Gold Jacket Spotlight: Emmitt Smith turned dreams to goals the ‘write’ way

Early in his life, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher learned the value of writing down goals as a pathway to achieving those desired outcomes.

EMMITT SMITH'S Escambia (Pensacola, Fla.) High School coach, Dwight Thomas, instructed his players to write down their three goals for the football season on a file card and place it in their locker so they could review it each day.

“It’s a dream until you write it down, and then it becomes a goal,” Thomas told his players.

Emmitt’s dreams became his written goals, and achieving those goals throughout his high school, collegiate and professional career culminated in his enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010. His journey is recalled this week in the Gold Jacket Spotlight.

Thomas’ advice was well-received by Emmitt, and the standout running back led Escambia to a pair of state championships and a No. 1 national ranking.

Emmitt’s high school efforts included averaging 180 yards per game and recognition as the Gatorade National Player of the Year for the 1986-87 season. 

“God gave him a lot of ability, and inside that ability is the inner-being of not getting beat,” Thomas told NFL Films. “The young man had drive.”

Incorporated in the Gatorade recognition was a trip to the Super Bowl in Pasadena. It was while sitting in the Rose Bowl that Emmitt dreamed of playing in the Super Bowl. He later put that dream to paper as a goal — one he achieved Jan. 31, 1993, in that same venue.

While Emmitt was writing and achieving his goals, he also was requiring skeptics to rethink their positions.

“They said he was too small to play in college. Not big enough, fast enough to play in the pros,” said Emmitt’s coach at the University of Florida, Galen Hall, during a “Football Life” episode. “All those doubters are just people that fueled the fire that makes Emmitt Smith go.” 

Among the accomplishments Emmitt achieved playing for the Gators were breaking the school’s single-game rushing mark in his first game and earning unanimous All-America honors. Emmitt still retains the top two spots in both yards gained in a game and yards gained in a season for Florida.

Emmitt departed Florida following the 1989 season and, again, overcame cynical perspectives.

Joe Brodsky, Dallas Cowboys running backs coach from 1989 to 1997, shared the profile of the running back the Cowboys were seeking when he told “A Football Life”: “They had a picture of that guy, in words. He’s 6-foot-1 to 6-foot-3, he’s 200 to 214 (pounds). Emmitt was a no, no, no to each of those.”

Although Emmitt didn’t match the “picture” Brodsky described, Dallas head coach JIMMY JOHNSON was willing to use the team’s first-round pick (17th overall) to select the Florida running back in the 1990 NFL Draft. 

“You look at his height, his weight and his speed, a lot of backs have that. But Emmitt got it done,” proclaimed Johnson in an NFL Films documentary.

Daryl Johnston, the Cowboys’ fullback who provided blocking for Emmitt for nearly a decade, said, “Emmitt coming in was the final piece of the puzzle.”

That completed puzzle would propel a team that won a single game the season prior to Emmitt’s arrival to appearing in a Super Bowl within three seasons and winning back-to-back games in Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. The team won a third Lombardi trophy in Super Bowl XXX.

On Oct. 27, 2002, Emmitt became the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

“That moment wasn’t just for Emmitt Smith,” the record-holder professed while describing the scene that afternoon in “A Football Life."

“That moment was for the village of people that have poured into me and helped shape me into the person that I have become, the football player that I once was and hopefully the father that I am. Period.”

Emmitt accomplished his record-setting career with 18,355 rushing yards by doing things the “write” way.