“Wait, Dad – what do the Georgia Bulldogs have to do with being a good citizen?” 

Oh, my sweet, insightful girl, thank you for the prompt. I have been hoping for this question my whole life. 

She posed this question on Day 3 of the Founding Citizens Institute’s “citizens camp” last summer, upon our jaw-dropping tours of Sanford Stadium, the gameday locker room, the practice facilities, and the players’ lounge, as giant young men with irrepressible smiles and bigger-than-life personalities roamed around us confidently like world-beating masters of the athletic universe.  Great question!

Short answer: The Georgia Bulldogs are players and coaches and mentors and staff who together form a powerful community of teammates. They commit to each other with dedication and determination and grit. They work hard for each other. They sacrifice and give of themselves for each other. They put themselves out there and strive for success and victory for each other, while risking the embarrassment and pain of defeat. They put their bodies on the line for each other and play hurt for each other and step up when each other is injured or otherwise falters. They have each other’s back no matter the adversity. They love each other.

And they trust that their fellow teammates do the same. 

As the pioneer Founding Citizens learned in dozens of meetings with community leaders and volunteers during citizens camp, citizens are not subjects. Citizens have agency and accountability for their communities and societies – that is, for their teams. 

In short, good citizens are good teammates. 

A few more details:

1. Citizens fearlessly throw themselves into the arena, striving valiantly and daring greatly.

Teddy Roosevelt said it best:

Gunner Stockton famously puts his body on the line for his team, taking brutal hits that would quell a lesser man, and bouncing right back up every time. He is a clutch performer, completing 90 percent of his passes in the 4th quarter against ranked opponents. Off the field, he has an almost unbelievably quiet, self-effacing demeanor and potent humility that is as intense as his competitive fire on the field. Gunner strives valiantly and dares greatly in the arena – for his teammates and for team victory, not for his own glory.

Gunner is a great teammate and a great citizen.

2. Citizens honor each other’s good work and individual contributions, creating self-propelling cycles of greater acts of citizen service.

A good citizen like Kimberly Allen of Royston, Ga., known as Ms. Kim to the hundreds of Georgia Bulldogs who loved her on the football facilities staff, can make a community joyful through the simple force of good cheer and a big smile. Her powerful presence brought 93,000 raucous fans to stark silence in honor of her great life and positive impact as a citizen, both of which were further amplified – not ended – by her untimely death.

The busload of Bulldogs players and leaders who came to Royston for Kim’s funeral set the standard for the Founding Citizens Institute. As an integral part of our future work to train young Americans to be active citizens, we will highlight Kim’s example of perhaps the simplest and most powerful act of citizenship that anyone – and everyone! – can do: Smile, thereby making the world brighter through good will and positive energy alone.

3. Citizens create an empowered and empowering community.

Being a Dawgs fan is sometimes about the game, of course; there is nothing quite like the electric energy of a great game in Sanford Stadium. But even on gameday autumn Saturdays in Athens, the Georgia Bulldogs Nation consists mostly of the community of people for whom the game is a platform to love and admire and draw inspiration from the University of Georgia and its fellow community members. This community consists of multiple generations of graduates and non-graduates alike, whose lives are in some way grounded in or positively affected by that community and the opportunities for fun and fellowship it provides, from a formal education to barking a friendly “Go Dawgs!” to a stranger on the sidewalk wearing red and black.

I saw a different version of this college football community this week in Miami, visiting dear friends and Miami Hurricanes fans who played at Christopher Columbus High School and helped create the multigenerational and mostly Cuban community of people who couldn’t possibly lose this week, no matter who won the national title game.

#76 Mario Cristobal and #70 Fernando Mendoza were teammates in the mid-1980s, and also the sons of Cuban exiles violently forced out of Cuba by Castro’s communist dictatorship. 

This week, Mario coached the talented Hurricanes team he had assembled to the cusp of the national title. 

And Mario’s former teammate, Fernando, watched his son, Heisman Trophy winner Fernando, Jr. – who, like our Gunner, appears to have been computer generated to provide a model of selfless excellence and humility as a teammate – launch himself and his unlikely Hoosiers team to victory.

I watched the game with my buddy and his Columbus High friends – all Cuban (except me and one Bolivian classmate), all immensely proud of Mario and Fernando, some pulling for the Hurricanes and some for the Hoosiers. It was an exquisitely unique football experience, unlike any college football Saturday I’ve ever enjoyed, and also, simultaneously, perfectly familiar – exactly the same, just a different accent.

So to sum it all up:

Citizens create and run their communities, founding them anew, every day, through each successive act of citizenship. 

Citizens are dedicated to each other and their communities; they embrace the grind and sacrifice that being a founder of the community demands.

Citizens take action; they get in the arena and take personal risks and accountability for their performance. 

Citizens are teammates who have each other’s back.

Citizens are champions – for each other.

And that, my beloved daughter and young Dawgs fan, is what the Georgia Bulldogs have to do with being a good citizen. Great question. 

Go Dawgs!