RENTON — Russell Wilson is, by his own admissions, “very reserved.” The Seattle Seahawks’ Pro Bowl quarterback is in many ways the prototypical 21st-century super star, someone whose face is everywhere, yet who is so polished and controlled in what he shows the public that you feel like you don’t really know him.
But on Tuesday, when his debut piece for Derek Jeter’s new venture, The Players’ Tribune, was published, Wilson let down his guard just a bit. He did so again on Friday when talking at length about his newly launched “Why Not You?” foundation, and the “Pass the Peace” initiative he hopes will help fight domestic violence, which has become a huge hot-button topic in the NFL.
Wilson isn’t suddenly becoming unfiltered like, say, defensive end Michael Bennett. When Bennett was asked if he would write for Jeter’s site, he said he would not. Then when told he should because he’d be good at it, replied: “I know I would, but I don’t like Derek Jeter. I’ve never liked the Yankees.”
Still, Wilson is giving glimpses now of a different side — a slightly looser, less refined Wilson who can joke about finding religion at 14, saying, “I used to always go to church to see the cute girls, and now I go to church to work on my heart.”
And this subtle transformation in Wilson, who after winning a Super Bowl has fully entered the realm of A-list stardom, is a very good thing. That’s not because it’s better for fans, and yes, the media, to interact with a more open version of a star athlete, though that is an added bonus. It’s better because we’re seeing Wilson wanting to be heard on issues he finds important.
Plenty of super stars, from Michael Jordan to Tiger Woods, have steered clear of potentially divisive topics in an effort to avoid possibly offending anyone. Few topics are more volatile in the NFL these days than domestic violence and yet Wilson is trying to lead the discussion on that issue. And he is targeting that topic while sharing a locker room with at least two players who have been charged with domestic violence in the past.
“I think some things you don’t have to shy away from,” he said. “You know what’s right, you know what’s wrong and I don’t think you need to shy away from it. … I knew that I could hopefully make a difference being the quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks and being able to talk to different people and hopefully be encouraging as well.”
It appears Wilson wants to turn this “Pass the Peace” initiative into something of an anti-domestic violence version of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. And yes, that might mean seeing “Pass the Peace” clogging your Facebook newsfeed or Twitter timeline for the next few weeks. But if that brings awareness and funding to domestic violence like the Ice Bucket Challenge did for ALS, then maybe Wilson can be play a small role in our country’s domestic violence problem receiving the long overdue influx of awareness and resources it deserves.
“I’m not just about football,” Wilson said. “I think I have the power to influence and help others and encourage others, that’s part of it, too, as well.”
For Wilson, that power to influence meant writing about being a bully as a child, something that he said was tough to put out there for the world to read.
“Yeah, it was difficult to write, to tell you guys I was a bad kid growing up,” he said. “To kind of go in depth about that — I used to have anger issues, I used to get mad all the time.”
Yet Wilson stood there at a podium, cameras and digital recorders rolling, and said, “I knocked people’s teeth out on a regular basis. I used to bang their heads up against the wall. I used to throw them up against the wall. I used to cuss all the time. I used to be a bad kid, man, but I grew from that.”
Jeter describes his website as “a new media platform that will present the unfiltered voices of professional athletes, bringing fans closer to the games they love than ever before.” Whether or not the website can be more than just a venue for athletes to control their own message and only tell the side of the story they want out there, it did help Wilson open up and become a very prominent voice in an important discussion.
“I’m just a small little part of it,” he said. “I just had an idea that I wanted to pass on. For me, hopefully it becomes like wildfire where everybody wants to ‘Pass the Peace’ and throw up their two fingers, and hopefully it can change a generation, change the world, because it’s not just an NFL issue, it’s not just a sports issue, this is across the United States.”
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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