The Kansas City Chiefs’ kicker could learn a thing or two from Allyson Felix, Abby Wambach, and Sabrina Ionescu.
Every year, college students across the United States look forward to graduation. They’ll receive their diplomas. They’ll walk across the stage. But first, they’ll listen to a speech.
Sometimes, the speaker is a famous athlete. Allyson Felix, an Olympic runner. Sabrina Ionescu, a WNBA guard. Abby Wambach, a retired U.S. Women’s National Team soccer player.
And sometimes, the speaker is Harrison Butker, kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs. His speech at Benedictine College was memorable – and not for good reasons. Some highlights: saying that IVF and surrogacy show “the pervasiveness of disorder” in the U.S.; calling diversity, equity, and inclusion “tyranny;” and dubbing Pride Month a “deadly sin.”
But it wasn’t Butker’s comments on reproductive rights, DEI, and the LGBTQ+ community that earned the most criticism. Instead, it was his message to female graduates.
“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you,” he said. “I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
At a college where about 52 percent of students are female, it’s a bold choice to tell half of the graduating class that their true job is to be homemakers. So bold that even the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica – nuns associated with Benedictine College – said Butker’s remarks don’t “represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested.”
It’s no surprise that Butker has faced backlash. He turned a graduation into a political sermon and, in doing so, seemed to forget all the basic rules of a good speech. Should Butker dare to speak at a college graduation again, he’d do well to study up on better addresses before he takes the stage. Allyson Felix, Abby Wambach, and Sabrina Ionescu could certainly teach him a thing or two.
Rule No. 1: Respect others.
It’s impossible to be friends with everyone. College students know this all too well – especially graduates on the verge of entering adult life. Still, that doesn’t mean a commencement address is a place to sling personal attacks.
Butker clearly missed this particular memo. He threw insults like candy on Halloween, demeaning anyone who disagrees with his beliefs. According to him, the current government is full of “bad leaders who don’t stay in their lane.” Trans people are “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth.” Even Catholic bishops are cowards, “more concerned with keeping the doors open” than with “saying the difficult stuff out loud.”
Contrast those scathing remarks with Allyson Felix’s 2022 speech at the University of Southern California, her alma mater. Never once did she disparage any person or group. She even spoke of Nike, the sponsor she’d had a falling out with over its maternity policy, with respect.
“I loved my time working with them,” she said. “There was just room for improvement.”
Nike had slashed Felix’s sponsorship pay by 60 percent after her pregnancy. The company’s lack of leniency for new mothers had driven her to write a New York Times op-ed. She had all the reason in the world to disparage them in her speech.
But she didn’t – because Felix, unlike Butker, has mastered the art of loving her enemies.
Rule No. 2: Be humble.
Make no mistake. The speaker might be the one standing on the stage, but graduation is about the students. Abby Wambach understood this when she addressed Barnard College in 2018.
Wambach is a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She won two Olympic gold medals and six U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year awards. Her athletic career was legendary, and of course she spoke about it in her speech. But she didn’t act like her fame and success made her superior to the graduates. She used her platform to praise other female soccer players who’d inspired her – Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers. She even talked about moments of failure, like being benched at the World Cup.
“That sucked,” she joked.
With her self-effacing humor and focus on uplifting others, Wambach made it clear: This speech wasn’t about her. It was about the soccer legends who came before her, about women banding together, about the resilience of the graduates. All of her advice came from a place of humility.
Butker’s advice…not so much. To say that leaders are incompetent, social justice is evil, and women’s career aspirations are built on lies requires incredible self-righteousness. To make a graduation speech about a personal political agenda requires astounding selfishness. But he said that, and he did that, because he couldn’t see that Benedictine’s graduation wasn’t about him.
Graduation is never about the speaker. Wambach was wise enough to see that. But Butker looked at the faces of hundreds of accomplished graduates and stole the spotlight for himself anyway.
Rule No. 3: Empower.
Sabrina Ionescu kept it simple with her advice for Oregon’s 2020 graduates: “Keep dreaming.” It was a brief message, but an important one – especially in the time of COVID-19, which had put a damper on many college graduates’ dreams.
A good graduation speech is meant to encourage. It’s meant to empower the graduates, to remind them of the possibilities of their futures. Ionescu did just that, touching on themes of hope, perseverance, and belief.
Butker, on the other hand, didn’t seem too keen on graduates dreaming big. “Staying in your lane is going to be the surest way for you to find true happiness and peace in this life,” he said.
Being involved in social justice is, apparently, out of a bishop’s lane. Stay in your lane. Having a career is out of a woman’s lane. Stay in your lane. Making decisions contrary to certain religious beliefs is out of government officials’ lanes. Stay in your lane. The lanes might be narrow, but stay in your lane, regardless.
Ionescu delivered a polar opposite message. “Carve your own path,” she said. “Discover what else is possible.”
Her speech encouraged graduates to dream, to grow, to live up to their fullest potentials. Butker’s only boxed them in. “Stay in your lane,” he told Benedectine’s graduating class. Perhaps, then, he should be the first to practice what he preaches.
Respect others. Be humble. Empower. Three simple rules, all of which Harrison Butker broke in his self-centered commencement speech.
The worst part? His address, spoken in front of a small crowd, has reached the ears of a far wider audience – women, LGBTQ+ people, racial minorities. It’s a cruel reminder of the world we live in, where a millionaire with a harmful agenda isn’t cut off, but given a microphone and a podium.
But remember this: For every Harrison Butker, there is an Allyson Felix; an Abby Wambach; a Sabrina Ionescu. For every uninspiring commencement speech, there are three great ones.
Let’s listen to those instead.
Edited by Breanna Ebisch