Sam Acho, former outside linebacker for the Chicago Bears, came to GMUK on March 15, 2019, for a visit that included a meet-and-greet session, an inspiring speech about leadership, and a football clinic showcasing his talent and special skills. Acho was also the Vice President of the Executive Committee of NFL Players Association (NFLPA) and the NFLPA representative for the Chicago Bears.
Sam Acho played football for the University of Texas and began his NFL career in 2011 when he was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals. In 2015, Acho was signed with the Chicago Bears. So far, Acho has played in 98 games with over 17 sacks, 252 tackles, and 3 interceptions. During the 2018 season, Acho was placed on the injured reserve during Week 4 due to a torn pectoral muscle. Recently, Sam Acho became a free agent. Despite numerous obstacles in his life, Acho doesn’t let them stop him from playing football, giving back to his community, and having faith in God.
Off the field, Sam Acho strives to make a difference in the world, such as having an active involvement in his parents’ charitable organization called “Living Hope Christian Ministries,” which provides medical supplies and programs for the less fortunate in Nigeria. Sam Acho also gives back to his community by participating in the “Hope for Life Celebrity Auction and Fashion Show”, visiting hospitals and the Ronald McDonald House. Because of his charitable actions, Acho was nominated by the Chicago Bears twice for the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year Award.
The Interview:
Have you ever been to Asia? How do you like Korea so far?
Sam Acho: I've been to Asia, I’ve been to Hong Kong and Singapore but I've never been to South Korea.
When did you get here?
S: I got here last night around 6:30 PM and one of my friends Gbemi [Disu] picked me up. We actually both went to school at the Thunderbirds School of Global Management, and that’s where we met. Gbemi picked me up from the airport with Conny [Kwak] and then took me to the hotel, and then we got some Korean barbecue last night, so it's been a great experience so far.
What do you plan on doing here?
S: I plan on being at George Mason Korea today and I’m excited to able to meet with some of the students and the faculty, sign autographs, and take pictures. Obviously, as a professional athlete you rarely get opportunities like this to go overseas and be able to meet not only fans but also people who want to know more about you and the sport. I get a chance to talk about this sport and business, so I played eight years with the national football league and also I have an MBA from Thunderbirds School of Global Management, I was a business honors major in college, so I’m going to talk today a little bit about just that intersection. And I will also have a sports clinic.
What other countries do you want to visit the most?
S: I really want to visit Dubai. I’ve been to Hong Kong and I loved it, I’ve been twice. Singapore was great, now South Korea. All the places that I’ve been to in Asia so far have been awesome. I want to go to Dubai though, because my wife has been there before and she loved it. So far, I just want to explore here more, I want to visit Seoul because I haven’t been to Seoul yet. I get a chance to visit tomorrow and I don't know where we’re going yet, there’s a tour guide who will show me around.
What was your time like with the Chicago Bears and what was your favorite memory?
S: I spent four years with the Chicago Bears and there were some ups and downs, so I didn’t love every minute of it. One of my favorite memories has been just the relationship I got to build with our chairman. Our chairman of the team is George McCaskey. His mom is Virginia McCaskey and she's the owner of the team and her dad is George Halas, the person who founded the Chicago Bears, so I got to develop a really good relationship with George. We have actually done some great adventures together and as a matter of fact, I invited him to come here to South Korea. Some of my greatest memories are the relationships I've built with people like him and also teammates and coaches alike.
Did you make any relationships with opposing players?
S: I did, it's funny because a lot of people who I played against in the NFL I played against in college. Not only do we play against each other collegiately we play against each other professionally and so these guys are either my teammates or I played against them when I was in college, and I got to the NFL and now we’re friends. There’s a guy named Russell Oakwood and he plays with the Los Angeles Chargers. I went to the University of Texas and he went to the Oklahoma State University, so we were rivals. We played against each other in college. When I went to the NFL, I played for the Arizona Cardinals, and he went to the Seattle Seahawks so we were rivals once again. We serve together on the National Football League Association, which is our Players’ Union, and we have become really good friends.
How do you handle dealing with a new quarterback? Is it uncomfortable or comfortable for you?
S: One thing I learned early in my career is that I don't really understand it at first, because I've been fortunate enough to have really good quarterbacks pretty much at every level I’ve been at. One thing I’ve learned is the importance of having a really good quarterback. Two years ago, we had our third overall pick in the draft and we traded to get the second overall pick in the draft in order to get a quarterback, who was Mitch Trubisky. A lot of people were up in arms about it and I was actually there at the NFL draft because I was there to announce the third-round pick, but then we traded for Mitch, so we gave away our third-round pick. Mitch is an unbelievable leader and quarterback, he’s just a guy that brings people together. People talk that the term “Moxie” like he's got that “it” factor and for me having a new quarterback has been great. He’s helped our team win, we were at 12-4 last year and we went to the playoffs. It was really beneficial having a good quarterback like Mitch.
The Chicago Bears were first in the NFC North in the past season. What do you believe attributes to this?
S: A couple of things I think attribute to our success and I think the biggest thing is teamwork. So obviously every team in the NFL is talented. You have a draft, you pick guys, and everybody has talent. Talent alone won’t take you anywhere. It takes teamwork and it takes togetherness, so we had a team. Our coach [Matthew Nagy] came in and said there's one thing: one is to have a rally cry or a motto. So for us our rallying cry was two things: “Be you”, and “Obsess to be the best.” So we rallied around these mottos. An example is that we have guys who like to rap and they made a rap video. Out of nowhere in our team meeting coach shows their rap video and said “we talked about “being you”, and this is you”. We do dance parties the night before games and even after games in the locker room we have dance parties. Coach just says to “be you”.
We also talked about the motto, “Obsessed to be the best” and so we rallied around that. What that means is not only players, but coaches were obsessing to be the best. We got a new coaching staff and they all gathered around on their off day, so they were running around on the field running routes. They were just trying to get better. These rally cries are what helped us become a closer team, right. So we had the talent, we played as a team, but I think the third piece that brought us together was what I would call togetherness.
We were together and the way that we stick together is that you may have heard it in in sports but they have people called “glue guys.” These people that just keep the team together, the ‘glue’ that keeps the team together. We had a lot of guys like that and I thought I was one of those guys, guys who do all the little things to make the team right. An example is that we talk about running the ball and extra effort. One thing I would do is that we had different practice periods and between every period, the trainer or the coach would set the ball down on the field and we’d be on the sideline. So usually guys would walk or maybe jog out to the field. Well, I would sprint out to the field and try to touch the ball first, you know just to have a good time. Well that grew, and it grew to the point that not only I was doing it, but the offense and defense were doing it, and even to the point where our coach, 60-year-old coach, was running out. Little things like that keep a team together and you know you're getting really good when your best players become those glue guys. We signed a guy name need Khalil Mack to a $141 million contract. He's one of our best players, but he’s also one of our best leaders. He’s one of those glue people and he was in the locker room all the time hanging out. We have a basketball hoop and we would shoot basketball together. He was a guy who loved his other teammates. I would say the talent, the teamwork, and that togetherness is what really, really helped us be a good team.
What advice do you have for the Chicago Bears’ current players to improve even more?
S: My advice would be to not be satisfied. I know it's easy to have a good season, feel comfortable when you’ve done a good job, but my advice would be don't be satisfied. Continue to work hard, continue to understand that winning isn’t easy, and so you have to continue to find talent, not only for the coaches, we also have to continue to do those things that make a good team a good team. We talked about the rallying cry: continue to be yourself and continue to obsess to be the best. Lastly, you can never overvalue those glue guys or glue people. My first couple years in Arizona, we had a pretty bad team and then we changed coaches, got a new staff and then we got those glue guys together. We went from worst to first. All of a sudden, we went from 5 wins and 11 losses to 10 wins and 6 losses. The next year we went 11 to 5 and in the playoffs and so on so forth. After that year, the general manager started getting rid of some of those glue guys because he thought, “yeah, we have the talent and they worked together as a team so we will be fine” and I was one of those guys who they didn't sign back and there's probably three or four guys who they probably got rid of. Well, sooner than later the team started to tank to the point where they now have the first overall pick in the draft, meaning they have the worst record last year. I think they won 3 games and lost 13. My advice would be if you are one of those glue guys, don’t undervalue yourself, know that you are important, know that you have value and also to the managers out there I will tell them it's more than just about winning.
What made you want to play football?
S: That’s a great question. Interestingly enough, people always ask, “well how did you choose football” and my answer is, “I didn’t choose football, football chose me.” So I grew up playing basketball, track and field, and soccer and all these different sports, and football were one of them. I didn’t know if I was going to be good at football because I really enjoyed basketball, so I thought I was going to go play basketball in college. Well out of nowhere I went to this football camp in California at USC and I started getting recruited. The head coach saw me and he actually brought me, and that was one the top programs at the time. They had 300 of their top players at this camp, and at the end of the camp they called me and four other players to the head coach’s office offer us scholarships. Out of nowhere this path opened up. I decided to stay close to home and go to the University of Texas and so I went there and I played there, and even then I wasn't really sure that I wanted to play football each and every day again. Once again, the doors kept on opening for me. I had a mentor by the name Brian Orakpo, who played the same position I did, he was Nigerian, we were about the same height and size and speed and strength and he was drafted in the first round of the NFL draft, and he was two years older than me. Once I saw him do it, I thought that I could do it as well and so it inspired me to work harder. At times where people would be going out and partying, I said, “let me go and do an extra workout, let me change my diet, let me study even harder for my classes so I could focus there and not be distracted on game days”. People asked me, “how did you choose it [football]?” and I would always say, “it chose me,” so I just kept walking down that path.
Who is a player on an opposing team that you believe is underrated?
S: The first guy that comes to mind, and he's finally starting to get the recognition he deserves, is a guy that plays for the Minnesota Vikings, one of our rivals. His name is Adam Thielen, he's a receiver for the Vikings, and if you just look at them you would never know he is a professional athlete. If he walked in and out of this room, nobody would even recognize him, but he's one of the best receivers in my opinion in the NFL. He’s this white guy who’s probably from Wyoming, but he just works really hard and he’s really talented, and he finally got a chance to be nominated for the Pro Bowl last year. But he’s been performing for years before then. So Adam Thielen is a guy who I would say is underrated.
What does being a leader mean to you?
S: To be honest, being a leader for me means doing those things that even when it doesn’t look like it's right, like the things that you believe in. People might look at you and say, “man, this guy is crazy.” For example, in college, we talked about Friday night, Saturday night, and even Thursday night, some schools Monday and Tuesday night, some guys would be going out partying. Literally it was like the thing to do, but for me, I had a goal. I said, “okay, well I could choose to go out and not study and not work out or I could just choose to go and actually try to reach my goal.” For me, being a leader meant going left when everyone else was going right. At that point, it was kind of lonely and no one else really did it with me, but after a while people started to see that there's a benefit in my decision-making, and so now instead of a me being a person that was going left people started following me. So for me being a leader means making those decisions, and I use going out as an example to say I had to goal and I had a dream and I knew there was a path to get there. There were also things that were distracting me from getting there. For me, I had to make a decision of how to get there and I had to take the steps to reach that goal. So that is what leadership means.
As a pro NFL player, how did you also manage to earn academic success?
S: For me, balancing football and school was something I did at a very young age. I went to a school called St. Mark’s School of Texas, and it is one of the top private schools in the United States, and it is an all-boys college preparatory school. For me, academics are very important, but I also loved playing sports, and so I knew at a very young age that if I wanted to be able to play sports, I had to keep my grades up. From each grade level I was making sure my grades were good, but I was also playing.
Going to college, it was the same thing. I was a student athlete. Not only was I playing on Saturdays and practicing on Mondays to pretty much from Sunday to Friday, we would also have class. I would try and balance that. For me, it went back to that decision making, just choosing what I wanted to be good at, so I got that. I got that balance, graduated, earned an award called the Campbell Trophy, is the academic Heisman Trophy. Then I went to the NFL and all of a sudden, there was no more academics, so it was it just didn't feel right. With that award, I had a $25,000 postgraduate scholarship, so I decided to pursue my MBA at the Thunderbirds School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. I pursued my MBA during the off-seasons and when the season started, I would focus back on football. That’s how I had the ability to balance both.
What made you want to get your MBA?
S: Well, there are a couple things. After my first year in the NFL, we have an off-season, which is three or four months, which meant you literally don't do anything. It's like summer break, and you don't do anything. For me, it just felt weird and I felt like I was ready, I was doing well in the NFL, I've started a bunch of games and I played really well. After my first year I spent three months just doing nothing, hanging out, partying, just going out, just doing what everyone else did. It just didn't feel balanced and so I just sat and I thought a little bit I realize I had this post-graduate scholarship that expired within two years that I needed to use and also realized that the NFL, the National Football League, have these benefits that say if you decide to either go finish your degree or pursue education while you're playing, we’ll actually refund you for up to a certain amount. So I figured there’s this asset out there, so why not take advantage of it. I was looking at different schools and I ended up finding the school pretty much in my backyard in Glendale, Arizona when I was playing for the Arizona Cardinals. It just made sense because I had time, I like learning and it was an international business school and I love international. It was the perfect fit. It was the number one international business school in the world. I had friends from South Korea, from Japan, from Germany, from Nigeria, from Ghana, from Italy, from France, from all over. Students were coming to this campus and so we work on projects together and we were hanging out together, we were working out together. We just got a chance to form these really tight bond and some of them I still hold to this day.
Why was it important for you to actively be involved with charitable activities?
S: My parents were born and raised in Nigeria, so I got a chance to go back there pretty much every other year and see what the conditions were like, and for me it just didn't seem fair. I remember going there when I was 15 one year and I was playing sports, so I was big and strong, and I remember going there and seeing another 15-year-old who I looked at him and I thought he was nine or ten years old, just so skinny and malnourished. For me, it didn't seem fair, it didn’t seem fair that I got a chance to live America and eat all this food, and enjoy all these benefits that he didn’t. It's always been about trying to not necessarily balance the scales, but just give what I can because I've been given. It just clicks because you just think, “Look at where I live. Look at all the things that I have.” Then you go to a place like the Philippines or Nigeria and it doesn’t have to be out of the country, just go to different areas and you see how people are struggling for simple things. In Nigeria, people would die from an insect bite, they would die from something that a trip to a local Walgreens or pharmacy would cure. You just wanted to go and do something better.
How does sports, life, and faith intertwine?
S: I am living in that intersection. I’ll leave it there.
Written by Alexa Bituin | Staff Writer
abituin@masonlive.gmu.edu
Komentáře