Calling Audibles Part XXI: Thank God for the NCAA
“Here may encouragement be found and relationships strengthened.”
~ from Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community
At the beginning of the 2010 football season UNC played LSU in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl in Atlanta. Looking back on that game I realize the remarkable ways that it set the stage for this tumultuous path we’ve been traveling since then.
In fact, I had a strange experience that night in 2010 riding back to the hotel from the game. I actually wrote about it on my blog way before I had even imagined doing this “Calling Audibles” series. The post, “Providential Symmetry” explored the fact that, even though I was in Atlanta that night, my GPS kept telling me I was in Tennessee. And I wasn’t just anywhere in Tennessee, I was near a graveyard close to Bell Buckle.
As I wrote in that earlier blog post, the strange symmetry was that Bell Buckle was where my husband, John (then a lowly GA just getting started in coaching), went to training camp when he coached at Vanderbilt under Gerry DiNardo. Bell Buckle is where he learned to drink pots of coffee to stay awake with hardly any sleep. Bell Buckle is where he was initiated into the insane work habits of football coaches. It is where he made the choice to gut it out and make this football world his life’s work.
My GPS was putting me back there—near a graveyard, no less. I had an intuition then, and I see it even more clearly now, that something about this way of life we are a part of is in the process of dying. In our death averse culture, that can sound ominous, like there is something to fear. The providential part, however, is that death can be a doorway to birth, to new life, to something life-giving that we can barely imagine.
Now here we are all these months later. The NCAA decision has been finally handed down and the consequences continue to ripple through our lives and so many others. After all these months one could assume that what died was our official connection to the University of North Carolina when they fired all the coaches a few months ago. And one could point to the loss of our family’s life as we had been living it here in Chapel Hill. Indeed, we are still grieving all those layers of loss.
At the same time we grieve the losses we are also seeing more and more of the golden threads of God’s providential offer in it all. This time of change and death is one we share with larger systems and mentalities that need to die. We are caught up in this wave of change that is coming, whether people want it to or not.
Joe Nocera, the New York Times Reporter who has been writing about the injustice of the NCAA’s policies, practices, and procedures, was here in Chapel Hill this week. I had the privilege of two meals with him in which people from several different constituencies were able to talk and to listen to each other–from players to faculty members, from advocates and lawyers to a coach and a theologian. We all shared our experiences, our ideas, our concerns, and our hopes.
The way his visit brought us together and created space for such constructive conversations only confirms that God’s providential symmetry is stitching itself into seismic cultural shifts around things like race, power, and justice. Sport is one arena in which these shifts are happening. And in our broader culture this wave is gathering steam. Some things are going to change; some things are going to die.
In it all I catch glimmers that encourage me to trust life, to trust this unfolding even with all that we have lost.
Under the circumstances it might seem bizarre for me to say I am thankful for the NCAA.
Twenty-one years ago I was named the NCAA Woman of the Year for Centre College and then for the state of Kentucky. I then was named one of the ten national finalists for the NCAA Woman of the Year for the whole country. 1991, the year I received this recognition, was the first year for the NCAA to honor women’s athletics with this award. During this time I learned a great deal about the legacy of women in sports even as my career as a competitive athlete was coming to an end. I saw myself after that as a part of a strong heritage of women who fought for a place in the world of sports. I was thankful then for the NCAA and the money they gave my small college as a result of that honor to support women’s athletics there.
Those gifts of recognition and monetary support to my alma mater are not all that being NCAA Woman of Year gave me. In a very concrete way, the NCAA brought John and me together and helped to start our married life together. John and I had lost touch with each other after meeting in Oxford, England in a summer abroad study program during college. It was John seeing the announcement in USA Today of the ten NCAA Woman of the Year finalists that put us back in touch with each other. And becoming a coach’s wife ushered me into new challenges and opportunities for how I fit into the world of sports.
Now here we are, twenty-one years later, and the NCAA once again is a major factor in creating a moment of truth for me, indeed for us. This time around it is a loss of employment and another move that the NCAA has helped to put into motion.
After careful consideration of the opportunities John had for other jobs, we decided none were the right fit for us right now. For many reasons, some we don’t totally understand even ourselves, we are not ready to move on from Chapel Hill yet. John has decided to take a year off of coaching. And we’ve entered into a time of discernment and prayer about our role in the world of football. We are taking risks to speak out about things that need to change, wrongs we’ve witnessed first hand. We are sticking around Chapel Hill because we care and we believe there are important issues that need attention. We want to be a part of honest conversations about them. And we know that, no matter what, this experience will make us better people and John a better coach.
And our lives and beliefs are being integrated in new and startling ways.
Sharon Lee, mother of UNC fullback Devon Ramsay, whose courage and determination helped to get the wrongs done to Devon by UNC and the NCAA exposed and even reversed (as much as that was possible) was here for Joe Nocera’s visit. She said to me, “I have the NCAA and Holden Thorp to thank for my getting involved in speaking out. If they hadn’t put Devon in the death grip, I wouldn’t have done what I did.”
Her statement points to the golden threads of providential symmetry once again. These golden threads invite us to show up for moments of truth. And so often the seismic shifts of history are birthed from anguish, from the trials of labor pains that spur us to move, to speak, to cry out.
I know that if John hadn’t lost his job and our whole lives hadn’t been turned upside down we may not have been moved to speak out either. If the aftermath had taken us quickly away to another place that we were excited about we would have left so much unsaid, unattended. I would have never started writing “Calling Audibles” and found my voice in a new way in this world of football, this world that so potently effects mine.
We also wouldn’t have had the blessings of several new friendships that this situation has helped to create. Ironically, we now feel more connected with several faculty members and alums at UNC than we ever did while John worked for the University. Because they have reached out to us and we have reached out to them a conversation is growing. And all of us are being grafted into a larger and growing movement about reform in the world of college sports.
We are receiving new ways to do work that we care about like racial justice, economic justice, community transformation, and courageous cross-cultural conversations. More and more space is being cleared for our family and others to walk along Jesus’ way of connection, compassion, and conversion.
From loss comes gain. From death comes new life.
So, the audible here for me in the wake of the NCAA report, after Joe Nocera’s visit, and in the face of a future that is full of more unknowns than I can list, is simple. I am taking a minute to see the gifts, the grace, the healing invitations. I am saying thank God for the NCAA, for Holden Thorp, and for anyone else who pushed this situation to the brink. I still see and protest the wrongs that have been done and the injustices suffered. Even so, my life and the lives of others will somehow, someway be the better for it. Even in the midst of the struggles, the grief, and the loss, encouragement is being found and relationships strengthened.
Thanks be to God for that!
Calling Audibles Part XX: White Out
“If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us”
~1 John 1:8
Living a lie is a well-worn habit for human kind. We human beings tend to avoid hard truths especially when they might mean we have to change. The tenacity of our denial tends to increase the more there is to lose.
I will confess my own shortcoming in the face of all of this football mess here at UNC—anger.
There have been several angry moments during this situation for me. Many have told me that my anger is justified. And I know many, too, who are angry right along with me. Even righteous anger, however, is not from whence I want to speak.
Anger, in and of itself, is not a problem. It is an emotion that can give us some helpful information and lead us to needed change. At the same time anger can become an affliction, a toxic emotion that can diminish our lives if it has too much power. If we give in too much to anger it can distort our vision instead of leading us to life giving change.
Since the Taylor Branch, Bill Friday panel on February 28 at UNC I have struggled anew to find a place that is not angry from which to write.
For days I have prayed, talked, and reflected on the panel. Even while I have attempted to do some writing about this event, I have resisted posting on my blog until now because I sought a more generous space than anger gave me.
With God’s help and with the wisdom of a good friend, Emmett Gill, I have gotten to a place from which to write that is not simply about anger. I have gotten there not because the causes and conditions that gave rise to my anger have changed, but because I feel God’s generosity in the Divine call in all of our lives to speak truth. Emmett suggested that I start with my struggle with anger. Because of that I can see that within the framework of God’s call to tell the truth my anger can be what prods for me to take the risk and speak again, instead of diminishing the opportunity in all of this for new life, new wisdom.
Yes, I am angry. And I also care. And I write from a place of love and respect for many good people involved in the football family at UNC—and from a firm belief that the world can be a better place if we find the courage to speak the truth. It is love and faith then, not simply anger that takes the white of an empty page and fills it in with the testimony my experience.
My writing here is my own personal resistance to the excessive use of WHITE OUT that characterizes the dominant narrative in the world of athletics in Chapel Hill these days.
White Out is, of course, the handy dandy stuff you can buy at Staples that literally replaces your ugly mistakes with a lovely white veneer that is ready and waiting for you to rewrite history in a way that feels better to you. Whiting Out is literally the erasure of a narrative to be replaced with another.
And it just so happens that in this particular situation in Chapel Hill, the White Out of rewriting history also involves the Whiting Out habits of white mentalities. This Whiting Out is the veneer that the mentalities of white privilege, paternalism, and exclusion create. Whiting Out is the hushing of truth that comes from the margins in favor of the norms and narratives of a privileged Whited-Out worldview.
Since it’s basketball season and the Tar Heels are a number one seed, lots of people in the Tar Heel world really don’t want to hear about anything but Carolina blue. But those powdered blue lenses can deceive even the most well-meaning of us to over look the White Out, and see blue skies instead of the gray areas that truth may lead us into.
If you weren’t there at the Taylor Branch panel you missed a telling example of how this University is attempting to deal with what happened with the football program. From where I sat, the event embodied the deep crisis of conscience that has so many of us in its grip right now. We all know that something is very wrong about what happened at UNC with the NCAA and the football program during these last two years. And people of good faith and good intention want to understand and do better. Many want to make changes and live into brighter days. The problem is that there is no official expression of an institutional will to hear and include the diverse voices of those who were most intimately affected by what happened.
The demographic of the panel itself embodies this lack of official institutional will. Three aging white male academics, even with keen insights and stellar experience and expertise, do not an adequate panel on the problems of big time college athletics make. While I appreciate the perspective of each of these accomplished gentlemen, especially the courageous work of Taylor Branch, the true story of what happened at UNC cannot be told without players, coaches, and other involved administrators (like Holden Thorp) at the table.
Maybe Holden Thorp was in the audience, but I didn’t see him anywhere. And I was disappointed not to see him since he was one of the main power brokers in this situation. I was saddened to look up on that stage and see a completely white panel discussing the apparent problems of a phenomenon in our culture that is largely composed of people of color. And it hurt again to hear another official conversation of which so little corresponds with what my family and I and the players we love experienced. I don’t understand why an institution of higher learning that boasts a free exchange of ideas cannot have a more inclusive conversation on these issues?
For integrity to be robust it much be procedural and not simply rhetorical in any institution. UNC has compromised its integrity through its own exclusionary and demeaning procedures ironically set in motion to protect the integrity of the institution. When abuses of power and denial of rights are ignored while rhetoric about the Carolina Way is supposed to make us all feel like the integrity of this place is in tact, the White Out is in full force. What integrity has been preserved when members of this community are simply sacrificed as collateral damage to protect the institution?
The White Out wasn’t just at work in the panel’s racial make-up. Rhetoric from Dr. Bill Friday blaming the football program, the boosters, and the players for threatening the academic integrity of UNC was chilling in its obliviousness. I do not attribute any ill will to Dr. Friday or the faculty who support his viewpoint, but the story they are telling is not reflective of the complicated reality of what actually happened at UNC.
For instance, when my husband, Coach John Shoop, asked a question about how UNC could have better advocated for the players who were involved in the investigation, he received a startlingly confused response from Dr. Friday. Dr. Friday explained that he was not aware of any problems in the way the young men were treated by UNC during the investigation and he wasn’t clear on what the question was. When John rose again to clarify that players had been told not to get attorneys and that they had no advocates in the process, Dr. Friday had no response. Taylor Branch attempted a reply from a more global and anti-NCAA perspective, but with an obviously limited knowledge about what transpired at UNC during the investigation.
There is a growing realization by more and more people that there is an institutional will to White Out major chapters of the story of the last two years of football. A few faculty members have approached John and me, and we have been able to engage in constructive conversations. People tell us over and over that they did not realize all the layers of what was happening. Players who did nothing wrong were punished. They were guilty until proven innocent. Coaches were denied information about what was really going on and were denied opportunities to advocate for players. And, of course, in the end, the coaches who could speak to some of the most disturbing realities of these last two years were fired.
The Whited Out reality is replaced with a narrative that says UNC is “moving on” and the problems have been solved now that the community is rid of the troublemakers. John and I appreciate the many people who have wanted to talk and learn more. We have learned more from them, too. These conversations are a blessed coloring in of a more vivid picture of what happened.
Until white privilege is dealt with in a fearless way on an institutional level there will be more Whiting Out than coloring in. And the destructive and hurtful mentalities of whiteness will persist. And the resulting caricatures of young black men and the football program as interlopers, free-loaders, and trouble makers are also going to continue to find traction in this community.
Until power is shared and the table of conversation is expanded, the false dichotomies between academic integrity and athletic excellence are going to persistently block the strong growth of diverse and transformative communities here.
Until the secrecy and problematic modes of leadership that fueled the way UNC dealt with the NCAA investigation are truly revealed and examined out in the open, the same habits will persist even if new faces and names are put into positions of power.
Individuals do not reform cultures, inclusive communities do.
What could have been a model and revolutionary approach to dealing with the oppressive and destructive patterns in Big Time College Sports instead continues to unfold as an all too familiar story. People with too much to lose don’t often seek the clarity that colors bring. The Whited Out, smaller world works for them. And the rest of us are left believing there will come a day when a Whited Out world gives way to our true colors.
Calling Audibles Part XIX: The Sound of Silence
I’ll admit it, during the last several weeks I lost my stinger about speaking out about the problems of big-time football. I felt like “what’s the point.” I felt silenced by the situation—by our discernment of what we should do next, by the way UNC took John and me and the other coaches’ families out of the conversation, by the fact that I am female and there are those who feel that because of that I should be quiet about football. Truth is, I was enforcing my own silence on these topics.
On Wednesday I participated in the panel discussion at NCCU Law School on Student-Athlete Human Rights moderated by Dr. Emmett Gill, a leader in the movement to secure due process for college student-athletes.
At the panel we talked a lot about silence.
We talked about the disturbing silence from UNC officials about these injustices. As Justice Bob Orr said, “no one in leadership from UNC has stood up and said what happened was wrong.”
We talked about the imposed silence on the players and coaches during the investigation that allowed injustice and untruths to flourish. Former player Deunta Williams talked about how he was told not to talk to anyone and that he was told that he didn’t need a lawyer if he’d done nothing wrong. He talked about how he was never told about the seriousness of what was actually happening.
We talked about the silence imposed on the coaches and the outward threats to his job John received if he spoke out about what was happening. We talked about the secrecy and how no one really knew what was happening. By the time it was clear that power was being abused and rights were being violated, it was too late.
Attorney Noah Huffstetler, who represents Michael McAdoo, talked about the legally capricious procedures of the NCAA. He pointed out that the hyped up language we hear on commercials for the NCAA about how they are there to promote and support student-athletes is the absolute opposite of their practices. When investigations are underway support and advocacy for players is non-existent. Where there was feel good hyperbole about student-athletes, there is only silence.
We talked about the silence of the media on the true stories about so many of these players who did nothing wrong. Radio personality Bomani Jones shared his frustration about the easy caricatures that are portrayed in the news about NCAA investigations all around the country. Media outlets of all stripes remain silent on what really happened here at UNC.
We talked about the silence of white mentalities around the complexities and ambiguities of race in the UNC case. With nothing to go on, it was an easy step for many white people in power to take to believe that a football team of largely young black men was full of cheaters and criminals. Believing someone is guilty until proven innocent allows silence to take the truth captive. And some white people continue to look for ways to deny that race had anything to do with what happened at UNC. So far there is largely silence around the issue of race in this situation.
And we heard about the silence of the NCAA on the rights of players. In the 400+ page NCAA manual there is NOT ONE page that talks about players’ rights.
The sound of silence can be deafening.
The panel was a blessed breaking of so many layers of silence. As Deunta pointed out during the panel, “it feels good to hear others talk about this and get to tell my story.” Hearing that from him gave me a renewed sense of the gift of testimony—even when it is risky to say what you need to say, what you should say out loud. The sound of truth is powerful, liberating, healing.
At the same time, this call to testify is a challenge because being a truth teller doesn’t often win you lots of friends. Jesus showed us that pretty clearly time and time again.
At the end of the panel Dr. Gill asked us “so what can we do?” All of us talked about systemic change, about multi-layered approaches to reform that included the legal system, universities, media, and cultural awareness. And we all agreed to keep talking, to keep telling our stories, to keep telling the truth.
The audible here for me is that the sound of silence that I feel imposed from the outside cannot be what I allow to prevail inside myself. I will continue to speak out about student-athlete human rights even with the risks that doing so involves.
I am thankful that my voice is not the only one speaking out—but I am a part of a growing chorus of people who aren’t afraid to make the sound of silence loud enough to be heard.
Calling Audibles Part XVIII: Bright Lights, Small Shadows
…truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these,
you did not do it to me…
~Matthew 25: 45
My seven year old daughter woke up this morning and said, “It’s Super Bowl Eve!” Indeed it is. And as a football family we are, of course, looking forward to the biggest game of the year, the pinnacle of football’s yearly NFL season. And we are especially excited for players like Hakeem Nicks, who we know from John’s years coaching at UNC. And we’re pulling for friends coaching in the Big Game like Coach Pat Flaherty, who John worked with at the Chicago Bears.
Yes, it’s Super Bowl Eve! So get your chips and dips, your kegs and deviled eggs ready. Get your flat screens warmed up. The big day is almost here!
The energy of such a cultural spectacle is contagious. And it is great to enjoy the game and all the hype that comes with it. But before we get taken in by the bright lights, this year I am taking some time to remember the small shadows that can be forgotten when the bright lights come to town.
There is growing awareness that the Super Bowl generates revenues not just through the normal sources of sales we think of in the hosting city (ticket sales, restaurant and hotel revenues, parking, etc.). The Super Bowl is also prime time for the most sorted business in our world–sex trafficking of children as young as 10 and 11 years old.
The State of Indiana has stepped out in front of this deeply disturbing fact and passed a fast-track law this past Monday to strengthen penalties for human trafficking. And a woman named Theresa Flores, a victim of sex trafficking when she was 15, and her group Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution (S.O.A.P.) are distributing over 30,000 bars of soap to area hotels that have national trafficking hotlines printed on them. Flores uses soap to reach out to victims and witnesses because of her own personal experience. She remembers going into a hotel bathroom as a teenager and trying to get cleaned up with a bar of soap after being auctioned off to the highest bidder and being sexually abused 20 times in one night.
Child sex trafficking is a very lucrative activity in America these days. Awareness about its prevalence (one study estimates 300,000 kids in America are victims of child sex trafficking) is growing, but that growing awareness is not keeping up with increasing demand and increasing profits.
Shared Hope International, a group started by former Congresswoman Linda Smith, has helped to educate the public and advocate for smarter policies and more effective laws to combat this horrible evil in our midst. Even so, finding a way to pay for sex with a child is not hard in this country apparently. One trafficker said to an undercover Shared Hope International investigator, ”If you pay the price you can get what you want, and I can get it for you. Now if you want something really young, that $200, it’s just going to cost you a little bit more than that.”
The sex is cheap and the profits are staggering. Siddharth Kara, a former investment banker who left his lucrative career to become an informed abolitionist of modern day sex slavery sheds light on just how lucrative this business is in today’s world. In his recent interview with Forbes magazine, Kara explains that “Slavery today functions for the same purpose it has throughout history: to maximize profit my minimizing or eliminating the cost of labor.”
Kara says, “Whereas the average slave two centuries ago could generate a 15% to 20% annual return on investment for his or her exploiters, that same ‘ROI’ [Return On Investment] today is several hundred percent per year and over 900% per year for sex trafficking.”
What can we do? Kara asserts in another interview with Columbia magazine that, “Only after understanding how sex trafficking functions, as a profit-driven business, can a more effective abolitionist movement be deployed that will attack the business by dismantling its fundamental premise: the exploitation of a vast supply of potential slaves to meet the demand for ever-greater profits in the worldwide commercial sex industry.”
Football is big business. And it props up a lot of other businesses, too. The bright lights of the Super Bowl spectacle cast these small shadows of children ensnared in a sinister cycle of violence and exploitation. The sex trade wouldn’t be as lucrative if there wasn’t the demand that there is. And the person who wants it could be sitting next to you at the big game or have the hotel room down the hall.
Keep your eyes open, football fans, you are on the front lines tomorrow. The audible to call is yours. Enjoying the game doesn’t mean leaving behind your human decency. Adopt a no harm policy in the fun you have–fun is ok if it does no one harm. And don’t avert your eyes when you see something that doesn’t look right– a young child with an adult who does not appear to be their parent, perhaps inappropriately dressed, and maybe avoiding eye contact. Do not be blinded by the bright lights of the Super Bowl so much so that you miss the small shadows around you.
And when Monday comes, maybe we’ll all have learned something. Maybe our eyes will be better able to see the least of these in our midst in the normal light of everyday.
Calling Audibles Part XVII: Game Plan
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts
~Isaiah 55: 8-9
Lots of people ask me what football coaches do while they are working all those long hours. “What could they possibly be doing in there for all that time?” Early on in our marriage, I use to ask my husband, John, the exact same question periodically. During his years in the NFL the answer was mostly “watching film” and “game planning.” Those elements are there in college football, too, and “talking to recruits” is added to the mix.
If you are anything like me, those explanations still leave some room to wonder about what they could possibly be doing in there for all the hours they work. But several years into this curious profession of my husband’s I quit asking this question. I accepted the reality that football coaching seems to equal long hours, lots of time away from home, and husbands and fathers who are not actively involved in daily family life on any consistent basis.
Truth be told, that was not an easy reality for me to accept. I had always thought I would be in a marriage where we more equally shared the parenting and the household responsibilities. I have a career, too, so I always thought somehow that my career was equally important to John’s. That was my game plan, at least—as close to an equal partnership as possible.
While the last seventeen years of marriage have been a great gift and our marriage is strong by any standards, I realize how unrealistic my expectations were early on in my life as a football coach’s wife. During the twelve years John spent in the NFL he almost never was able to do things like take the kids to school, be at a school function, or be at home when I had an evening meeting or class to teach. During the season my kids could go sometimes weeks without seeing him. I realized once that my son didn’t even know his dad lived with us for a stretch through one season. John got home well after 11pm and left home before 5 am, sometimes more like 4:30 am so to my children’s awareness he never came home.
I remember going to a baby shower for a coach’s wife soon after John and I got married. Another wife was being kind and asking me questions about myself. “Do you have kids?” she asked. “No, not yet,” I said. “Just wait,” she said. “That’s when this life really gets interesting.” Then she proceeded to tell a story about her son when he was a little boy (maybe four), and the doorbell rang. It was her birthday or Valentine’s Day or some occasion for flowers. When the four year old raced to the door and saw the man delivering the flowers, the little boy asked him who sent these flowers. When the deliveryman said they were from “Joe” (which was the name of the boy’s father, the coach), the boy turned to his mom quizzically and said, “What ever happened to Joe?”
She told this story and, of course, the whole room of seasoned wives laughed and shook their heads knowingly. I remember another wife telling me afterward that NFL stands for “No Family Life.” Even with all this sage advice from women who knew the drill, I kept hoping we could find a better way.
Coming to UNC did give us a better way. Even with all of the hours John logged in the office and on the road, our family’s life flourished here. The kids and I could be a part of things. Coach Davis cared about the coaches’ families. We were welcome at the office. We came for family dinner nights. John took the kids to school every Friday morning. My son went and helped his dad at practice twice a week. The kids knew all the players. The life we were able to have here in Chapel Hill is probably as good as it gets when it comes to family life in big time football.
The game plan we had talked about in those times in the NFL when John wanted to be able to be a more involved parent was a reality during our time at UNC. We will always be thankful for our time here and everything Coach Davis and his wife, Tammy, did to make this an atmosphere for families to flourish.
Now we’re looking at the possibility of returning to the NFL. Not many people understand why I wouldn’t be totally excited about that prospect. From a purely football perspective, getting a job in the NFL is a great accomplishment. Lots of people didn’t ever understand why John left the NFL in the first place. While I am working to be open to ways that are not my own and while I want to trust God who works in mysterious ways, I can’t help but have concerns.
From my perspective, life feels a lot like football right now. Sometimes our game plans in life don’t play out like we’d hoped they would. And sometimes there are reversals, turnovers, and penalties that happen to you even when you did not do anything wrong. Sometimes teammates let you down even with their best efforts. And sometimes teammates just don’t do their part. And sometimes the officials stink and make terrible calls that change the outcome of the game. And even with all the preparation, all the good work, all the successful plays you run, you still end up having to drop back and punt.
The audible this time around might come from me, from my family. Maybe there is a more excellent way to inhabit this crazy business my husband loves. Maybe God will make a way where I don’t see one. Either way, I need to be ready. I want to do my part to make the play called one that gives us more gain than loss.
Calling Audibles Part XVI: American Idol(atry)
Strive at first to meditate
Upon the sameness of yourself and others,
In joy and sorrow all are equal
Thus be guardian of all, as of yourself
~Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva
…the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.
~John Calvin, The Institutes
An idol is anything we excessively adore. That something may well be worth our love and affection, but it becomes an idol when that affection gives way to a distorted adoration. Idols become everything—more than they could ever really be. They embody our fantasies, our hopes and dreams. And even more dangerously, idols embody our projections of what we want and need from God.
If the human mind is a forge of idols, big time football is one of the hottest furnaces around turning out new idols at a dizzying pace. This time of year the idol factory is working overtime. Between the coaching carousel, bowl games, and the NFL playoffs idols are turning out faster than we can fall in and out of love with them.
This human tendency to pour all our expectations and hopes into the “next best thing” isn’t confined to football. Politics and Hollywood embody the same dynamic—who is hot today? Who can solve all of our problems? Who can make everything better?
What makes the hyper-productive idol factory of college football a blog-worthy topic is not that it simply exists. The interesting question is why idol making is so robust in a sport that is perhaps the most intensively team oriented sport that there is.
Few sports have the deeply entrenched collective character that football does. The beauty of this game is that so many people work together in an organic and organized way and they can make something exciting happen. A well-orchestrated football play is magical—as if all involved are so deeply connected that they move in perfect harmony, prompted by a secret language that only they understand.
Football is the symphony of the sports world. Basketball is more like a cool jazz band—there’s room for some improv and we enjoy the over the top solos. But, football is nothing if not people coming together to play their part in creating something breathtaking, something that we can’t wait to see unfold.
Even my seven-year old daughter gets the symphonic quality of football. She watches every play of her dad’s football games. She told me one day, “Mom, I know I can probably never play football, but it’s my favorite sport because every play I just can’t wait to see what might happen next.”
So how has this magnificent symphony of team effort become such a factory of individual idols? Why has this symphony of team become the theme song for a seemingly endless string of cult of personality characters?
Football is an American sport, born and bred. It embodies the American mythology of the rugged individual and our “united we stand” mantra. That hybridized character of this game we love is not a bad thing—it’s who we are as Americans. The sharp edge comes in how much we seem to be getting away from the united we stand part of who we are.
Football shows us this trend in Technicolor. The Internet is a breeding ground for our idolatrous tendencies. Cults of personality are googled into existence whether the truth backs up the banter or not. Twitter flashes the names of potential dieties every few seconds and the rate of retweeting determines a person’s iconic traction. Fantasy football has put team loyalty on the back burner in favor of people rooting for individuals and statistics so their own little world can work the way they want it to.
The tragic part of this idol factory is that we will inevitably end up disappointed when our idols fail to deliver, when we discover that they, too, are limited. The destruction wrought by over-zealous egos who buy the hype about themselves unleashes another layer of harm. Lives, careers, families, institutions are all vulnerable to the destruction that idolatry can set into motion. When someone really believes they are the answer to all of our problems, they set themselves and us up for a hard fall. And real people and their real gifts and abilities get lost in the way idolatry blinds us to what is actually around us.
The truth is a head coach or a star player is only as good as the people around him. A great receiver without an accurate quarterback is not that great. An amazing running back without a stout offensive line will not consistently find running room. A head coach without an able staff of assistants will not have long-term success. And a coaching staff and players without the support of their university can be destroyed no matter how willing and able they are to excel.
This statement of our deep connectedness is not rocket science. It’s basic biology. We are systemic beings—we live and breathe the air around us and those who inhabit our lives—whether we like it or not. We are what we eat and who we meet and where we live. We might yearn for there to be that one person who can make everything right. Or we might yearn to have the power to make things the way we want them to be. But we were made for a more complicated way of life, with a different kind of power and possibility than idolatry tells us we have.
Our radical relationality means that no one person can do it all. It even means we can’t feign helplessness when it comes to our relationship with God. God needs us to do our part, too.
Football could be an excellent stage to teach these important lessons of simultaneous humility and responsibility. No one is the answer to all of our problems, and every one of us can be a part of solving those problems. Practicing what it means to live in the kind of world where we need each other and others need us is what we need football to do for us. What we don’t need is something else in the world that tells us lies about what life is all about.
What a horrible distortion that the symphonic nature of football is being drowned out by over-amplified egos. If we could quiet the noise, we may be able to hear how things could change for the better. The audible must come from all of us—those who are idolized and those who do the idolizing. What we need is a shift back to a basic formation—there is no “I” in team. And if we can turn the “me” into “we” then all of us just might end up making something happen that we could have never done alone.
Calling Audibles Part XV: A Sam’s Town and Hotel Casino Christmas
… Mary was about to be delivered… there was no room in the inn… Mary laid her baby in a feeding trough among the sheep and cows… wise men and working men followed a wild star to come and see this baby.
Christmas is a time of paradox and contradiction.
In a world so full of paradox and contradiction, we have tried to turn away from the sharp edges of Christmas. If you believe the commercials, Christmas is about electronics, jewelry, and lots and lots of decorations. Christmas is about getting what you want and giving others what they want—and it is built from the mentality of accumulating more and more stuff.
If you believe the Bible, Christmas is about chilling austerity—God entered the world by way of a tiny helpless baby born far from home with questionable paternity among the dust, straw, and manure of a stable. His first bed doubled as a feeding trough for cows. His mother was a teenager who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. And only a few people even noticed when he came into the world.
Jesus was born in the quiet, in the dark, in and among ambiguities we can barely get our minds around.
For the last four years, there has been plenty of room in the inn for the UNC entourage at Christmas time. We’ve traveled by car, bus, and plane to get to these Christmas destinations. We’re fed well, we are entertained, we get new clothes, we get gifts, and we get attention. Far from the austerity of Jesus’ entry into the world, we have spent Christmas the last few years in the midst of abundance.
This year, however, the paradox of Christmas is far from drowned out by the noise of your typical bowl game experience. This year the contradictions and sharp edges are persistent. The pain and the possibility in it all are impossible to avoid.
We’ve listened to the new AD from UNC tell the VIPs at this bowl what an outstanding coaching staff this is. And we hear all that knowing that this coaching staff has already been dismantled. After this bowl game this outstanding staff is gone. This is an outstanding staff that has been dismissed from duty. Job well done in difficult circumstances has gotten them fired. Sound paradoxical? Sure does feel that way to all of us.
We enter our hotel this year off the quiet streets of Shreveport, LA. The smoke from the casino is overpowering. The blinking lights of the casino flash over a downtown several decades past its prime. Like many southern cities, there are the remnants of a complicated past and a difficult present in the midst of warm hospitality and signs of resilience. The kindness of people is real. The complexities of life in America today are visible. There is happiness and grief in this place. Sound contradictory? Those contradictions are impossible to escape.
We are here with people who we love and care about and we know that our time together is short. After the game tomorrow everything changes. We can’t stop the clock. Nothing anyone says or does will change the bottom line. These players know that. They will work hard to finish this season strong and then they will move on because they have to. And we will do the same. We won’t move on without sadness about saying goodbye; we won’t move on without gratitude for the blessings of these relationships. Sound conflicted? The contradictions are excruciating at times.
Christmas Eve is a sacred time in the life of a Christian. Often at bowls players are taken by bus to places like arcades, movie theaters, and malls to entertain them on this holy night. This year they went bowling.
John and I always find a way to get to a church service with our kids. Any players who wanted to this year could leave the bowling alley and come to church with us. Twenty-six of us went to worship with the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Shreveport. The pastor, Pen Peery (a UNC alum), wore a Tar Heel tie under his robe. The ushers had reserved seats for us in the front of the church.
We heard the magnificent story of the Incarnation, shared communion, and with candles lit in that beautiful sanctuary we sang Silent Night together. I couldn’t help but feel the power of the paradox we all embodied in that moment—a family albeit fractured, believers wondering what this could all mean, and children of God enchanted by a moment that passed all too quickly.
When we got back onto the bus one of the players said, “I really needed that.” Another said, “It feels like we’re a family.” All the way back to Sam’s Town we sang Christmas songs. We laughed and enjoyed each other. What a gift!
When we came back into the hotel we ran into some of the players’ parents and families who had just arrived in Shreveport. They wanted to talk and share their feelings about all that is happening with the football team right now. The tears we shared together were just as real as the joy we had shared with the players on the bus ride home from church.
All of it felt like what is absolutely right about college football. And this situation is being torn apart by what’s wrong with college football.
The paradoxes just keep showing themselves. The contradictions multiply.
Christmas at Sam’s Town Hotel and Casino gives us less and more. And God meets us there with gifts we barely imagined even while we are not getting what we want. We can’t get others what they want either. All of us are asked to trust in a future we can’t see.
A baby born in a barn is more powerful than the mightiest king. God’s abundance comes in an austere moment in time.
No audibles needed here. Today feels like a day to just listen and give thanks for the contradictions.
Merry Sam’s Town Hotel and Casino Christmas.
Calling Audibles Part XIV: Touchdowns for Jesus
What is impossible for us is possible for God. ~Luke 18:27
“Tell John Kasay that God doesn’t care about football. She’s a baseball fan.” This was the witty retort of a minister friend of mine back in the late 1990s when my husband, John, was coaching for the Carolina Panthers. We had lost a big game to Tampa Bay. Kicker John Kasay had missed a field goal that could have won the game in the last few seconds.
When asked about the missed kick in a post game press conference, Kasay suggested that the wind suddenly changed and that God must not have wanted the Panthers to win that day.
Tim Tebow is not the first NFL player to put God at the center of the way he understands and interprets football. Everyone knows that, right?
My husband, John, spent twelve years coaching in the NFL on four different teams. Every team had players who were committed to regular public pronouncements about their Christianity. We saw situations where team chemistry was strengthened by faith and we saw situations where team chemistry was fractured by faith.
In the places where it seemed to divide, faith fed an ethos of exclusion and judgment. With almost 100 players on a football team at different parts of the season, the law of averages tells us that there are people of diverse faiths on every team. But there is a chilling effect on people being “out” about their faith when one way of believing is held up as the only right way.
In the places where faith seemed to strengthen the team, it enhanced everyone’s ability to connect, to persevere, to put things in perspective, and to kindle generosity and compassion. Those were places where there was room for non-conformity to one way of believing.
With all this talk about Tebowing, I am wondering what offends so many about Tebow’s brand of Christianity? What could it be that hits a nerve for us when athletes bring God, or more particularly, Jesus, onto the playing field?
Does it boil down to simply a theological disagreement? When we assert that God has chosen one team over another, we are assuming the God uses God’s power in a particular kind of way. Perhaps it is the suggestion that God would use God’s power in this way that offends.
Because I am a pastor and theologian, people often ask me if it is ok to pray for wins. I say “sure as long as you’re praying for the same team I am.” All kidding aside, I confess, I do pray during football games. On my best days, I am praying for peace, for calm, for good things to unfold. I am praying for the players and the coaches. I am praying for everyone to enjoy, to do their best, and to be safe from injury.
In desperate times and in the heat of the moment, I’ve have prayed for things like touchdowns and wins. Who hasn’t uttered prayers that are theologically inconsistent when the going gets rough?Of course, we all know that God has more important business to attend to than who wins a football game. I don’t personally know Tim Tebow, but my guess is that he would agree. I would add, too, that if God worked in such a mechanistic, puppeteer-like way that God was engineering wins and losses then we would not have children with distended bellies in Africa or war or children who are abused by the adults who are supposed to take care of them.
At the same time, another version of the idea that wins and losses are beneath God that goes something like “I don’t think Jesus gives a crap about football” does not quite cut it either. Jesus’ ministry was much more skillful than that. He didn’t go around saying, “I care about this, but I don’t care about that.” He moved about in the world with an utter immediacy to who and what was in front of him.
I believe that if Jesus were here today in his ministry on this planet that he would make it his business to encounter something that holds our attention and elicits our passion that way football does. I have a feeling that Jesus would be able to inhabit football stadiums much like he would inhabit modern day churches—with compassion, with hard truth, with an offer of healing, and with some parabolic wisdom that would knock your socks off.
With all the ways NFL football players can be almost deified in our culture I would rather see a player who acknowledges that there is a higher power at work in his life than one who makes it all about him. That awareness about our own power and the limits therein can be life-giving.
The issue of power permeates the college game when it comes to how faith takes up space. In college these issues morph from how we feel when players express strong beliefs on a gigantic stage into the ethics of how faith is navigated in settings in which there are power differentials. As troubling as some of the expressions of faith we encountered in the NFL were (like when I got kicked out of the wives’ Bible study for expressing a different interpretation of scripture), the abuses of power that we’ve experienced in the college game are much more problematic.
In college football there are some prevalent streams of Christianity that course through most teams. These particular ways of interpreting and embodying the Christian faith are not problematic in and of themselves. They become problematic when people with more power than the players (e.g. coaches or other staff members in football programs and athletic departments) endorse that particular expression of Christianity and put pressure on the players to adopt it as their own.
When one has more power than someone else in a situation (like the power to effect one’s playing time, scholarship, status as a student), then one must be careful not to abuse that power. If a coach tells a player that he would be playing better if he would accept Jesus as his Savior, that is an abuse of power. If someone addresses the team at a mandatory meeting at a state university and tells them the team will win more games if they all follow Jesus, that is an abuse of power.
Such abuses of power are also an affront to the remarkable ways that God works in and through each of us. Faith is a journey unique to each person. Why does it seem sometimes like religious people have the most trouble trusting that God is at work that way? God doesn’t need us to force our religion on other people. God is working it the way God works. We may be a blessing along to way to someone, but you and I are not the reason someone changes his/her heart. God is.
There is too little tolerance in college football for differences in faith experiences. There is too much tolerance for the ways faith is used to chide players and is enlisted to manufacture team unity. Football teams aren’t that different than churches or any other system made up of people. Insistence on spiritual conformity is going to lead to alienation, hurt, and resentment for some people. There are ways to be faithful that let people have space for their own experience. God is that big!
God is calling audibles all the time—reading where we are and what defenses we have up. God knows how to see us and be responsive in just the ways we need in each of our lives. The audible in big time football could be to let faith be what it is—a powerful force of which humans are not in charge. If a player wants to score touchdowns for Jesus, that’s his call. If God has anything at all to do with football, then the end zone is big enough for all our religious differences, even the ones we don’t completely understand.
Calling Audibles Part XIII: Call It, Run It
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you…” ~Galatians 1:6
Apparently Coach Todd Graham, who left the University of Pittsburgh suddenly this week to become the Head Coach at Arizona State, had a promotional video on the Pitt website while he was still the Head Coach. In it he said that what he loved most about coaching at Pitt was his relationships with the players.
Word has it that Graham didn’t tell his players face to face when he left to take the ASU job. Instead he had an assistant forward a text telling them he had to leave right that minute for his dream job and God bless. The players who have responded in kind have generally not been kind to their erstwhile coach, choosing words like “liar” and “Judas” to express their hurt.
True to form, the Internet chatter has turned white hot with accusations about Todd Graham and others like him. They are hypocrites, the chatter chastises. He only cares about himself, others accuse.
I do not personally know Todd Graham. He may be exactly what people are saying about him. If he is, he isn’t the only football coach with a hyperactive ego and attachment issues. If he is not, he’s not the first football coach to be distorted by the Internet, media outlets, and the general public. I remember hearing one sports radio host in Chicago explain that John was too distracted by the four kids that he had to do a good job for the Bears. We had one 3 year old at the time. But because that was said on the airwaves, all of the sudden everyone believed that we had four kids.
The more interesting dynamic to dig into here, however, is not about media distortion or Internet hyperbole; it is about the nature of coaches’ relationships that matter in big time college football.
A quick list of relationships that matter would include relationships coaches have with their families, with their players, with university administrators, with boosters, with fans, and with the community at large. These are all the relationships that form the bonds that create a strong football program. Ironically, all of these relationships are causalities of many of the normal operating procedures in big time football.
Consider for a moment a player like Nelson Hurst, tight end for the UNC Tar Heels. Nelson went to Mississippi State his first year only for his coach to get fired at the end of the season. The next coach that came in did not really see much of a place for Nelson, so Nelson decided to transfer to UNC where his brother James was being recruited and thought highly of the coaching staff. Nelson redshirted his sophomore year due to NCAA rules for transfers. In 2010 Nelson got to play for Butch Davis and his staff. Then before his junior year Coach Davis got fired. His junior year he played for a different Head Coach in Everett Withers, even though he had the same Offensive Coordinator and the same Tight Ends Coach (Allen Mogridge). Nelson caught a touchdown pass and was an asset to the offense this past season. Now his senior year he will have his fifth Head Coach of his college career and an all new staff. By the way, he’s also had four Athletic Directors during his college career so far, too.
Can such fluid and volatile conditions create and support relationships that matter?
To say that it is difficult is an understatement. To say that it is frustrating and even heartbreaking sometimes is also only a superficial description of a dysfunctional dynamic. Todd Graham’s abrupt departure from the University of Pittsburgh is just a symptom of deep and abiding habits in big time football. Habits like impatience, grasping, short sightedness, and breaking promises are par for the course. These habits are not confined to football by any means. Football embodies much of what American society is like—for good and for ill. In America we often rush to decisions and judgments at the same time we love instant gratification. In football, this leads to decisions made without ample time and without ample and inclusive conversations to take into account the deeper and wider effects of our choices.
Todd Graham is not the only one who has broken promises to people. Presidents and Chancellors do it, too. Athletic directors do it. Recruits do it. Colleagues do it. The way big time college football works, the engines are fueled by such contingencies. Who knows what can happen at any given time? Some would say the pressure and tension created by these dynamics is what motivates the over the top hours that coaches work.
But in the best-case scenarios, the motivation for that kind of work comes from a place other than fear of losing one’s job or grasping for the next best thing. Hopefully more people involved in big time football than not are in it with more noble intentions than what is in it for them. Some passion, some love at the core of all this effort and expense must have a redeeming purpose. For me, it gets back to what is most basic about this work that my husband does—building relationships that matter. Relationships that matter can inspire people to be their best selves. Relationships that matter can inspire people to work for a shared goal and put their own needs aside. Relationships that matter can make a bunch of individuals become a winning team that does things together that no one expected.
I can testify first hand that coaches who really do care about their players do build and maintain relationships that matter. Many times, however, despite their best efforts the relationships are fractured and trivialized by the way this business works.
My seven-year-old daughter is trying to sort out what it means that her Dad will not be coaching at UNC for the Tar Heels next year. She keeps asking where we will go and who will go with us. “Will Bryn go with us?” “What about Gio and Marquise?” She goes down the list of all the players that she knows and loves wondering how these young men fit into our lives now. I tell her that they’ll still be here playing for the Tar Heels. We’ll always love and care about them, Dad just won’t be coaching them the same way anymore.
I wonder what the audible could be in big time football when it comes to how much these habits conspire against relationships that matter. Why is it so difficult for people to believe that football programs are only as strong as the relationships that make them up? Maybe this audible is about not calling an audible at all. Maybe we should get back to something so basic that we’ve forgotten how potent it can be. How about running the play you called? After all, a man is only as good as his word.
Calling Audibles Part XII: Reading Tea Leaves and Twitter Feeds
Chapel Hill is abuzz with predictions that a new football coach is on his way. Twitter feeds suggest possible timetables and scenarios while everyone waits for some official word.
For my family and the other current coaches’ families we pretty much knew this day would come when they fired Butch Davis back in July.
Many people came up to us when they fired Coach Davis and said things like “I’m so glad your husband didn’t get fired and that you all get to stay in Chapel Hill.” It is hard to explain to people that, while John and the other coaches did not get fired when Coach Davis did, firing the Head Coach in this situation simply meant death by a slower means for the assistants. When the Head Coach goes it usually follows that all the assistants go, too. In this situation, since they fired Coach Davis when they did, they needed people to coach the season so we were retained. Everett Withers wasn’t the only one with an “Interim” tag before his name. They could have put that before everyone’s title back in July.
Every game week there were tea leaves to read—how did the team look, what’s the talk around town, do we have a real shot at staying or will they clean house here no matter what?
Now the tea leaves and twitter feeds leave less and less to wonder about when it comes to what’s next.
Just five years ago it was my husband and the other coaches coming to UNC who were creating the same buzz. People were excited about a new stage in Carolina football. We were excited to be here and we were very touched by how kind and supportive everyone was. The coaches have done what they were hired to do at UNC. And there is a lot to feel good about. Even so, as guess work gives way to predictions and predictions give way to rumors, which give way to some new reality, what is unfolding here does not feel good to us now.
One Twitter feed I saw yesterday, written by someone we have done business with in Chapel Hill, read something like “I am sorry to see the current FB staff to go, but I am excited about a new coach and ready for the healing to begin.”
I wonder whose healing gets to begin when the new coach gets here? The players who have dealt with two years of upheaval and uncertainty and now face another season of transition and change—does their healing begin? The coaches who are uprooted and wondering where the next stop is after doing a good job here and serving this university well—does the healing begin for them? The coaches’ families who have friends to part with, houses to sell, and more unknowns to face–does our healing begin?
If there’s one thing I have learned about healing it’s that you don’t do it alone or in a vacuum. If you are healing, but I am not, your healing will always be compromised. We are that connected with each other. The harm that has happened at UNC will not be healed simply by bringing in some new faces. Healing is not a surface dynamic and it doesn’t stop with superficial wounds. Deep healing gets to the places where the real harm has found a home. And it keeps rooting out the offending source of infection and harm until real change occurs. The healing may or may not begin here with a new football coach—it depends on how willing people are to look at the real wounds and the chronic diseases.
I doubt that kind of healing work is something that the “tweeps” and fortune tellers of the world are interested in at this point. The adrenaline rush of a new face, a new day, a new reason to cheer and feel good about their school is enough to keep the twitter feeds feeding and the tea leavers reading.
Between the lines and behind the wonderment of it all, we’re all still here, living in this community albeit for the short term. You might hear about where we’re headed before we do! Just remember not to believe everything you read. The real lives in college football are not reducible to 140 characters or to the rumor mill that rules the internet.
The most important information I got yesterday was not from any tweet or internet rumor. The wisdom I received was from two different players’ fathers—they are the ones who really sent the healing balm our way. More than the twitter feeds and tea leaves, these men spoke from real experience and from lives touched. They reminded us about what’s true and good about the football life. Both of them reached out in their own way to say thank you. Their words mean more to us than anything else we could have received. We came here to be a part of young men’s lives in a way that could make a difference. And we came here to help usher in an exciting new day in UNC football at the same time. The twitter-speak may not be able to put that into words that translate. But these fathers sure did.
As far as the audible for big time football, when it comes to days like this, I am not sure what to call. Whatever the play, we can’t escape the loss.
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