Though he has won widespread acclaim for his ability to connect with an audience, trial lawyer-turned-union chief De Smith might have misfired a bit with his lofty, professorial address to the newest crop of NFL players.
"The fundamental truth of progress is that we only surpass history when we embrace it," Smith told the incoming first-year players at the annual Rookie Symposium. "Mature thought is a thought where we now understand not only what we do and who we are, but where we are and where we exist in the world.
"If you let people define you as just a player, I guarantee you one thing: You will lose. So who are you? You're fathers, you're sons, you're brothers, you're husbands. Hamlet talked about that famous question: What is it to be? If you remember any part of that soliloquy, the answer to his question was the question itself. It was an understanding of who he was in relation to the world in which he lived. He was a brother, he was father, he was husband, he was a son. That's who you are."
Insert snoring sounds here.
And those players who didn't fall unconscious might be wondering whether De Smith just told them that, since they are what Hamlet was, they're all destined to become so paralyzed by thought and indecision that they eventually ponder suicide.
For the players who weren't already sawing logs with rusty blades after hearing the term "soliloquy," Smith also mentioned that French president Nicholas Sarkozy addressed both houses of parliament last week, explaining that it was the first time that had happened since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte.
And that likely prompted one rookie to ask another one, "Wasn't his last name Dynamite?"
Look, we've got not problem with Smith's message. But talking about fictional Danish princes and dead French dictators isn't the way to get through to young American athletes.
And please don't give us the "But weren't they college students?" routine. For most of them, attending college was a means to an end, and the only book they ever really studied had only two letters in it -- X and O.
So while De Smith has done a nice job of connecting with his constituents, some of the kids who had their first exposure to him at the Rookie Symposium possibly emerged from the experience unimpressed.
Rested and refreshed, but unimpressed.
"Hamlet talked about that famous question: What is it to be? If you remember any part of that soliloquy, the answer to his question was the question itself."
If De Smith is going to allude to Hamlet he should at least read the play. The "To be or not to be" soliloquy is not about identity, or the roles we play in life (son, father, etc). It's about whether Hamlet should commit suicide, and why more people don't. And the conclusion isn't "the question itself", whatever that means, it's that people don't kill themselves because they fear death, that "undiscovered country", that may plague them for eternity. Conscience does make cowards of us all.
I'm sure being fatally indecisive is not an NFL rookies' biggest obstacle coming into the league.
Nicolas, not Nicholas. And Napoleon wasn't a dictator, he was an emperor.