“Find a way.”

For Merril Hoge, the phrase is far more than three simple words. It’s been his life’s work.

It started when he was 8 years old. Asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, Hoge told people he was going to play in the National Football League. He was mocked.

Find a way.

His rookie year, before his first-ever NFL game, he found himself in the middle of a serious teaching moment from legendary head coach Chuck Noll, who had stopped practice to warn him about not playing to the whistle.

Find a way.

Ten years into his career, he had played in the most consecutive games in NFL history. Yet he was still beating rookies with blazing 4.3-second 40-yard dashes in training camp conditioning drills.

Find a way.

And on Feb. 14, 2003, Hoge got the call nobody should have to answer: it was his doctor, who told Hoge he had a three-pound, malignant tumor in his lower back. Intense chemotherapy was on the way. It wasn’t guaranteed to work.

And what did Hoge’s 9-year-old daughter tell him upon learning about his diagnosis?

“You need to find a way.”

That was Hoge’s message on Sunday, in front of hundreds of youth and high school football coaches, athletic directors, school administrators and key youth football stakeholders, as he was the keynote speaker in the final day of USA Football’s 2017 National Conference At Pro Bowl in Orlando, Fla.

And with all the challenges facing youth football coaches today, Hoge said he hoped the leaders in the room on Sunday would take, at least, one message back to their communities and their teams. You guessed it: find a way.

“You are more knowledgable now, you understand more now on how we must apply it, how we must give it to those kids and create that opportunity and that atmosphere,” Hoge told the coaches, who were wrapping up three days of networking with their peers and learning from some of the best in the profession. “We now are in a proactive position. The most vital components of that, administering that, showing that, sits right here in this room.”

Hoge made his dreams of turning into an 8-year-old Pocatello, Idaho, kid into a National Football League player a reality in 1987, when he became a 10th-round selection of the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he would play from 1987 until 1993 before wrapping up his career in 1994 with the Chicago Bears.

Hoge was simply an iron man during his NFL career, repeatedly rising above the challenges and various nicks and bruises to come ready to play week after week. When it was all said and done, Hoge had become one of the better multi-threat backs in the NFL; he had 3,139 rushing yards and 2,133 career receiving yards, with 34 touchdowns.

But had Hoge not made his dreams known as a boy — had he not pinned up the words “I will play in the NFL” on the cork wall in his bedroom — maybe it would’ve never happened. In high school, he went looking for inspiration from his idol, Walter Payton, but instead came away from this quote from Aristotle after a trip to the library: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Hoge later got the inspiration he was looking for from Payton in the form of his infamous sand hill he used during his brutal training exercises. Asked why — without being the strongest, fastest or biggest — he was the best running back in the NFL, Payton simply replied: “I want it more than they do. Every day of the week.”

“I said, ‘I can do that,’” Hoge said.

Since his retirement, Hoge has taken on a number of roles and responsibilities. While he might be best known for his work as an analyst with ESPN, Hoge has been passionate about many other endeavors, particularly those that affect the lives of children.

After all, after being consumed with the daunting thought of undergoing chemotherapy — as well as the chance that he won’t survive the ordeal — Hoge said it was his own children that inspired him to fight his disease. After just five months, and two rounds of aggressive treatment, he was cancer-free.

Hoge also has a passion for coaching and teaching the game that he’s loved his entire life: football. His work with USA Football helped spark the Heads Up Football initiative, and while it was created a few years back to create a better, safer game, Hoge told the coaches on Sunday that “this game is safer than it has ever been in the 100 years we’ve been playing it.”

His reasoning: the protocol for head trauma; much better equipment and fitting of that equipment; and how the game is taught and structured.

The onus is now on today’s youth coaches — particularly those who took the time to attend this week’s USA Football National Conference — to take the better knowledge they have learned and apply it to their teams.

“I have enormous respect for the people that are sitting in this room. I know the things you have to do and the responsibilities and the challenges,” Hoge said. “We need you. And you being here shows that you came here to be better at your craft. I applaud that.

“We coach the greatest team sport: football. But there is only one team game that trumps that — and that’s life. Life is a team game. And I’m honored that I can be a teammate of yours today,” Hoge continued. “Individually you’re all strong, but collectively in this room we are powerful. And you being here allows you to be stronger as you advance in your career and move on.”

In other words: “Find a way.”