Doug Flutie told New England Tech graduates to stay positive, be creative and find a cause greater than themselves.

Journal photo / Glenn Osmundson

If you are about to graduate from college, what better commencement speaker than Doug Flutie?

If you are about to go out into the world, what better person to hear from than someone who defied every odd there was?

What better person to hear from than someone who went to Boston College because it was the only Division I school that gave him a scholarship and went on to win the Heisman Trophy, arguably the best New England individual sports story we’ve had in the past half-century?

Because if you were to have brought Flutie’s story to a Hollywood studio, you undoubtedly would have been laughed out of the office, told it was too preposterous. Here was this undersized kid from a Boston suburb, in an area that’s never been known for its high school football, and he is going to grow up to win the Heisman Trophy and play professional football for 21 years? Yeah, right.

Or as Flutie told the more than 1,000 graduates of New England Institute of Technology on Sunday in the Convention Center, “I’m living proof that anything’s possible.”

Yes he is.

So there was Flutie the other morning, and he didn’t sugarcoat anything, starting off by telling the graduates in their dark blue gowns that they were about to enter a world that can seem bruised and battered, one where it often seems that we’re all waiting for someone “to throw a Hail Mary and have somebody catch it in the end zone.”

His message was both simple and forthright, all built around the premise that we all can control our lives, even in times when everything can often seem so out of control. We can control our lives by our passion, our attitude, our creativity, and our ability to both work with others and lead them, too.

And what better message than that, whether you’re a college graduate, a high school graduate, or just any of us trying to get by in a world that’s changing and swirling all around us?

So here are five Flutie-isms:

•It’s OK to be scared…

“I was scared stiff when I went to BC,” he said.

Why not?

He was something like the ninth guy on the depth chart, he was coming from Natick High School, not some football powerhouse in some football-rich area, and what were the odds that he was ever going to see the field at Boston College, never mind make his own imprint on it?

“But once you get there and get involved, you realize it’s the same old thing,” he said. “But it’s all right to be scared, because being scared makes you prepared. I played my whole life with a chip on my shoulder, and that probably came from a sense of inferiority. You have to face your fears.”

•You have to be creative…

“If it weren’t for scrambling, making something out of nothing, no one ever would have heard of me,” he said. “Think outside of the box? Burn the box. Or else stand on it and do cartwheels. Do something.”

In short, don’t let people pigeon hole you, and tell you what you’re capable of doing.

Was there anyone who was more creative on a football field than Flutie, always improvising, always doing something that surprised you, always burning the box?

It was the essence of his style, what not only made him great to watch, but gave off the sense that you never were exactly sure what you were going to see, quarterback as jazz musician, quarterback as artist. There have been better quarterbacks for sure. But more fun to watch? That’s another story.

•You can control your attitude…

There are a lot of things in a workplace we can’t control. A lot of things in life we can’t control. But we can control our attitude.

“I always brought passion to what I was doing,” he said. “You have to find something you love and enjoy it.”

Go into any workplace and there are some people who always are looking at their watch, sending out the vibe that they would rather be anywhere else in the world than where they are.

“When you have a positive attitude it’s contagious,” he said.

•Be a leader…

“Leadership is not pointing at people and getting in their face,” he said. “It’s making people feel important, making them feel they are a part of it. Tom Brady is great at this. You need to become a leader and bring people along with you.”

•Hitch your wagon to something greater than yourself ….

Flutie says it took him too long to realize this. Maybe it was the fact that his son has autism, which led his family to start a foundation, something that takes up a lot of his time. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s 46 now, no longer the kid who seemed to have stepped out of the pages of adolescent fiction back there at Boston College in the mid ’80s.

But somewhere along the way he’s come to realize that a well-spent life is more than just accumulating things, more than the house you live in, or the car you drive, or the other obvious ways in which we’ve come to measure success. Somewhere along the way he’s come to realize that life is short, and that it’s relationships that endure, not cheers and other things that float away in the wind.

For Flutie is now more than two decades removed from when he was one of the best New England sports stories ever, but he still has things to say, lessons for all of us.

breynold@projo.com