SLANT 45 is announced to great fanfare at Cowboys Stadium

By Steve Pate

September 21, 2009

Bill Lively’s original big thought might already be winning over the National Football League.

SLANT 45 truly has a chance to become a part of Super Bowls every year, once it is introduced prior to North Texas’ first ever Super Bowl in February 2011.

Who says so? The guy who puts on all the Super Bowls.

Frank Supovitz, the NFL’s Senior Vice President of Events, attended the North Texas Host Committee’s gigantic blowout Monday announcing “Service Learning Adventures in North Texas” (aka SLANT 45) amid much fanfare at Cowboys Stadium.

In attendance were more than 600 elementary school children, 2,000 business and civic leaders, the Host Committee’s 114-member Council of North Texas Mayors, and the media.

Only minutes following the event, Supovitz, the NFL’s chief executive for Super Bowl games, conceded:

“SLANT 45 is in my view the most ambitious educational program that a Host Committee has ever attempted. But it goes far beyond educating children. It will condition kids to get involved in their community.

“It gives them an opportunity, through the Super Bowl, to express themselves in ways that will benefit everybody in their community — learning about how to identify problems, and then setting about how to solve them.”

Does that mean SLANT 45 in some form could become an integral part of all Super Bowls, wherever played, following the kick-off in North Texas?

“I think that this program has enough heart,” Supovitz said, “and has enough good thinking behind it, to really become a big part of what Super Bowls become after we leave North Texas.”

It has the potential to live on?

“I think absolutely it has,” Supovitz said.

That was the dream of Lively, the North Texas Host Committee President & CEO, when he was first lured to come aboard by Host Committee Chair Roger Staubach.

“I knew we had to do something that was not required and had never been done before,” Lively said. “I knew we had the capacity to, and it would bond the region as we wanted to from the beginning.”

That, too, was the immediate vision of SLANT 45 Action Team Chair Daryl Johnston, the former Cowboys fullback who is an NFL analyst for FOX Sports.

“The ultimate is for this to be franchised by the NFL and carried on to other host cities,” Johnston said, “so that somewhere down the road, we’re talking about SLANT 55.”

Johnston used the highly popular Taste of the NFL as his motivating example. The NFL Taste was conceived by a chef in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area 18 years ago as a way to raise awareness and money for the homeless. The NFL Taste in North Texas will be the 20th anniversary of that wildly popular event.

“That first event in Minneapolis was a Who’s Who of the chef’s of today, and now that’s been franchised by the NFL,” Johnston said. “For me, the best of the best would be 20 years from now we’re doing SLANT 65 somewhere.”

Monday’s program on the Plaza Level of one end zone at Cowboys Stadium included encouraging speeches from Honorary Co-Chairs President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, appearances by a number of Dallas Cowboys legends, and a mini-concert by multi-platinum pop sensation Jordin Sparks. The CorporateMagic team provided surprising fireworks, a thrilling touch that played well to the shrilling children.

There was even a talented orchestra on stage, pieced together by an old orchestra leader named Bill Lively.

Among the enthusiastic speakers was Gigi Antoni, President & CEO of Big Thought, the Dallas-based non-profit organization that designed SLANT 45 and will manage the huge service-learning initiative.

Afterward she beamed, “How unbelievably honored Big Thought is to be a part of such a remarkable event. This event was inspiring and exciting and beyond our wildest imagination. These remarkable leaders are putting forward their voices and experience to celebrate that children have the power to change the world.”

The SLANT 45 program, which launches in early 2010, is funded by title sponsor Bank of America and North Texas philanthropists Ted and Shannon Skokos. More than 20,000 children, primarily in Grades 3-5, will contribute more than 45,000 hours to communities all around North Texas.

It’s the children, not only in North Texas but everywhere, who might benefit most from this program.

As Supovitz told the gathering when he took the podium Monday, “The scale of SLANT 45 is as ambitious as it is unprecedented — like the stadium in which we sit and stand today. It is demonstrative of how big thoughts and big hearts can be applied to real change, and real partnerships within the region.

“On behalf of the National Football League, we’re looking forward to the contributions of SLANT 45, and the contributions that all of you will make. And we welcome all of the students and schools about to come off the bench to play their part on this incredible team, working together, to achieve the goals of an entire region.”

And, perhaps in the future, an entire nation.