There are several things we expect from NFL players. We expect them to play at the best of their ability or better, we expect them to win (unless you’re a Cowboys fan), we expect them to serve as role models in certain instances, and we expect them to sometimes do crazy things like drive their car into a pond. Yet not many of us would expect to see an NFL player start a book club. After all, there is a preconceived notion that most athletes aren’t the brightest of the bunch.
Well one veteran NFL player is proving all the haters wrong.
Seattle Seahawks defensive end, Michael Bennett has started a book club for his teammates. He’s known for leaving books all over the place because he’s always reading. Bennett took the idea to Seahawks vice president of player engagement Maurice Kelly, who liked the idea. So far, a few of his teammates have been receptive to the idea. The first book up on the list is Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
“I think Outliers is the perfect book for us because we are outliers when you think of the sense of what we’ve been through and who we are and the situation we were born in,” Bennett said, “For us, everything that we built up, that whole 10,000 hours of doing what we’ve been doing to be great at this moment, it’s definitely us when it comes to that.”
The goal of the book club is to get players to think of issues off the field and to educate themselves. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the locker room and if other teams will catch on to the trend. Great idea, Michael Bennett!
