Leadership, poise, charisma and a positive attitude are all desirable traits when recruiting a student-athlete. Marcus “Goodie” Goodloe brought these traits to the University of New Mexico football field along with a calling to facilitate change in the community.
Goodloe, a product of South Central Los Angeles, said he chose to attend UNM in the early 1990s for several of reasons: he would get to see playing time right away for a struggling program, he would get to experience a new culture with plenty of sunshine, and he would get a fresh start to tackle issues dear to him.
“I threw more interceptions than I threw touchdowns. I was probably pulled from games more than I started,” Goodloe said. “But I helped, along with others, to bring about a social change on issues that matter here, and I know that to be true.”
Goodloe said the lack of results he produced on the field was made up for with his ability to produce change to issues regarding gender violence, gender inequality and other social injustice issues.
As a Lobo, Goodloe wasted no time in trying to facilitate change in the New Mexican community. He said human rights have been an area of interest to him since he was a kid, falling asleep to old speeches given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I remember telling people, ‘Yeah, I have memorized some Run DMC, some Grandmaster Flash, some LL Cool J. But I also memorized some MLK,’” he said.
The New Mexico alumnus said the Daily Lobo ran a comic of him, which featured a protest sign that said Goodloe was saving the world yet again, while still a member of the UNM football program. At the time, the Daily Lobo granted Goodloe an editorial every Friday to talk about the social injustices going on in the community.
As a football player, Goodloe was able to learn and lead a group of men to fight for wins on Saturdays. However, that wasn’t enough for the ex-Lobo quarterback.
“Football is a metaphor for the potential of what can happen in life,” Goodloe said. “When a group of people come together for a common cause, they commit themselves to work at it and hone in their individual skills, but then use those skills collectively to produce something.”
Following his football career, Goodloe continued to lead a group at the University of New Mexico. The ex-quarterback had drawn quite the following throughout his student-athlete career, becoming a rare ASUNM president to never have engaged in Greek life.
The former student-president said he was able to overcome not being part of any fraternities because of the noise he made on campus while still a student-athlete, fighting for human rights.
“We didn’t win very many games,” Goodloe said. “But check the scoreboard: we made history.”
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Goodloe helped bring in leaders fighting for social justice to speak at the University in order to raise awareness of major issues going on in the community.
Aside from bringing in high-profile names like Spike Lee and Jesse Jackson to give speeches at UNM, he was also one of three speakers to introduce then presidential candidate Bill Clinton when he came to speak in front of 10,000-plus people, Goodloe said.
In order to leave his own mark, Goodloe recently published a book titled “King Maker,” utilizing Dr. King’s leadership teachings with hope to facilitate a critical view in the world and move society forward. He shared his book with the public for the first time at Bookworks on Rio Grande, just north of Griegos this past Saturday.
Breda Bova, a former special assistant to the dean and academic adviser at the College of Education, assisted in Goodloe’s return to the University of New Mexico, leading him around the University to where he spoke to student-athletes and current students at UNM on Monday night.
“We are very proud of Marcus and all that he has accomplished since he graduated from UNM,” Bova said. “From the time that I spent with him, it is clear that he has impacted many lives and is committed to helping grow the next generation of leaders.”
Although currently residing in Los Angeles with his wife, Lucy, along with his two kids, Hannah and Joshua, Goodloe said he couldn’t imagine starting his book tour anywhere other than Albuquerque, the city that he said shaped who he is today.
Even though he said Albuquerque is far from perfect, Goodloe said the city is capable of facilitating major change.
“We help bring clarity to issues of justice, issues of equality, and we point at issues for which this state and this nation need to advance,” Goodloe said. “... Albuquerque has the potential to be a leading voice on some of these issues, if we can find our way.”
However, the human rights activist said people need to begin to look at what really matters in the society surrounding them in order to overcome the majority of these issues. He said he has taken the lessons of Dr. King to teach people that the issues do not solely focus on race, class or gender; he wants people to focus on the fact that they are human issues.
“The moment you label something black, white, purple, gray, whatever, you have the potential of excluding others,” Goodloe said.
Goodloe said to generate change, priorities need to be addressed across the nation. He said a good starting place would be one that he classifies as one of the greatest cities in the nation: Albuquerque.
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at assistantsports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Liam_CE.
