Retiring at the end of last season, this man ended his career of perfection and longevity having scored the third-most points in NFL history (2,150). On turf, he was the Michael Jordan of scoring. (No, seriously, Jordan’s third all-time on his list, too.)

This man has put up points with the gridiron trenches collapsing in on him, but his delivery was always as flawless as dentures. He’s only the second player in league history to score 200+ points against three different teams. You’re thinking quarterback; I’m saying kicker.
As far as kickers go, he’s arguably the ‘Greatest of All-Time’ (G.O.A.T.). I’d say he was the goat, but he was actually a Lion. Through decades of his team’s troubles and triumphs, he made his living and his legacy into the living legacy he now is, which stood before a pack of Lions Saturday morning—though this pack was of attentive fans all crammed between the straining bricks of the high school auditorium.
Like every kick of his career, all eyes were on the one and only Jason Hanson.

“Characters matters in sports,” he preached early on in his speech. “Who you become in sports is why you play, why you have fun, and why you’re dedicated.”

Stemming from the importance of one’s character is leadership.

“Not all heroes are leaders and not all leaders are heroes,” Hanson declared. “We tend to think that the ones who make the miraculous game-winning shots are the people we should follow, but most leaders are people who don’t always get in situations where you get to be super famous. But leaders are consistent every day and are the product of hard work that happens every day, not just something that happens in some game-winning moment.”

The thing that stood out in Hanson’s highly insightful speech, perhaps more than anything, was his ability to cannon kick a specific meaning of something that initially would look to sail way beyond the audience for a touchback, way over everyone’s heads of comprehension, yet he’d still manage to explain it in a way that everyone could receive and take in the ball of new knowledge he had kicked to them.

Selflessly, he wanted everyone to ‘return’ the favor and run forward in progression through life with that new knowledge he’d helped instill in everyone. Take, for example, his method of condensing important points into things as memorable as specific words.

“Integrity,” Hanson started. “Think about where that word is from. In math, it’s from the word ‘integer.’ An integer is a whole number. You get the idea that integrity has something to do with being whole, so think of it like math. Someone of integrity is someone who’s a whole number and not a fraction. You’re not divided; you’re not somebody different in different circumstances.

“‘Who you are’ and ‘what you do’ have to be the same. And when they’re different, you’re not being a person of integrity. All of my best teammates had that. Each was someone who you could count on because they were the same person all the time.”

In preaching that, as an example of other points he made, Hanson had composed a speech of morale values and their relation to sports just as much as dedication to the sports themselves. The balance between the two was captivating and intuitive in the cleverest ways. In some way, the lessons seemed lasting.

To everyone that went, you were very fortunate this weekend.