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I love college football and everything about it. I love watching a good offense, but there is nothing like a strong front line on the defensive side. There is nothing more intimidating to me than having a great front four that doesn’t let anyone advance down the field. They are the rock of their defense — a mighty fortress, so to speak. Nothing can penetrate them when the offense tries to advance. They stand firm. What an awesome sight it is to see nothing cross the line of defense.
He had accepted his dream job as the head football coach in a highly successful school. He had always been successful. He won lots of games and championships in his first few years of coaching and now had just completed his first two losing seasons. He was hearing boos from the public, and his wife could barely take the unending criticism flooding from the stands about her husband.
As a former semi-pro hockey player who has been out of the game for more than a decade, I still like to look back at my career and reflect on the life lessons that my high school hockey coach taught us. One of my favorites was from a speech that went something like this: “Don’t worry about what the other team is doing. Concentrate on what makes you great. Get to the rink early and visualize shooting the puck and passing the puck. Visualize winning the little battles in the corner and coming out with the puck. We can only control our actions and our attitudes. Hockey is a game of mistakes, and if we make fewer mistakes than the other team, we will come up with a win.”
It’s that time again—time for me to dig in and start the countdown to my next competition as a bodybuilder with multiple sclerosis. At 53 years old, I’m a few years older than when I last competed, and it certainly is not getting any easier. But, as He always does, the Lord has stood by me and has allowed me to keep pushing on by encouraging me to battle this disease and win.
My very first day of coaching high school girls’ tennis fell on a hot August afternoon. As our practice was about to end, the only thing left was the distance run. I had my stopwatch ready to call out the time of each player as she finished. I knew this was going to be tough that first day; nobody was in great shape at the end of the summer after too many afternoons spent lying on the couch in air-conditioning.
After our fastest runner crossed the finish line, she immediately turned around to see how far back the other players were and saw one young player far behind everyone else. Without hesitating she sprinted back to that last runner and began to run alongside her for the last leg. Our fastest runner did not want anyone to have to finish last or alone.
Rick Carlisle took over as coach of the Detroit Pistons and went on to become Coach of the Year because he directed his team to the NBA Eastern Conference finals in back-to-back fifty-win seasons. Unfortunately it wasn’t good enough. Carlisle was fired because the management of the Pistons decided to go in a different direction.
Being a sports fan my entire life, I have always watched athletes and paid close attention to the way they conduct themselves on and off the field. In particular I have always watched for humility in these athletes.
To me, I’d always thought humility was most clearly displayed through those who gave their teammates the credit, handed the ball to the official after a touchdown, or celebrated a goal in a respectable way. Lately, however, I’ve realized that this is only the beginning of what true humility means. It’s easy for athletes to appear humble on the surface by doing the aforementioned things when everything is going well, but true humility really occurs in the heart.
Coaches need support just as their teams do. As a result most schools have booster clubs made up of a wide range of people from parents to interested members of the community. Most of the time, club members work sacrificially to help make the school’s athletic programs more effective. Some, however, may become more of a thorn in a coach’s side through expressions of uninformed criticism.
A while back, a friend of mine gave me a small book called "Overcoming Intimidation" by Keith Shealy. After reading the first chapter, I found a new mantra: “Run toward the roar.” This phrase has changed my entire mindset, especially when it comes to my sport of running.
Whenever I am in training for a race, I often experience pre-run anxiety regarding a variety of things—whether or not I'll finish, if I'll have enough energy, if there will be a treadmill available, if there will be rain/wind/snow, if I'll have the speed I need, if I'll get hurt, etc.
In 1998, the Ohio State Buckeyes beat Northwestern 36–10, but personal fouls and unsportsmanlike conduct tainted the win. OSU’s coach at the time, John Cooper, made a point to his number-one ranked team, emphasizing that there is no place in football for trash talking and taunting and that it can be a distraction more than a help. Guard Rob Murphy said, “He got his point across.”
Discussing the numerous flags that were thrown during the game, Cooper demanded that the trash-talk behavior stop. Again Murphy said, “I agree. We need to play more and talk less.”
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