Forbes® Best Business Mistakes: How Today's Top Business Leaders Turned Missteps into Success

Chapter 22. JOHN CAPPELLETTI

Heisman Trophy winner

Played in National Football League (NFL) for Los Angeles Rams and San Diego Chargers

Business owner, classic car enthusiast

If you meet John Cappelletti and are old enough to remember who he is—he won't bring it up—you can suddenly find yourself feeling like a kid again. You can forget everything that has occurred in your life for the past 30 years and you're back in the 1970s, feeling something you haven't felt in years: admiration.

John observes, "People seem to want to remember you at a time in your life and in their life that was special to them, whether they were 15 or 50."

Why would people do that around John Cappelletti? Because not everybody can say they played football in college, went undefeated while winning the Orange Bowl, won the Heisman Trophy as the best football player in America, then went on to play in the National Football League for eight seasons.

But wait, there's more. When John was given the Heisman award, standing at the podium on the dais next to Vice President Gerald Ford, his acceptance speech brought tears to the eyes of many in the room as he recounted the everyday struggles of his brother Joey, who was dying of leukemia. The speech made such an impression that a book was written and a television movie made about John and his brother's life (Something for Joey, in 1977).

"It's amazing that after all these years," John says, "I still get letters from kids who are reading this book in fifth grade. A teacher ...