Calling Audibles Part X: Dear Haters–An Open Letter
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you… Do unto others as you would have them do to you. ~Luke 6
Dear Haters,
You don’t know me. And you might prefer not to get to know me. I might be a threat to one of your favorite past times: hating the football coach or player of your choice. Now you also might hate an Athletic Director or maybe even a Chancellor in the case of UNC football’s current situation.
I am pretty sure you know who you are, haters. Just in case, if you answer yes to one of more of these questions, you may indeed be a hater:
- You are a regular user or maybe even creator of a www. fire fill in the blank with a coach’s name .com website
- You boo your own team at games when they do something you don’t like.
- You have cheered when a player has gotten hurt before
- You use Twitter to criticize the coach or player you hate during games
- You participate in internet sports chat using a fake name and talk about the the stupidity of the object of your hate
- You regularly yell about how much you hate fill in the blank in stadiums, sports bars, and/or other places where sports fans gather
- You actually believe deep in your heart that you could do a better job than the object of your hate at their job. OR
- You believe your life would improve in quality if fill in the blank with name of a coach was fired.
The first thing I want to get straight with you, haters, is that I do not hate you.
In fact, I would really like to know more about you. Do you have a family? What kind of work do you do? How long have you been a football fan? What position did you play when you played football? Have you thought about going into coaching? What kinds of things do you enjoy doing? How do you feel when you get home from a football game? Do you tend to be angry at family members, co-workers, or neighbors, too, or is it just football coaches and players? Do you enjoy the hating or do you wish things could be different between you and fill in the blank of the coach/player you hate?
I know some in the football family who simply believe you are nuts. I, myself, believe in your full humanity. And I wish we could interact with each other on that basis.
I do not like hearing your hate, and I do not believe the things you say. You do not define what’s real and what’s not. I know there are those who know better. So, I don’t wish for a way to change your mind. But I do worry about your heart, your health, and your wellbeing.
Hate is poison. Hate is destructive. Being so filled with hate toward anything is like breathing in a little asbestos every day. The little dose won’t kill you, but the cumulative effect can be devastating. Hate literally hurts your heart—and I am talking about your physical heart—the one you are counting on to keep you alive every day. And hate isn’t good for your brain either—the one you need to help you navigate this big, sometimes confusing, always diverse world.
Hatred is a toxic emotion. It comes from a place of mistrust. It comes from a place of hatred itself. Hate breeds more hate. I sometimes wonder what the original source of your hatred is, haters. Have you been so hated? Were you raised on hate? Is there somewhere in the world where you have seen hate be an effective coping strategy? Where did your hate get its traction in your life? From whence does it come?
You should know, haters, that there was a time in my life when you all really use to get to me. I could feel the anger well up in me during football games when I would hear the venom being spewed. And I found myself thinking about all the things I would like to say to you to set you straight. I had statistics to quote. I had stories to tell. I’ll admit, I even had my fists clenched ready to swing a pretty good punch.
It didn’t take long for me to notice how much joy you were taking from me. It didn’t take long for me to realize that getting sucked in to your hatred is a black hole—a place with no substance, with no firm ground, with nothing but a vortex of diminished returns. So, I decided to let you have your hate. I decided to let go of caring about you and your distorted reality.
These days I am in another place I guess. I do not need to set you straight, but I still wish we could all find a better way to be. You see my life’s work is about healing. I have been on a healing path for much of my life. We all are really.
Mine has been a path that has traveled from my own experience of being raped as a teenager. There were many crossroads in my healing journey where I could have taken the road of hate—hate for my perpetrator, hate for all the people who stood by and watched things happen and didn’t help me, hate for a world where people are violent and so very brutal toward each other. As deep as my wounds are from sexual violence, the disease I would contract from turning to hate would be much more deadly.
I thank the loving presence of the Divine One who has walked along with me for keeping me from the ravages of hate. And that same One calls me to tell you, haters, that I bless you. Even when it’s hard, I pray for you. I forgive you for the hurtful things you say about people that I love and care about. And I want you to know that your hate does not define my world. I know the truth—you don’t get to define that for me. And I want you to know that I look forward to the day when your hate does not define your world either.
What if you haters called an audible of your own—what if you tried learning more about the sport you love and the person you hate? What if you stopped yourself the next time you were going to put your hate out there in the world and tried a play you may not have practiced much: enjoy the game and look for something to cheer about even when things are not going your way. That’s a formation that could change the world!
Peace to you,
Marcia
Calling Audibles Part IX: Choose Your Demons
Come out of the man, you unclean spirit! What is your name?
My name is Legion, for we are many. ~Mark 5: 8-9
Getting to know your own demons is a pretty painful process. The man who was controlled by his demons in Mark’s gospel was basically a raging lunatic. He lived in a graveyard. He couldn’t be restrained even with chains. He couldn’t sleep and he spent his time “howling and bruising himself with stones.”
Once the demons were named and acknowledged, they left his body and he was in his right mind again.
Even with how hard it is to live with demons, naming and acknowledging them is even harder. Sometimes it even takes Divine intervention.
That’s one of the reasons we’d rather demonize other people—that keeps all of our own shadows under wraps. The tendency to demonize others—to heap all bad things, all problems of the world, and all the blame for what’s wrong onto a person other than ourselves is a well-worn habit in human life.
And in big time football this demonizing is not just an unfortunate tendency, it is a business plan. The compulsive firing of coaches year in and year out in football embodies this plan of attack—find someone to blame when things go wrong and get rid of them so the problems go away.
In football, there is no job security. Contracts are not job security. For head coaches, contracts may provide some guaranteed income when the gauntlet is lowered. But for most assistants, contracts are getting shorter and shorter assuring that institutions have to make less and less of a commitment to the relationship.
I know that in this day and age football coaches are not the only ones without job security. And they aren’t the only ones to suffer the ill effects of working for companies and institutions that don’t really seem to care about them as people. Many people are living with that kind of pain these days.
Football coaches, however, are in a business that is unapologetically brutal when it comes to the blame game. This sunk in for me in Chicago when I would hear fans cursing John’s name even when the special teams and defense made mistakes on the field. The demonization took on a life of its own. And the blame game had little to no connection to what was actually happening in that organization. In actuality there were deep problems, unhealthy personalities, and people jockeying for control and power. The demons were Legion, and the truth telling capacity of the overall system was severely compromised.
Butch Davis has also been demonized, especially in local media. Somehow he became the object of deep disdain even with all the things he did well. Even if you don’t agree with everything Coach Davis did (and there were times when I didn’t), you have to wonder about the timing of his firing and why it happened the way it did.
Several people have commented to me after Coach Davis was fired that “at least now we can get someone who cares about academics more than football.” I have corrected them each time–Coach Davis was very committed to academics. John and I have seen win at all costs mentalities up close, and Butch Davis does not have that mentality. Even so, the reality of his commitments to academics and to winning the right way gave way to a flood of projected demons onto him. And now that demonization distorts the whole staff that is left. Somehow now everyone is tainted by being a part of the Davis regime.
Demonization is potent—and once it starts, it can seep into even healthy places and find traction. Reality doesn’t matter anymore.
The demons become Legion—so many we can’t count them, so pervasive the truth can get snuffed out.
I guess in the football world there is something comforting about the temporary relief of anxiety that the yearly firings bring. Fears breed obsessions, which breed compulsions that temporarily relieve the anxiety. The compulsions become a quick fix that doesn’t really deal with the root fear itself. The compulsive firing of coaches is a quick fix for the deep-seated fears that institutions have.
What could these fears be? I am sure they are as varied as the institutions themselves. But perhaps they are all a variation on a theme: the fear of insignificance, or worse yet, the fear of disappearing all together.
And what would happen if football disappeared? What would institutions lose?
In big time football, football programs are golden calves because they are cash cows. Fear of losing football equals fear of losing money equals fear of not being able to exist the way institutions have grown accustomed to existing. Put on top of that an increasingly acute sense that there are scarce resources to go around. Then throw in some of the more destructive of human vices like greed, ego-mania, and envy and you have a full fledged systemic pathology on your hands.
So the football world has created these collective compulsions that keep the system living and breathing, but not all together healthy. The anxiety has a partial relief valve when things are about to blow; but the root fears remain in tact and the real demons continue to flourish.
We are at that time of the year now, when things are about to blow. Every year at this time, no matter if a coach is headed to the chopping block or not, the collective anxiety level in football is raised to a fevered pitch. There are very few coaches who are actually enjoying their lives at this time of year. The stress level can be unbearable.
Right now at UNC the coaches have worked hard and done their absolute best to focus on beating Duke this past week (which they did and did well), knowing all the while that what is ahead means profound personal uncertainty. They have done good work these last two years—holding a team together in the midst of many, many upheavals and disappointments. They have served this university well. The community should be proud of them and the things they have accomplished. But stress is high and something has to give. In times like these the norm in football is for demonizing to take people captive–from fans to university officials to even members of staffs themselves. People are looking for people to blame, people to take the fall so deeper issues can be avoided.
And there must be a savior out there who can come and make things feel good again.
The flip side of demonization is how much people want a savior to come and fix everything. So athletic directors and college presidents have to make a splash with a big-name hire and recycle all the expectations heaped on the last coach onto the new coach. Bringing in someone new gives people the false comfort that everything will finally get fixed. Maybe they will be the one to make the demons go away—and we won’t really have to look at our own.
Leadership matters, but it can’t perform miracles unless the collective is ready to name the demons.
The audible here for big time football—not just at UNC, but for every institution who is looking to clean house for a fresh start—is to commit to an exorcism that involves broader systems and not just individuals. Stop using demonization of others as your business plan. Start calling plays that call on the whole system to tell the truth about its demons and find new health and real possibility for change.
What if every big time football program asked itself what its demons’ names are? At UNC the demons may be a lack of hard honesty with itself and an aversion to outside perspectives. At Penn State the demons perhaps involve keeping secrets for some perceived good of the whole. At other places maybe it’s a sense of entitlement, at still others perhaps a culture of deception and backstabbing.
Getting to know your own demons is a painful process, but the alternative is that they control us more and more. If you can open your eyes to what we’re up against, changing the way we play the blame game is the best hope for finding our right minds. “Demons, what are your names? Legion, we are many.”
Calling Audibles Part VIII: Face Time
This Thanksgiving, as every Thanksgiving we’ve spent at UNC, we were blessed to have some of the players at our Thanksgiving table. Devon Ramsay is one of them.
If you don’t know Devon’s story and you are a Tar Heel fan or any fan of college football, you should. He is a fine young man—someone to be proud of, someone to root for, and someone for whom UNC should be thankful. For John and me, Devon is someone who inspires us with his resiliency, his perseverance, and his desire to keep working toward his dreams. And for John and me, Devon is the face of how poorly some of the NCAA investigation has been handled on multiple fronts. We have grieved with and for Devon for two seasons now.
With the way the NCAA investigation of UNC has been handled in various media outlets and even with the way UNC itself has handled the scandal, it is easy to lump together all the players whose names got caught up in the fray. And it’s easy to do that because little to no attention has been paid to some of the individuals who have lost so much when they did nothing wrong. While a player like Marvin Austin, who made obvious bad choices, is the face of the scandal, Devon Ramsay is an almost invisible part of the overall picture. Where is his face time?
Consider just a cursory look at what happened to Devon.
Devon has been a strong student during his time at UNC. He comes from a great family. He has been a great player with very realistic hopes for being a solid NFL player someday. Devon has been a good team member and a good citizen of the UNC community. Devon is an outstanding young man.
Four games into last season he was called into the UNC compliance office because of an email that turned up in the university’s investigation of academic improprieties. The university had decided to go through all emails from Jennifer Wiley, the tutor who is accused of providing improper benefits to some of the players. Early in Devon’s college career he had had a brief email exchange with Jennifer Wiley about a paper. Devon had written the paper himself and asked Jennifer to look over it. Jennifer suggested he move a couple of sentences from the end of the paper to the beginning.
When Devon was called in about this paper, which had been written a least two years prior, he was asked why he wrote certain sentences of the paper the way he did. As can be expected, Devon could not remember every detail about a paper that he had written two years ago. There was no indication that Devon had not written the paper himself, but the university sat him out of games “just in case” he was found to have done something wrong.
Then the agonizing wait ensued. Devon’s case went into the lethargic case pile of this investigation. (I still haven’t heard an explanation of why UNC’s investigation has taken over a year and half and still hasn’t totally been resolved, when cases involving people like Cam Newton seem to get resolved almost over night.)
Devon waited and waited and missed game after game.
Devon was given bad advice—like “just plead guilty and then you’ll be able to get back to playing faster.” Devon’s case stalled out for several reasons that have not been officially acknowledged. The NCAA finally handed down the penalty of “academic fraud” in November 2010 even though the UNC honor council did not even take his case to trial because there was no evidence of any academic impropriety. The NCAA’s penalty was the loss of two years of eligibility. Since Devon only had one year of eligibility remaining after the 2010 season, the NCAA’s penalty was an effective ban from any more college football for him.
For a player good enough to play in the NFL to have lost so much playing time and to have nothing on film for scouts to evaluate severely compromises one’s marketability as a player. Devon’s opportunity cost from this undeserved penalty is high.
With the help of his mother, Sharon, and an attorney, Robert Orr, the NCAA finally reviewed Devon’s case. In the end the NCAA totally reversed their decision in February 2011.
So between UNC’s decision to sit Devon out of games when he had not been proven guilty of any offense to the NCAA’s decision to exact a punishment he did not deserve, Devon missed all but the first four games of the 2010 season. Devon missed the opportunity to help his team win games and to create more film for pro scouts to see.
When Devon was reinstated we were so happy that he would get to play his senior year. We all had renewed hope that he could have a great senior year and that his NFL dreams were well within reach again. Devon worked hard during spring football, during the summer, and during training camp. In fact, Devon is recognized by the coaches as one of the most dedicated, hardest working players on the team.
He started the opening game of the 2011 season at Kenan Stadium only to suffer a season ending injury to his knee during that game. “Injury to insult” about sums up what has happened to Devon.
Since his injury, Devon has been working to recover from surgery and he has been working to find a way to still play football in the future. While at last year’s Thanksgiving table we were praying for the appeal to the NCAA to go in his favor, this year again we are praying that he is granted a 6th year of eligibility. Given the season he missed because of multiple errors by people other than Devon it seems like they owe him one, doesn’t it? Even so, Devon remains in limbo. He’s hoping, but there are no guarantees.
Devon has not given up; still, he has not given up. And he is not angry or bitter, he is not using his energy to complain, but to keep his sights on dreams he’s had for a long, long time. He is trying to do what he needs to do make a sixth year possible—still following advice of UNC officials, still hoping that the NCAA will rule in his favor.
So when you think of the scandal at UNC and you feel tempted to picture criminal players illegally getting jewelry and trips to parties in Miami, don’t forget to think of Devon, too. At the Duke game this Saturday it’s Senior Day. Devon will go through it all “just in case” this is really his last game. He’s not cleared to jog yet in his knee rehab so he’ll simply stand on the field with his position coach, Ken Browning, not quite knowing how to feel about the moment. Will he be back this way again? Or is this really it for him at UNC?
If there is any justice in the world, big time football will call an audible that sets the stage for Devon to have the running room he deserves. And he’ll get face time for making the kinds of plays we know he can.
Calling Audibles Part VII: Black and White
Warning: If you are a white person, this post may contain material that is hazardous to your worldview. Please proceed prayerfully, not fearfully.
The embarrassment I have felt during UNC’s NCAA investigation hit its peak last fall when accusations of academic fraud started coming out. The offense of cheating has always hit a nerve with me, but the prospect that people cheated was not what left me the most horrified.
I have been a part of several stellar academic communities in my life—from the college campus I grew up on, Centre College, to Oxford University to Vanderbilt and Emory and others in between. I was always disturbed by the number of people who seem to have no qualms about cheating on their schoolwork. I’ve been a student on campuses with honor codes and seen and heard about the serial abuse of the code that occurs in these situations. People cheat when they have the opportunity. Not everyone does. I don’t. But, I am not naïve about how rampant cheating is. So, the fact that the honor system at UNC has some weak spots doesn’t shock me. I am troubled by it, but that is not the part of this investigation that has troubled me in the deepest places in my soul.
What hit me in the gut and horrified me the most is the disturbing and destructive ways that race has functioned in this situation. When I opened the Daily Tar Heel one day last fall and saw the mug shot-like pictures of every player who may have done something academically unacceptable right there in black and white, my embarrassment and shame hit its peak.
It hit me then that the players were being treated with the utmost unfairness—guilty until proven innocent. And then it hit me that there was a deeper pathology at work here because every single one of the players pictured was a person of color. Or more specifically in our hyper-racialized American culture, every player pictured was black.
The unconsciousness with which white people live with the ravages of racism is a deeply diseased part of our culture. I have heard several white people during this NCAA saga say, “this has nothing to do with race.” I have heard other comments about how “they” shouldn’t have ever been admitted as students if “they” can’t do the work. I have also heard white people say how disturbed they are with how “they” can’t seem to play by the rules. Nowhere in these accusations and in these racialized stereotypes do white people ever look in the mirror and reflect on how white people benefit from the imprinting a racist mentalities in this country.
Nowhere have I heard the question asked about why it has been so easy for the UNC community and local media to jump to the worst possible conclusions about these players. And I have yet to hear anyone in power own up to the fact that there is an inherent elitism in suggesting that what we need is more and more oversight and more power to punish football players. How can white people collectively miss the racial overtones of all this rhetoric about looking for more ways to make sure we keep young black men in their place?
What’s going on in big time football these days is much, much more complicated than lawless players doing things that are illegal. It’s not so black and white. The problems and disparities are deep and complicated and, yet, we lay as much blame as we can at the feet of the young men who make the football wheels turn in the first place. I don’t think Taylor Branch’s article in “The Atlantic” was overstating the case to use plantation language when it comes to some of the dynamics at work in college football these days. And how can we deal with that disturbing reality if we don’t know how to talk about race in any substantive way as white people.
In the situation at UNC race has been an unspoken elephant in the room. White people in power have tried to soften the overtly racial nature of it all by appealing to things like “academic integrity” and “not lowering our standards.” They have never given any communal energy to what this scandal may be bringing up race-wise for a big state university in the south.
Media outlets repeatedly include lines in their articles about the UNC investigation with language about how many players had to sit out games last season because of the investigation. I have yet to see an article where anyone in power pointed out that some of those players were found to have done nothing wrong. In other words, they missed games and were punished for no reason. And their names and pictures were out for all to see when they were presumed guilty, but you haven’t seen the same spread now that some are cleared of any wrongdoing.
Why was it so easy for everyone to assume the worst and punish these players before we knew all the facts? If you are white and you want to say that race had nothing to do with that, then I want to call your bluff. There is no way to extract race from this situation and say it was simply about other community values that we hold dear. Racism is a part of our every day lives in this country. And our unconscious assumptions profoundly shape how we function.
There were and are deeply embedded assumptions and fears at work in this investigation and its aftermath. It could be a wake up call for all of us if we let it be.
The assumptions are about black students not being able to do the work at a place like UNC. The assumptions have to do with the fact that there is a part of the collective white psyche that says “we” are doing “them” a favor to let them be here in the first place. The assumptions have to do with white mentalities about being right about everything. The assumptions have to do with white attitudes that everything would be and will be fine in our society if “they” just learn how to act like “us.”
And the fear comes in when we realize our world may be changing. What had seemed like black and white is becoming grey. The realities and statistics about black athletes are a conviction of white privilege to be sure. Branch’s article in “The Atlantic” is a must read for all white people. The recent Drexel University study about how many Division I football players live under the poverty line should be more required reading. The imbalance of power and the unfairness are offensive. The unconscious ways that we all enjoy football with little to no critical awareness of whose backs it is built on is disturbing. And the defensive, penal posture of universities and the NCAA around the power dynamics of big time football is looking more and more sinister to me.
In so many ways, sports have been a place where interracial relationships have had a chance to form and be genuine. Sports have been some of the trailblazing spaces for racial integration in this country. But white power structures have failed to attend to the ways that white privilege has fed and formed the way business is conducted in big time football (and I would suggest big time basketball is the same).
The audible here must be complex—no quick fix, no big play that will change the game. The audible here for big time football must be a commitment to the run game—the long-run game.
How can we all work together to tell the truth about the inequalities that have made football so lucrative for universities and the NCAA? How can we be intentional about unearthing the racialized assumptions that exist about the abilities and rights of the mostly black players who play big time college football?
As the wife of an offensive coordinator, I am keenly aware of how much people prefer an exciting passing attack to a gritty, grinding run game. The passing is much more dynamic and pleasing. The run game is slow, deliberate, and incremental. We like instant gratification, not the step-by-step building of a strong foundation.
This long-run audible would be an unselfish play to call: some who have so very much would have to be willing to give some of that up. Like a successful run game, everyone would have to do their part to block, to create running room, to have the backs of those who are doing the work.
What if big time football made a commitment to less glitz, more justice? Less big money for institutions, more fair treatment of players? A less punitive approach to the young men who play the game, and more substantive attention to their real lives and abilities? That sounds like a game plan worth our very best team effort.
Calling Audibles Part VI: Arrested Development
When you watch college football today there is one thing for sure, women will take up space in the spectacle of it in very limited ways. Most, if not all, of the women you will see will be cheerleaders or in beer commercials. There may be a few women reporters on the sidelines–there is only one who ever does play by play (ever)—a tepid attempt the networks are making to have some women around who are not simply “eye candy,” as I heard one sports radio host describe women at football games. If there is one place that football suffers from arrested development, it is around issues of gender. With all the advances that women have made in the larger culture, football is still a man’s game and men wield the power.
Behind the spectacle of big-time football are women like me—coaches’ wives. We fill an almost liminal space in this game. We provide a crucial support system for our husbands and the football programs they work for, but we are largely invisible in that same world and we can exercise what little power we have only in fragmented, behind-the-scenes ways.
I’ve been told countless times that, “it takes a special person to be a coaches’ wife.” What exactly is “special” about coaches’ wives?
Generally the “special” comes from the fact that we wives generally don’t take up much space in the world of football. What makes us special, I guess, is that we can hold down the fort while our husbands work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. We’re special when we don’t complain, when we don’t need much, when we can handle everything from the plumbing and the yard to the children and packing up the house to move. And we’re special when we can hold our family life together with absentee husbands and still attend all the games properly attired and appropriately supportive of the team.
It’s a curious way to be special, isn’t it? Usually special means exceptional—some one who distinguishes herself in a crowd, some one who stands out for what she is able to do. In the case of coaches’ wives, we are asked to be exceptionally invisible, exceptionally low maintenance, and exceptionally suggestible. Many women who live and function outside of football might look at that description of special and wonder if coaches’ wives are exceptionally crazy!
I can honestly say that I do not often feel special because I am a coach’s wife. Mostly I feel restless and ill at ease in such a male-centric world that does not have room for strong, capable women in the main streams of power. My life in the football world is where I feel most like I am not seen for who I really am.
My role as a coaches’ wife is the only thing in my life where I am encouraged by the culture to aim low—as in, keep a low profile. In everything else I have always been encouraged to be my best. As an athlete I was encouraged to win races and break records. As a student I earned awards for good grades and speaking up in class. As an ordained minister I am encouraged to be prophetic and present in difficult situations. As a consultant I am expected to take leadership and be creative. As a theologian I am encouraged to be bold, take risks, and explore uncharted territory. As a writer I am rewarded for speaking from the heart and for finding ways to express hard truths. And in my marriage I am a trusted mutual partner. But as a coach’s wife in the football world I am told to wait, to be quiet on important issues, to pack up my family and say goodbye to friends and jobs and communities without question, and to be as behind the scenes as possible.
When my husband, John, and I were engaged to be married he was told by a coach at an SEC school that is was “good to go on and get your first marriage out of the way.” When John started his career in the NFL I was in a PhD program in Religious Studies, but I was told not to come back to the wives’ Bible study because I suggested women may want more from their marriages than being submissive help mates. When my husband was with the Oakland Raiders I was not even allowed in his office because of my gender.
It is strange to spend so much time in an atmosphere where excellence is encouraged and to realize over and over again that there is an unspoken addendum to that mandate to be excellent: strive for excellence except if you are a coach’s wife.
I’ve tried different strategies for being a good coach’s wife through the years that had some integrity for me—from learning about over and under defenses and screen passes to barely going to any games. Neither approach was realistic. I don’t have time to become an offensive mastermind in football—I have work outside my life in football. And not going to games, and not engaging with John’s job, didn’t feel good either. Those are some of the few points of contact we have during football season. While distancing myself from the football world may be good for my sense of self, I realized that that same distance was not going to help our marriage survive this very stressful life that we lead. Attending games and participating in the world of football is part of my “stay married to the man I love plan.” Being a good coach’s wife, however, is still a strange vocation that I am not sure I am cut out for at all.
When Chancellor Holden Thorp fired Head Coach Butch Davis just a few days before training camp this season it deeply affected my family. We are living in limbo now even though my husband and many other coaches here have done good, even excellent, work. The Chancellor’s decision took a good (albeit complicated) situation and blew it up in our faces. Much of what was good about the program has now been profoundly diminished in its capacity to have a lasting impact. Firing Coach Davis when Chancellor Thorp did was a destructive interruption of the learning and growing that was happening. So, when the firing occurred I could not continue with the waiting, the quiet, the behind the scenes approach that is the preferred mode of operation for coaches’ wives. So I contacted Chancellor Thorp and asked to see him.
Even though I know I have no official standing in the football situation at UNC, football is something I know about and live with more intimately than the Chancellor. And I also understand some things about academia since I, myself, have a PhD and I am the child of two college professors. I have an informed perspective. I also have the conviction that the football world could benefit if women took up a more space in the conversations that matter. My seeking to talk to Chancellor Thorp is the kind of thing I do in my life as a minister, as a theologian, as a mother, and as a writer. And so this time around I decided I am not going to live by different rules in my life as a coach’s wife.
To his credit, when I contacted the Chancellor, he agreed to sit down with me. My words didn’t mean much in any official way—and they certainly didn’t do anything to change the situation. But maybe no one else had told him the things I told him. Maybe he came to understand some things in a new way. I can’t control what he does with our conversation, but I needed to be seen as a full person by the one with the power to change the course of my life.
I know me going to the Chancellor is frowned upon by many men in the football world. It doesn’t take much for word to get around that people disapprove of the way you do things. It may even be that it somehow hurts John’s reputation that he has a wife who speaks up about things. That prospect, of hurting him professionally, is one of the reasons I have kept quiet so long. But in the bigger picture, he married me for who I am, not for some voiceless cardboard cutout of what a coach’s wife is supposed to be.
I have yet to meet a coach’s wife who is one of those cardboard cutouts. We all have to figure out how to live this life, stay sane, and be able to look at ourselves in the mirror. That’s what makes us special—maybe someday that will be the kind of special we can freely be.
What would happen if big time football opened its eyes to who women really are in our culture? We are strong, capable, creative, relational people who’ve seen and lived lots of things. We make things work, we improvise, we support, we listen, we respond, and we can actually make things happen if you give us some room to be ourselves. What if the audible big time football called around gender was to simply catch up with the times? The offense of the same old plays becomes more and more acute as the world continues to out grow male-dominated power structures. Seeing this arrested development for what it is means football might be due for a serious growth spurt soon!
Calling Audibles Part V: The Agony of Defeat
The Agony of Defeat–On the way home from Virginia Tech
Crisp fall afternoons
repetition, one more time
details, instincts, well worn paths
routes
putting the pieces together
of a winning combination
step by step
moving toward the present goal
careful attention
solid determination
confidence builds
coming into its own
in time for the flurry
the buzz of a night
with lights blazing
and expectations high
don’t lose sight
or hope
don’t forget the process
the steps
the feeling those steps
have
you can do this
one step at a time
stay focused
don’t flinch
breathe and move
in concert with the ways
you’ve come to know
by heart
even so
yes, still, with all the
practice
and know-how
with your heart so fully
open to the possibility
that this can be your moment
this could be the day
even so
unraveled moments
and lost connections
jarred bodies
and aching bones
the thrill of what might have been
gives way to the hard thud
of
what is
over
vacant
time gone
energy retracts
and disapproval looms
and not another
place to find
to set yourself in motion
no longer in sync with a dream
now you waken
in your exhaustion
and realize
all over
again
the bitter way
those fall afternoons
suddenly
seem
so utterly incomplete
that is the agony of defeat
Calling Audibles Part IV: Fan-Wise
Teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise. ~Psalm 90:12
“It’s only a game.” This statement of seemingly obvious fact is what people often say to me when they are musing over why people care so much about football.
The sentiment behind this statement is one of exasperation, judgment, and desired diminution. Football needs to get back to its proper place—to a game, a hobby, a past time that doesn’t carry with it the most important and profound parts of life. And the feeling is that those who make it more than a game are misguided, deluded, and in need of a reality check.
For us and for other football families, football is not just a game. It’s my husband’s job and it determines where we live, who our friends are, how people treat us, even whether people talk to us or not. Football has moved my family from Nashville, to Charlotte, to Chicago, to Tampa, to Oakland, and to Chapel Hill. It has brought us great joy, blessed opportunities, and it has at times broken our hearts. Football means 16-18 hour workdays for most coaches each day. Football means working on Thanksgiving, Christmas lots of times, too. I think most people can understand why football is not just a game for my family and for others who have made football their life’s work.
That “it’s only a game” pronouncement must really be about the fans: the people who live and die with their teams, who travel far and near, who build their weekends, their decorating, their wardrobe, their social life around the team they love. Why do they care so much? Why does it matter to them so very much?
At the university level of sports I see a love/hate relationship with fans. On the one hand, the university loves their fans and wants to make them happy. University fanaticism can carry with it the loyalty of generations and genuine gratitude toward an institution of higher learning for how it shaped and molded many of its most ardent supporters. Without fans there is no big time football.
There is also a disdain toward fans at their extreme. More than simply “irrational exuberance” or excess, football fanaticism can feel dangerous. Just look at what happened at Penn State after Paterno was fired. At gatherings there since, armed police have been present. That’s not the kind of fans we want our school’s fans to be. Jumbotrons in stadiums everywhere preach the gospel of taking the high road of sportsmanship and respect.
The difficulty with this love/hate relationship is that universities want and need these to be long-term relationships. What do you do to live with this off the graph, dangerous side of the ones you love? Why do people care so much that they become rude, unruly, insulting, even violent?
Through the years I have pondered those questions at a gut level. I wondered about it when we received death threats in Chicago. I wondered about it every time we got cursed at in restaurants. I pondered it when I had to start wearing head phones and listen to gospel music during games because I got tired of listening to how many ways my husband needed to die and/or go to hell or both. I’ve explored it when some parishioners in the churches I’ve served are more passionate about their questions about the team my husband coaches for than they are about their passion for God or about their faith. I’ve thought about it when I read statistics about elevated levels of domestic abuse for people whose teams lose. I’ve wondered about it when I have seen whole cities turn against people or root for people depending on how they are performing.
It is equally unsettling for us when we see how quickly fans can turn from vitriol to hyperbolic praise. My husband can literally be an offensive genius one minute and the biggest idiot in the world the next. I’ve learned not to listen to either extreme, but it sure can make real, trusting relationships hard to come by. Are people your friends because they love the team? When things go wrong will they turn on you? Do people really care about you and your family? Is their kindness genuine? We are blessed with many good friends, but we always have to be intentional about who and how we trust.
It is a wonder, isn’t it? People who are otherwise polite, polished, moderated adults can enter emotional abandon at the drop of a pass. Therein lies some of the mystery and importance of why football (and other sports for that matter) is not just a game for many people. Obviously it is feeding us in a place we are hungry, scratching an itch, filling a void that we desperately need filled.
Today I am headed up to VA Tech for the UNC game. I will pray and breathe and get centered on my way up there. Who knows what will happen! I could experience elation, excitement, and joy. I could leave with a soaring good feeling. Or I may encounter deep and painful disappointment and sadness. Either way I try not to get angry or sucked in by any of the comments I hear being made around me—good or bad. I do get angry sometimes—especially at the officials, but I have learned through the years that it doesn’t feel good to let football turn me into someone I don’t want to be—angry, distrustful, cynical, or mean-spirited. So, I let myself feel the sadness and the joy—but I work to not attach to the anger and hostility.
And when I feel myself practicing this art of being present but not attaching to toxic emotions like anger and cynicism, I realize that I am practicing being the kind of person I want to be in the rest of my life. Maybe that’s why football has such a hold on so many—it’s a place where we practice life. Can we defeat the enemy? Are we strong enough to work through pain? Will we be ready when the big play comes our way? Will things work out the way we dream of? And can we persevere when things don’t?
At football games we get to cheer for the people who make us happy at the top of our lungs. We can yell at those who make us mad. And we can scold those who don’t do their jobs or who disappoint and frustrate us. At football games we can jump up and down, dance, sing, put our arms around total strangers, and feel connection and community with thousands of people. We know whose on our side and whose not—it’s as simple as the jersey color on the field.
And we can take a good hard look at our shadows—life is dangerous, life is brutal, life is full of people who don’t play fair, and the wicked sometimes prosper. Nowhere else in life (past the age of 2 or so) are we authorized to express these full-bodied emotions about and reactions to the way life is. We can’t do it in our jobs, in our families, in our churches, in our politics—at least not without being labeled as deranged.
Football isn’t just a game—that should be obvious to everyone in this country at this point. Embracing that fact for big time college football programs is not their normal mode of operation. The hallowed halls of academic conversation and higher learning are not supposed to be consorting with fanatics. At the same time, universities know how lucrative this relationship is. So they keep up the love affair even though they do not know how to feel all the way good and settled with it.
I don’t think anyone, including the Roman Empire, has ever figured out how to let the coliseum be the powerful force that it is without it becoming a deeply distorting force in society. In American society we’ve got this tiger by the tail on the campuses of the places where our best minds are teaching and learning. How can we harness the power for some redemptive cause? And I am not just talking about raising money for charities or bringing cans for a food drive.
Universities are supposed to be about the business of making the world a better place through the light of learning. Surely there is a lot to learn from this burning source of energy and passion that exists adjacent to our laboratories, libraries, and lecture halls.
Calling an audible in big time football when it comes to the fans will have to be a trick play—something that no one expects and that defies all the patterns we’ve shown before. What if big time football programs engaged in a time a moral reflection about how we can collectively make this relationship between fans and universities an honest one? Let’s bring the relationship out into the light and own up to our love for each other and the complications and pitfalls therein. What better pathway could we find to insights about our societal conscience and desires than this game that captures the hearts of so very many?
The passion in the relationships between fans and their teams can tell us a lot about ourselves—shadows and light. The healthiest relationships do just that—we call those couples “soul mates.” And maybe, just maybe, the truth is that football touches us there, in the hungriest places in our souls. Trick plays catch us off guard–like when new light comes to us from the shadows, even fan-wise.
Calling Audibles Part III: The Winning Edge
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ~Colossians 3:14
During the twelve years that my husband, John, coached in the NFL he coached some great players and we met some wonderful people. While leaving the highest levels of the game is a hard thing to do in a competitive business like football, John made a choice to go back to college football because of what got him into coaching in the first place.
When I met him in Oxford, England while we were both in college he was deciding what to do with his life. We became good friends because we were both athletes and religion majors and trying to sort out what was next after college.
During all these 20+ years of coaching for John in the NFL and college, I have never forgotten the comment he made to me when we first met about why he was leaning toward going into coaching instead of church ministry. He said that when he looked back on his life so far that the people who had been the most formative for him other than his parents were his coaches, not his ministers.
Interestingly enough, even though I went into ministry myself, I totally agree with John’s assessment. My coaches remain some of the most important people in my life. They are like other-fathers to me and they did help me figure out who I am. They not only pushed me and made me a better and better runner, but they made me a better person.
My cross-country coach in college, Dick Burchett, started every practice by saying “today I hope you will become a better person first, and then a better runner.” I ran at a Division III college so many may say that we had that luxury—the luxury of the love of the sport and the luxury of character formation. We didn’t have the pressure of the money and of the stiff competition and intense expectations for high performance. There was space for some things at a Division III school that seems hard to find in Division I athletics, at least these days.
But maybe the art of coaching as character building, as relationship making, as caring, mentoring, and helping to mold young men is some of what we’ve lost and desperately need to reclaim in big time football.
It seems to me there are a few different models for who coaches are and what they do at this level of the game.
First, there is the CEO model. Coaches are big names with big money and they are the “face of the program.” They hire assistants to see to the more player-centered work and the x’s and o’s. The CEO head coach is focused on raising money, building a program, creating an image, and marketing a “product.” They are vision people and they are big personalities that people invest in. This approach is the most popular model for big time schools these days. They want big names, big plans, and big money will follow. There are people who follow this model who do it professionally and who do it well. And there are people who get lost in the ego trip and do not do it well. And there are those in between who have some of both and bring some good things and some disturbing things along with them.
A second model is the X and O model. These coaches are great football minds, technicians of the game. They are not about people; they may even be a little socially awkward. But they know the game of football and people put up with their idiosyncrasies because of their technical skill. Rarely do these technicians of the game become head coaches in college any more, but some do. Their hyper focus on the details is extreme and they help create highly skilled players. Their attention to detail can create great success and their eccentricities are excused because of their knowledge of the game.
A third model is the Player’s Coach. Just like the other models, this one brings with it both good and bad connotations. These coaches are involved in their players’ lives and focus on taking good care of their players. At its extreme, this approach can mean working to secure special privileges for the players so much that some players become exceptions to rules. In its more moderated form it is about making sure the players are respected and treated well.
As the coaching carousel revs up for this year, schools will be setting their sites on these types of coaches as well as on names and personalities. Many schools will be looking for the silver bullet, the savior to come and redeem their program, the ultimate captain to right an errant ship.
The audible to call in this yearly ritual of big time football is to stop looking at “the who” and “the what” and “the how”, and do a gut check about “the why”—why do coaches do what they do? What if the winning edge is really in the why?
I think many coaches might say that their most important work is invisible—not able to be quantified with statistics or records, not on video highlights or on ESPN. Coaches who do what they do out of love, out of a higher calling than salaries or ego-trips or fame, do their best work in the ordinary parts of their long days at work. They do their best work in their availability for conversation, in their attentiveness to a player who might need some extra support or push, in their belief that respect and hard work matter, in some extra time they take to focus on an unexpected problem.
The cold hard truth is that the way big time football works means that the little, invisible, ordinary things coaches do that make a difference in young men’s lives don’t help coaches get or keep jobs. There is a bottom line—wins and losses. And we’ve learned at UNC this year that even having more wins than losses doesn’t give you job security any more.
There are few professional courtesies left in big-time football. And there are even fewer ways that institutions give coaches to build lasting, substantive relationships. If coaches are constantly worried about getting fired they are not as free to do the kind of work that can really make a difference in people’s lives. If coaches can’t trust that the university they work for truly values them as a part of the community, then it keeps them from investing themselves in the deeper problems of that community.
Our own experience has been that some of the best coaching John and his colleagues have done has been lost in the shuffle of the things that really fuel the engine of big time football—money and power—these are things most coaches and all players do not have much if any access to in this business.
What if in this year’s coaching changes universities did a gut check of their own instead of calling the same long bomb down field? What if they see what they are truly up against today in big time football and choose to go back to the heart of what football at its best can be?
Teaching, nurturing, and helping to form young men in our culture who know how to work hard, be respectful, take care of themselves and others, and do things not simply for their own interest but for the interest of a greater good are values we can all surely agree are of the upmost importance in our society today. If a young man can arrive at football practice and know that the people there leading him care that he is becoming a better person first and then a better football player, I say we all win.
Calling Audibles Part II: Seeing Right Through
It is better—much better—to have wisdom and knowledge than gold and silver.~Proverbs 16:16
Driving home from vacation this summer my husband John and I talked about him returning to work on the UNC football staff. It had been just over a year since problems with the program came to light due to the NCAA investigation over improper benefits and academic fraud.
The football season that was behind us had been uniquely stressful and sad for many at UNC. The coaches and players worked hard to do the right thing, to learn, and to come together as a team. It was an uphill battle; and there was a lot to feel good about that the players and coaches had been able to accomplish in spite of and because of all that had happened.
The season ahead promised to be a time of recovery as we both anticipated and appreciated that many people were taking steps to address the problems unearthed in the investigation.
John specifically commented on how thankful he was to work at a university that he thought really wanted to get to the bottom of what went wrong. He said how good it felt to respect the institution for which he works so hard.
Little did we know at the time that Head Coach Butch Davis would be fired just a few days later. After the Chancellor fired Coach Davis, what had been a difficult situation became close to impossible. And we are now coming toward the end of an even harder season than the one before. Being blindsided just a few days before a season begins brought layers and layers of conflict and challenge to the people who work hard for this team and who have done nothing wrong. It has been especially heartbreaking for those of us who love these players and respect the young men that they are becoming.
Chancellor Thorpe explained in the media and to me personally that he needed to fire Coach Davis to restore the integrity of UNC. And I hear that word, “integrity,” getting used a lot by the powers that be at places like Penn State, Ohio State, and Miami. They fire people, declare war on cheaters, chastise agents, and punish aberrant players in order to restore integrity.
Honestly I have gotten to a point where I am not sure what “integrity” means to anyone anymore—especially when it comes to how big-time football programs are created and how they function.
Let’s take a minute to remind ourselves of the technical definition of integrity. Merriam-Webster defines it as: “the firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values.” It lists synonyms: incorruptibility, soundness, virtue, and uprightness. Integrity is the absence of division within ourselves and/or within an institution. Integrity means being “complete” or “undivided.”
If we’re honest, do we really think that institutions of higher learning with big time football programs have really ever been “undivided”? Can an institution be undivided if it has both a commitment to academic virtue and a money source that thrives most robustly from loyalties kindled by fanaticism? Can a university truly be incorruptible if they are beholden to any one funding source that has the power to be an exception to even one standard or rule? Is integrity possible when a university has an even perceived divide between athletics and academics, between the pursuit of “wisdom and knowledge” and the pursuit of “gold and silver”?
The quest to preserve and/or reclaim integrity at the schools with the most recent football unrest usually involves talk about tightening standards, closer regulation, and more consistent enforcement. I have yet to hear anyone say that this quest to reclaim integrity will include universities coming clean about the complexities and ambiguities of being a “house divided.”
I, myself, believe football can be a part of a healthy university community. I also believe football can be a part of a community that has real integrity. But for those dynamics to be a reality, those in power in the universities must come clean about the broader constellation of values that define their institutions instead of thinking the rest of us with be satisfied when they use an abused word like “integrity.”
Integrity means nothing if we are not clear on what values we are adhering to, if we don’t have clarity about the things we will not compromise on in our institutions of higher learning. At UNC people talk a lot about “the Carolina Way.” Before this fall I gathered that the Carolina Way had to do with being excellent in athletics without compromising high standards of character like honesty, respect, equity, hard work, and caring for others.
As the fall has unfolded it has been harder and harder for me to figure out how a commitment to restored integrity is what’s driving this and other universities with big time sports to fix their problems. Communication has been poor. Relationships have not been defined by mutual regard. Hard work doesn’t count for much. And the values of equity and honesty seem far away from the patterns at work in addressing problems.
The audible to call at this point in the imploding of big time football is not to call the same old play. Don’t expect us to fall in line with this worn out word, “integrity,” that has frankly lost (or never had) its own integrity in the complicated and conflicted contours of big time sports.
The audible to call is to tell us—the coaches, their families, the players, the fans, the faculties, and the public that you will give us transparency.
Transparency is where substantive honesty, hard work, and caring for others comes. I would not expect that transparency would reveal an undivided, untroubled reality. Ambiguity is the nature of so much of human life. The complexity and ambiguity are not going to go away with more rules, more regulations, more firings, more punishments.
The gift of transparency is the space it creates for us to find real integrity–the kind that comes from the ground up and not from the top down, the kind that comes from people and not from rhetoric. Transparency will show us who we really are. What redemption could come if all of us could be honest with ourselves and each other about how this sport, that elicits such profound passion in so many, might actually find an untroubled home in our hearts.
Calling Audibles Part I: “Sudden Destruction”
When they say
“There is peace and security,”
then suddenly destruction
will come upon them,
as labor pains upon
a pregnant woman,
and there will be no escape.
~1 Thessalonians 5:3
The Defensive Coordinator at a place that plays blue-collar/smash mouth football like Penn State surely appears heroic. Jerry Sandusky’s “Linebacker U” defense was known for its strength and dominance.
There were also simultaneously whispers around college football that Jerry and his “Second Mile” charity were less than heroic. Now that the scandal at Penn State is out and heads are rolling, people are comparing notes on the things they had heard through the years about Sandusky’s abhorrent patterns of child sexual abuse.
Now we know that there were people who knew more than whispers and rumors—we know there were witnesses and that they included some of his co-workers, even police who heard Sandusky himself admit that he showered with ten year olds. Sandusky told a mother who confronted him about showering with her son with the police hiding in the other room, “I wish I were dead.” (NPR, “All Thing Considered” on 11/11/11).
What is more tragic, a man who serially destroyed the lives of young boys he said he wanted to help or all the people who knew and even saw what he was doing and let it continue? As a survivor of sexual violence myself I can say that all involved are in the grip of deep demonic distortions that leave the victims forever diminished in their ability to be fully alive. Candle light vigils are small consolation for the years of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, isolation, depression, anger and deep woundedness that victims of sexual abuse suffer—especially when the abuse is suffered during childhood. There is no way to make this right—even if Sandusky gets his due from the justice system.
People wonder how a place like Happy Valley, with a Coach like Joe Paterno, could be a place where these horrific things could happen.
When the students rioted it surely wasn’t just about losing JoePa. They were losing much more than that—they were losing their good feelings about a place they had trusted, they were losing people who helped their lives make sense, people who gave them dreams to dream. They were losing a whole sense of purpose and place. They thought they had “peace and security” in a place like Happy Valley, then “suddenly destruction will come upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape.” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).
They didn’t want to think that such a horrible thing could happen in their house, in their family, under the watch of the one they revered and respected. It is a chilling reality to face when we realize the banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt described it during the Nazi trials after World War II. When evil looks like us we want to somehow otherize it and somehow deny it is real. We want to go back to the way things were before we knew the truths that tell us we might need to change ourselves, too. It is easier if evil comes from monsters, from people who look different than we do, from those who live on the margins.
But the crumbling has gained momentum and there is nothing that can stop it now.
Indeed in all of college football a tide is gaining strength that is uncovering abuses and excesses of all types. And this tide toward revealing corruption is all around us in the larger world—things are not going to be the same again. Those who have suffered from the abuses, the excesses, and the inequities are gaining strength from hearing the voices of others who are saying “no more.”
If we really want to learn something from this tragedy, we’ll learn that concentrations of unchecked power, hierarchies that rest untouchable and beyond reproach, institutions that are “too big to fail,” and cults of personality create conditions for disasters like the one at Penn State. The audible for the football world to call has to do with learning new skills that involve how to share power and how to embrace dissonant voices so that we can hear and heed hard truths.
The “sudden destruction” that has taken hold in college football these days has actually been a long time coming. And like a woman gripped in labor whose best bet is to surrender to the labor pains and breathe, our sports-loving society could do well to accept that something old has to die so that something new can be born. And hopefully things will never be the same again.
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