Man's Men

A while ago I was watching the movie “300”, about the 300 Spartan warriors who fought at the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartans would have followed their kick ass leader, Leonidas, anywhere, against anyone. Men like Leonidas don’t exist today, not in great frequency anyway. Not since Patton. Many Americans don’t want manly men anymore. They want guys who watch “Friends” and aren’t afraid to cry if Meredith Grey dies. They want soldiers who to try not to kill people when they’re shot at and come home to be metro-sexuals. They want no score kept at little league games and boyfriends that have wedding showers instead of bachelor parties. You get where I’m going here. I fear for small boys who may grow up hero-less.
So who is left? Who are the people that could get you out of a fox hole and charge into battle? I can think of a few, and maybe I’ll add to this later. The list starts here…

1. Ray Lewis
I imagine Ray Lewis, in full army gear, face painted in camo, telling me to get out of a fox- hole and follow him into battle. I’d be more scared of pissing off Ray than I would of the enemy.
I’m not necessarily a huge Ray Lewis fan. I appreciate his talents, but I don’t have pictures of him in my house or anything like that if you know what I mean. Ray Lewis is a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens NFL franchise. He is one of the better defensive players of his generation, but he is at least as well known for one incident away from the football field. In 2000, Lewis (along with two of his friends) was arrested and charged with the murder of two men in Atlanta. He eventually pleaded down to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice in exchange for his testimony against his two buddies, who were later acquitted. I only mention this incident in the interest of full disclosure about the man. It isn’t his ruthlessness that would draw me to him, but his dance.
If you’ve never seen Ray Lewis do his patented war dance as the smoke clears when he enters the stadium, it’s a sight to behold. It’s reminiscent to me of middle age warfare, when fighting was done face to face- as a means of not only rallying your own men to fight, but striking the fear of God into the heart of your enemy as well. Remember at the beginning of the movie “Gladiator” when the two sides are squaring off against each other before the battle? If the Germans would have had Ray Lewis walk out, face painted, in uniform, and do his war dance, they may have beaten the Romans.

2. Urban Meyer
I didn’t originally intend for this to be a list of football guys, but Meyer is more than a football guy. Urban Meyer is the head football coach at The University of Florida, where he won the 2007 National Championship in just his second year with the Gators. Again here, I am not a big fan of UF, but I’m a huge fan of Meyer’s. Meyer first became a head coach in 2001 at Bowling Green State University, and quickly rose up the ranks to the University of Utah, and then to Florida.
I had the honor of hearing Meyer speak six or seven times while he was at Utah (as most students did), in both large and some very small groups, and spoke to him on a few occasions. There is something that can only be described as magical that happens when Meyer speaks. Something that I imagine would have been similar to Moses. As one of my friends said once, he could speak to a group of grown men in suits and in 45 minutes have them follow him, running out the door screaming, pumping their fists in the air, and not even know why, or where they’re going. If I were sitting on my couch watching TV, and Meyer came in and told me to start vacuuming, I’d do it right away. Not because he scares me or could hurt me, but because I wouldn’t want him to think for a second that I wasn’t the best damn vacuumer in the world. He could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves, and never, ever make her think that he didn’t have her best interest at heart.
Meyer will eventually go down in history as one of the greatest coaches ever. He will be talked about like Vince Lombardi and Knute Rockne. Trophies will be names after him; maybe even stadiums, and statues will be erected in his likeness (I’m not exaggerating), all because of his gift for motivating people to maximize their potential.

3. Bear Grylls
Bear Grylls is quite possibly the toughest man to ever live. And he’s English! (Quite an anomaly isn’t it?) This brief description is lifted straight from his website:
Bear spent three years with the British Special Forces [like the Army Rangers]. During this time he had a horrendous parachuting accident whilst in southern Africa and broke his back in three places. Yet two years later, after severe rehabilitation, he overcame the odds to become the youngest British climber ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return alive. (http://www.beargrylls.com).
You may also have seen Bear on The Discovery Channel's 'Man Vs Wild' TV Series. If you haven’t, you tube the guy. You may see him making a fire with sticks in the mountains, eating a dead zebra like a wolf to keep from starving in the African savannah, jumping into a frozen lake in the European Alps to demonstrate how not to die from hypothermia, squeezing the juice from elephant dung for water, eating live snakes, stalking and killing a jackrabbit, trying to tame and ride a wild horse, or something else that no one would ever think of doing to stay alive in the wild. Bear Grylls could survive longer and more comfortably in any barren wilderness than most people could in a Wall Mart.