On the eve of history Friday at already tradition-rich Notre Dame, athletics icons – Tennessee State head football coach Eddie George, Notre Dame women’s basketball head coach Niele Ivey and former Super Bowl-winning, record-setting Fighting Irish wideout Derrick Mayes – shared leadership lessons, career advice and challenges, as well as perspective.
The group gathered inside Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business for panel discussion before Saturday’s football clash featuring No. 13 host Notre Dame and George’s visiting Tennessee State Tigers – the first-ever Football Championship Subdivision and HBCU (Historically Black College and University) foe to face the Irish inside Notre Dame Stadium.
Aided by the efforts of Mayes and JP Abercrumbie, Notre Dame’s Executive Associate Athletics Director for Culture and Engagement, the trio of former star athletes joined Notre Dame business-school namesake Tom Mendoza to share their journeys – and their paths forward for greater diversity, leadership and growth in life.
A former Heisman Trophy winner at Ohio State and four-time Pro Bowl selection with the Tennessee Titans, George shared the foundational tenets for his HBCU program – and revealed that, in Year 3, George has labeled this Year 1 of the TSU rebuild.
“Our culture is still being established,” George told a capacity crowd. “Just going in understanding 1, everything the job entails, all the challenges around it and what needed to change. It was really below a rebuild.
“We’re at the place now in Year 3 where we’re rebuilding. Because there was so much we had to do in terms of our foundation from a busines standpoint. As far as the team is concerned, getting the right people in the building, the right staff, the right players; we had to go through the pruning process.”
As he has worked to establish that culture, George revealed the “three ships” that defined his approach at Tennessee State:
1. Relationships. Building genuine relationships and knowing who we are. With the turnover in college football, kids leaving with the Transfer Portal, it’s a new team every year. We have up to 35 new faces in the building with our kids. They don’t know each other. So we challenge them to invest in each other, to get to know each other.
2. Ownership. That’s buying into what we’re telling you in terms of the standard. I have a rule that we wear white socks only to practice. Not blue, not gray, not pink. It’s a sign of team. And if you don’t do it, there’s extra effort for that [conditioning].
3. Leadership. We’re creating and developing and teaching leaders, and I think it’s important we teach them how to lead from real a place, lead from the heart. That’s at the core of what we do. There’s a verse in Corinthians that walks about what love is.
Notre Dame’s first-ever African-American head coach, Ivey also made history as first-ever female African-American assistant coach for the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies. She, too, shared the importance of culture in her Notre Dame program which last season captured the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season championship.
“For me, culture is everything,” Ivey said. “Coach (Muffet) McGraw being a heavy influence on my life, she created the standard. The culture was winning. And what did it take to get to that winning tradition and have that excellence?
“Establishing that culture and bringing that culture back makes or breaks a program.”
Mayes, who has flourished as an entrepreneur in addition to his standout-careers at Notre Dame and in the NFL and who sits on the board of Patrick Industries, also shared a three-pronged approach for leadership.
“I look at leadership three ways: Mentorship, advocacy and peer influence,” Mayes said. “Mentorship, I believe, is a full-contact sport.
“About 20 years ago, I was at The Linebacker the night before a game [that Mayes had returned to watch at Notre Dame]. I was playing it cool with (former Irish quarterback) Tony Rice. He said I want to Introduce you to a guy, his name is Tom Mendoza. I don’t know if you remember, Tom, but I told you that night, ‘You’re never getting rid of me.”
Mendoza has flourished in business, and in 2009 his Network Appliance company was named Fortune Magazine’s No. 1 company for which to work.
“We focused on culture Day 1,” Mendoza, who earlier this summer addressed Marcus Freeman’s Notre Dame football team, shared. “Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.”