You need to know your priorities in life.
As head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, that’s probably the most important message I deliver to my players, especially the younger ones. Focus on what’s truly meaningful, I urge them.
I’m a guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve, so when I say these things, my players know I speak from the heart. What they don’t know is that I learned that lesson the hard way.
They weren’t there in Chicago the night of the banquet in my honor—one of the greatest moments of my career as a player, and the lowest point of my personal life.
I’d played my entire NFL career with the Chicago Bears. In the 1985 season I’d helped lead the team to a victory in the Super Bowl. Chicago fans always appreciated me, and this night in 1989 would make it official.
All the goals I’d set at age 12 had come true. I was being honored in my adopted city as the best defensive player in the league.
You can imagine what the night was like. People approached my table throughout the evening. “Congratulations, Mike,” they’d say, pushing between my wife, Kim, and me. They’d pay me a ton of compliments, and then turn to Kim and say, “Oh, you’re so lucky to be married to him.”
I figured, if ever I could make Kim proud, this would be the time. “This is our night, honey,” I said. Kim said nothing. We barely spoke through dinner. Driving home, Kim didn’t say a word. Her eyes said it all.
How did it ever get to this? I wondered.
Kim is the only woman I’ve ever loved. I thought back to the night we met—in the Baylor University library, when we were sophomores. I was already well known on campus as a football player.
But off the field I wasn’t nearly so confident. I’d seen Kim around, but couldn’t work up the nerve to approach her. I couldn’t believe it when she walked up to me. “Can you help me with my math?” she asked. I wasn’t very good at math, but I told her I was.
Afterward, I walked her back to her dorm. We talked about a million things—family, faith, our hopes, our dreams. Man, I thought, as I returned to my dorm, she doesn’t care that I’m a football player. Kim’s the first girl I’ve met where I can just be myself.
A few days later we went on our first date. I never did believe in beating around the bush. “I’m going to marry you someday,” I said.
The next few months were heaven. For me, at least. I felt lucky to be around Kim. I thought she felt the same. Turns out she didn’t. We were a couple, but we didn’t spend much time together. Not as much as she wanted. Most of my hours were spent on the field, or studying.
One day she cornered me. “Where do I stand with you?” she asked.
“I truly love you,” I said. But she wasn’t satisfied.
Where to begin? I took Kim to a campus coffee shop and found a quiet corner. I was 12 when my parents divorced. I took it hard. I lost all my desire, all my motivation. Even for football, which I loved. I just wanted to get by.
I told Kim I probably wouldn’t have cared about college, almost certainly wouldn’t have amounted to anything. Until my mother talked some sense into me.
“Nobody gets life handed to them,” Mom told me. “Life is getting beat up and getting back on your feet. It takes willpower and hard work and focus.”
I told Kim it was the greatest motivational speech I’d ever heard, better than any delivered by a football coach. It turned my attitude right around. I went straight to my room and wrote out a vision statement.
My goals, I decided, were to earn a college football scholarship, to become an All-American player, to earn my degree, to get drafted by an NFL team, to become an All-Pro player, to buy Mom a home, to play in the Super Bowl and to own my own business.
“I became a totally goal-oriented person,” I told Kim. Single-minded, you might say. A fitting description for a guy named Singletary.
“There’s something missing from your list, Mike,” she said, touching my hand. “Love.”
I told Kim the truth: Nothing was going to keep me from going for my goals, for getting where I wanted to go. That even included my relationships.
A lot of women would have said goodbye right then. But Kim knew the sincerity of my heart. Eventually, she believed, a wife and family would rate at the top of my list.
But it never did. There was always something else that demanded my attention.
In 1981 the Bears drafted me and I achieved one of my main goals. I thought things would get easier. They didn’t. Most nights I fell asleep studying the team’s playbook. I was determined to be the best.
Kim moved back to Detroit, where her family lived. I can’t tell you how much I missed her. My heart ached. Did I ask her to move back and marry me? No. It was more important to establish myself in the league.
That took three years. I made All-Pro and felt things were falling into place for me. I called Kim. “I’m ready for you now,” I said. “I’m ready to give you the attention you deserve.” That summer we married. The next year we had the first of our seven children.
I loved being with Kim. But things kept cutting into my time with her and our children.
“Nothing has changed,” she complained one night. “You come home, and even at dinner your attention wanders. I know your mind is on football.”
I couldn’t argue. I was named team captain. I’d wolf down dinner then spend the rest of the night watching film of the next week’s opponent and phoning teammates to make sure they were doing the same.
I thought I was succeeding in life. The truth is, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the most important thing of all—Kim and the kids. But I didn’t realize how dissatisfied Kim was until that night at the banquet. Our marriage had reached a crisis.
Mike, you better figure this out, I thought. You better fix this.
Kim marched upstairs with barely a goodnight. I went into the den, grabbed a notebook and followed her into the bedroom. I felt like I did the night I met her: unsure of myself, deathly afraid I’d blow it. I love this woman. I can’t bear the idea of losing her.
I sat down on the edge of the bed with notebook in hand. I was going to make a list, just like I did when I was 12. “I need to know,” I said. “Am I the kind of husband that you need? How do I treat you? What am I doing that needs fixing?”
“Let me think about it for a while,” Kim said.
Every time I saw her over the next few days, I asked if she had an answer yet. I wanted to make my list, set my goals.
One morning at the kitchen table Kim laid it all out for me. My divided attention, leaving the hard work of parenting up to her, tending to my career first at the expense of all else. “You have to be here for us, with us. With me. This family has to come before football.”
It was pretty tough to hear—that a man so wrapped up in success could fail in his wife’s eyes. It humbled me. I promised to do better. But old habits die slow. Football is what defined me.
One night Kim and I got into a terrible argument. I can’t even remember what it was about. As usual, I didn’t quit until I had won. She marched upstairs, as frustrated as I’d ever seen her, and slammed the door. What have I actually won? I thought.
I sat down in the den. This time I reached for the Bible, thinking it would calm me. Flipping through the pages, I came across 1 Corinthians 13—the love chapter. Love is not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking. And it struck me—I was all of those things.
I kept reading. But love never fails. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not easily angered. I thought back again to my first date with Kim. She liked me for who I was, not because I was a football player. I didn’t have to prove anything to her except my love.
I snapped the Bible closed and took it upstairs with me. It was 2:00 a.m. Kim rolled over drowsily in bed.
“Kim, read this,” I said.
“You read it.”
I did. And when I finished I said to her, “You’re my number-one priority. You and the kids. From this day forward that’s how I’m going to love you.”
It took me five years of marriage, but I finally figured out what’s really important in life. Football is a big part of who I am. But not as big as my wife and kids, in terms of who I am off the field—a man of God and a family man.
By the way, it was Kim who suggested that I go into coaching 11 years after I retired as a player in 1992. I love being the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. But if Kim told me to leave the 49ers tomorrow, that would be it. After all these years, I finally got my list straightened out.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I figured maybe he was just guessing since that idea had been on the Christmas wish list he’d given me weeks earlier.
