NFL Free Agent, Gerome Sapp to Guest Star on Insightful Player™ Streaming Video TV Show on MingleMediaTV.com
Tuesday, July 26th 7 PM EST
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Gerome Sapp, NFL Free Agent
NFL free agent defensive back Gerome Sapp, one of 32 current and former NFL players recognized as Insightful Players will be the guest of the weekly Insightful Player online show on MingleMediaTV.com tonight at 7 p.m. ET. Mingle Media TV produces and broadcasts over 40 hours of web series and event coverage each week.
Sapp is one of the 32 members of the Insightful Player™ team. To be named to this team, one must be a person of integrity, such as a current or former NFL player, who shares their personal message of hope for the sole purpose of lifting the spirits of all, especially children.
Chrissy Carew, a Master Certified personal and business coach based in Nashua, NH founded Insightful Player™ in April 2010 with a vision of providing an answer to a crucial worldwide calling for messages of hope that provoke positive actions. “I’m thrilled to have an online show on MingleMediaTV.com where I’m able to interview my Insightful Players like Gerome Sapp, Montell Owens, Usama Young, Rashied Davis and others,” said Carew, who serves as the host of the show. Carew was inducted into the International Coaching Federation (ICF) New England Chapter’s newly-established Hall of Fame on June 13.
The short-version of Gerome Sapp’s Insightful Player story is available on InsightfulPlayer.com. The full-length version will appear in the Insightful Player book that will be published by Morgan-James Publishing this summer. Sapp has played five years in the NFL as a safety for the Baltimore Ravens and Indianapolis Colts.
On the show, Carew will discuss the core of resilience that has carried Gerome through every stage of his life thus far—from his hardscrabble childhood and an absent father to his ascension as the number one ranked high school football player in the entire state of Texas; the years as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, during which he demonstrated both athletic and academic success; and five strong years in the NFL. And Gerome’s quests are not yet over: he and some former teammates have launched a company called Morph &Thro, LLC.
Excerpt from Gerome Sapp’s Insightful Player Profile:
Growing up in inner-city Houston, there were times when Gerome Sapp and his siblings had to cope without water or electricity. Other children in those circumstances might develop an embittered view, but for Gerome, it was formative to his remarkably positive outlook. From the experience he learned two important lessons modeled by his mother, Angelia, who always blended the ideal and the practical. “First of all, she would tell us that tomorrow would probably be better,” Gerome recalls. “And second, that it would be a good idea to do our homework early instead of putting it off.”
Because their father was generally absent, his mother signed up her two sons – Gerome and his brother Charles, just one year older — in the Big Brother program. To 7-year-old Gerome, Big Brother Todd Freeman was a godsend. “He opened me up to a whole other side of life that I hadn’t seen,” Gerome says. The two stayed close; Todd attended Gerome’s college football games and his first pro game, and Gerome was in Todd’s wedding party. “He was the first consistent male figure in my life,” Gerome comments.
In high school, Gerome connected with the second major father figure of his youth: his football coach, Lee Malowitz. The players generally considered Coach Malowitz to be tough and not always kind, but Gerome and his brother got to know the coach on a deeper level. “He realized that me and my brother weren’t just the average teenage black males. And we realized that even though a lot of people thought Coach Malowitz hated them, he was hard on us because he didn’t want to see us mess up.”
Both brothers became high school football stars. In his junior year, Gerome was Parade and USA Today First Team All-American. The following year, he was ranked the number one player in Texas. College recruiters were watching, and Coach Malowitz urged the young man to take his academic requirements seriously. Along with studying hard, Gerome and his best friend maintained a commitment to clean living, using each other’s example to avoid the drugs and alcohol in which many of their classmates indulged.
At Malowitz’s urging, Gerome kept his grades up and listened to the college coaches who wanted to sign him. He eventually chose Notre Dame, in part because of its academic reputation and in part because of his mother’s insistence that he use college to explore a different environment from his home state of Texas.
The four years at Notre Dame were fundamental to shaping not only Gerome’s football career but his adult personality as well. “A lot of guys I knew who went off to college couldn’t handle the mental burden. You’re no longer the big shot anymore. So you have to learn how to play a role of a lesser athlete, not what you were in high school. I was able to handle that though.”
His classmates incorrectly stereotyped him based on his color and southern origins, but rather than get angry, Gerome set about proving them wrong by working hard and demonstrating his intellect. To this day, he values the lessons that his social interactions at Notre Dame taught him. “Looking back on it,” he now says, “the most important thing I learned at Notre Dame was how to get along with people in different social environments.”
Entering the NFL was another culture shock. “When you make that kind of money and have that kind of free time, you can get into a lot of different kinds of trouble. But I had my head on my shoulders, so I never was in danger of going off the deep end the way some guys did. Only 5% of the guys in the NFL make the kind of money where you never have to worry about working again. If you’re in the other 95%, you have to save your money and know what you’re going to do when your football career is over.”
It is important to Gerome that young followers understand how many different facets make up one man’s personality. “I always tell kids not to just look at me as an NFL guy,” he says. “To understand who I am, you have to see everything leading up to this point and everything I’ve gone through. That’s the most important thing, to have a perspective when you’re looking at something.”
The Insightful Player™ is brought to you by Coach Chrissy Carew, Master Certified Personal and Business Coach. Chrissy has been deeply inspired by her father, the late Coach Walter Carew, Sr. Her beloved father is in several Halls of Fame as a high school football coach (as well as high school and college player). He used the game as a way to help kids build strong character and teach them valuable life skills. The Insightful Player™ was created to help make our world a much better place.
Launched on February 8, 2010, online media and live web TV Network Company, Mingle Media TV produces and broadcasts over 40 hours of web series and event coverage each week. It’s audience reach online is over 250,000 weekly views of their video coverage, web series and live broadcasts and are currently in the top 20,000 websites in the U.S.
For more information on Coach Chrissy Carew and Insightful Player, visit www.theinsightfulplayer.com and call 603-897-0610.
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