players activism in the 60’s. I certainly agree with their right to the Nebraska players, the NFL players have to kneel during the national anthem. I don’t necessarily agree with it, I think there are better ways.
I think what’s missing is perhaps some of the heavy leadership around issues of social justice. I think you’ve got players speaking out of their own pain, trying to be advocates but not sure what to do. Young men, by and large. I think it’s a step in the right direction, but I think there’s better platforms to educate people.
America seems to have a historical amnesia when it comes to the history of African-Americans, and Jim Crow and slavery. Most of my adult life has been spent fighting systematic racism. I think most of us know it’s alive and well, and the question is how can we come together and fight it. I hope all those players are educating the white players in their locker rooms. It’s the beauty of the locker room that it can produce that type of change. That opportunity to really develop meaningful relationships and a culture that divides us at a very early age.
I’m glad to see the activism. I think black lives do matter. I don’t think that means white lives don’t matter, but I think you have to understand the historical context.