Written by Caroline Deisley, USC blog contributor
Name: Matt Koart
Resume: CEO at Koart Residential Inc.Â
Sport at USC: Football
Caroline Deisley (CD): What was it like for you being a student-athlete here in the 80s?
Matt Koart (MK): Needless to say, it was a terrific start for my life. I was recruited by a man who sort of is famous around USC named Marv Goux. He showed up at my high school when I was a junior and pretty much told me where I was going to school rather than recruit me. He just informed me and his style really appealed to me. It wasn't a style that promises you anything. He was pretty candid that you may never play a down, but if you do, then you know you played with the best. I'm not really sure where I would have ended up if I wasn't recruited by SC. I was recruited by other schools as well, but I wasn't necessarily the best student in high school. I had a great family but looking back it's sort of a miracle that things worked out the way they did. Once I got to SC then I got more focused on everything. I took school very seriously and I played as well as I could in my sport and good things started to happen. After football, I went to law school at USC and now my daughter goes there so I could not be more thankful for what USC did for me and my family.
CD: How challenging was it to balance both being a student and an athlete here?
MK: You had to be aggressive about everything. There wasn't a lot of time to watch TV. I certainly had a good social life and a lot of fun too, so it wasn't just a grind, but there wasn't a lot of idle time. For athletes, you can't have any class from noon to like six o'clock, pretty much every afternoon is taken. Night class is very much a part of your existence and you get up early in the morning, so there's no sleeping in either. It definitely pushed you to test your limits - physically with the sport and time management and stress management and all that. The school does a really good job at helping people get through that. You can just tell that people were really looking out for you and helping you adjust.
CD: You mentioned that you also went to law school here. What was it like being here for school without having football?
MK: It's different for everyone. For me, I got to the point where I knew how good I could be in the NFL and what my limits were so by the time I went to law school I was pretty much at peace with the idea that football was over. All the law school students I went to school with thought I was crazy for not going back to the NFL for another year, but all the NFL players thought I was crazy that I wasn't in law school. The grass is always greener. It's a study of human nature of people only seeing the good parts of somebody else's life and not the work that it takes to get there.
CD: How did you make that decision to transition from being a professional athlete to going back to school?
MK: Well, I was drafted in the fifth round and made the Green Bay Packers. I played for 11 games. We won one and lost 10 and then I got fired. At that point, I was already accepted to the law school at SC and they were kind enough to give me a deferral for a year, which I think is something that only certain schools would do. I think that's an example of that Trojan Family mindset. I don't see a public school giving a football player a deferral for a year to give him the chance to try and make it in the NFL. Also, when I reported to Green Bay, I was 288 pounds but when I got cut I was 260. I wasn't built to be 290 pounds for four months. But, I was cool about it at the time for sure.Â
CD: What was it like then getting back into the grind and having to go into intense law school? I've heard about that horrible first year...
MK: I would say that's one of the things I try and give credit to my football experience. I took an aggressive approach to it. You just can't mess around. It was time to get really serious and go into sort of a game mentality of going as hard as you can at something and knowing that no matter how hard something is you will get good again. It doesn't stay hard forever. The first year was definitely something. I lived by myself off campus which wasn't the most fun in the world as a grad student. I lived near school so I could give 100 percent of myself to it. It was really the same kind of competitive attitude that I think works whether it's in school or sports or anything else in life.Â
CD: People make comparisons all the time about how the lessons they learned on the football field they've now applied in the office. Now that you are in a leadership position, do you see the things you learned as a captain here at USC coming into play in the business world?
MK: Yes and no. It doesn't have to be just football it can be any sport that requires maximum effort. You don't have to temper that aggression especially in football the way you do in the outside world. In football, you can have almost no limits on your aggression and it's such a violent sport. Then, you go into the business world and certain parts apply because you certainly need effort and that work ethic to get people to respect you and want to work on your team. I think that part applies but it's much more subtle. You definitely have to severely choke back any aggressive nature if you're going to be accepted in a leadership role. Everyone's not wired with that football mentality. That wasn't a hard adjustment for me but it certainly was something I became aware of the further I grew away from sports. There isn't the same immediacy of results. You don't just run people over. You have to make them want to join you.
CD: What would you say to all the players deciding to enter or preparing for the NFL draft?
MK: There is a satisfaction to life knowing that you reached your maximum potential and then being mature enough to know what that limit is for you. I think that can be a difficult line to define sometimes. You should know how good you are at your sport and you should pursue that because you only have a limited amount of time to do so. At the same time, you need to be honest with yourself to know what that limit is. There were some free agents on the field at Green Bay that I knew immediately were in over their heads athletically. They didn't see it. If you're not honest with yourself, you can spin your wheels and waste a lot of time that could be put to use better elsewhere. At the same time, I encourage everyone to find that limit because you don't know where it is until you try. I entered USC as a freshman weighing 215 pounds and left weighing 288. I never would've thought that was possible, but I did it by growing up and working as hard as I possibly could. Pursue your dream as hard as you can but recognize and be honest with yourself when you're done because it doesn't last forever for anyone.Â
CD: When you were at USC, did you feel like you had to have a contingency plan for life after football?
MK: I don't think I was very good at having a five-year plan that you're supposed to have. All the business textbooks say you're supposed to have these five-year strategic plans and I've never had one. I just played as hard as I could whether it was in school or in sport, but I gave it my maximum effort and good things tended to happen because I committed myself to what I was doing. I don't think I had a contingency plan. I don't think I was that wise and mature. I wasn't necessarily always dedicated to just football as my dream. Some kids grow up thinking the NFL is their life and that's all they focus on. That wasn't me at all. I just played the sport because I liked it, was good at it, and I took it as far as it could take me. I was okay moving on when that was over. My father was a subdivision developer, the same kind of real estate that I am in now, so I sort of grew up knowing what I wanted to do. When I went to undergrad in the business school at USC, my entire focus was on real estate and when I went to law school, it was all focused on real estate. I've been tunnel-visioned about what my business career was going to look like and I had a lot of good luck along the way.Â
CD: Now what does it mean to give back to a place like USC that means so much to you?
MK: I really look at this as a debt not as a gift. Now, I'm fortunate that I did well enough that I can afford to give more than I originally hoped. I hoped that I would be able to pay back my scholarship. Fortunately, I was able to endow it so that it can continue to pay back. I didn't have great grades in high school. I didn't know how I was going to get to the place I wanted to be in life because I was just sort of enjoying each day and didn't have a real clear path. I look at USC as the place that helped give me that direction. It surrounded me with a lot of people who were going places in their life either athletically or academically. I think that rubbed off on me and for whatever reason I had an awakening somewhere early in my college career that I decided to commit myself to school. Without USC, I can't say I would have gotten to the same place. I give that school a ton of credit for helping me become the person I became.
CD: Alright, we ask everyone this. What's next? What's on the horizon?
MK: When I left my last company where I was an official employee, I had three kids still at home. I knew that my oldest daughter was close to leaving for college, so I decided to not accept another job that was going to keep me on an airplane. So, I opened a small development company with a partner and a big part of the reason is to spend more time with my family while my kids are still at home. I still have a senior and freshman in high school. We certainly do the same type of business I've done before, but we do it at a smaller scale and more locally. I'm really only operating in California right now and I'm fairly committed to not living on an airplane which limits the types of jobs I can do, but I'm totally okay with that. When my youngest is gone, I may have a different opinion because no decision or very few of them last forever but for now that's where I'm going to be.
