I was the starting wide receiver for our varsity football team my senior year with a new head football coach. Through the first five games of the season, I was the leading pass receiver in both yards and catches in our combined 10 team league. But I had not played one down of defense.

In that fifth game our starting safety sustained a concussion and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. I knew the doctor would not allow that safety to play in the next game.

The following Monday, before practice, I went to our head football coach and told him I was willing to give up my starting wide receiver position just to get some playing time on defense. His comment back was, “We will see” and then he walked off. My first thought was, ‘That didn’t go very well.’

That Friday night a sophomore started at safety and that made me angry. When the fourth quarter started, the coach called for me and he inserted me into the game at safety. I had a chip on my shoulder and was still angry. As I recall, I only made two tackles in that fourth quarter. Both tackles came against our opponents All-State running back in the open field. That second tackle was right in front of my head coach, near the sideline. When I got up, I looked at our coach, he did not say anything, but had a big smile on his face.

The following Monday before practice got started, the coach said he had an announcement to make. He said, “We are changing our defense this week. We are going to drop our 5-man front and go with a 4-man front and start two safeties. Tim will be starting at strong safety and Dwight will be back also, after his concussion, at free safety.

For the final three games of the year I never left the field. I was starting both ways and was put on every special team. In those three and a quarter games, I finished the season with 19 unassisted tackles and 35 assisted tackles and one fumble returned for a touchdown.

Ten years after that season (yes it took ten years) I wrote a letter to my old head football coach, who lived in another community. I thanked him for listening to me that night before practice and giving me a chance to play some defense and thanked him for being our coach that season. I received a wonderful letter back from him which I still cherish since he has passed away.

My thought for you today is send a real snail mail letter or card to your old football coach and thank him for being your coach. You may not have agreed with everything he did, but he was still your coach.

We were doing the Oklahoma drill in practice. I stepped up to be the ball carrier and my little brother was next in line to be the tackler. The coach made a big deal out of it, being it was going to be brother on brother.

Coach then threw me the ball and I started forward as my little brother moved into the tackle zone. I hit my brother as hard as I could with my left shoulder pad and he landed on his back as I ran over the top of him. As I turned to throw the ball to the coach, the coach said, “That wasn’t very nice.” I said back to the coach, “I am never going to be tackled by him!”

1 Samuel 17:28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”

Can you hear that condescending voice of Eliab? It is the same condescension in my voice about my little brother.

1 Samuel 17:43-44 The Philistine (Goliath) ridiculed David. “Am I a dog that you come after me with a stick?” And he cursed him by his gods. “Come on,” said the Philistine. “I’ll make road kill of you for the buzzards. I’ll turn you into a tasty morsel for the field mice.”

That same condescension I had in my voice for my little brother and Eliab and Goliath had in their comments for David is the same condescension some football teams have for certain teams on their schedule this fall.

Be careful what you think about your opponents this fall. My advice is to take them all as serious competitors no matter what they have done in the past.

1Samuel 17

Several years ago I was told about a grandma who had a couple of grandsons on the team. Grandma would ask when the bus would be leaving town to go to the game. She then would arrive where the bus was loading and bring dozens of cookies to the team.

A few years ago a grandma was talking to me about the basketball games being played at the high school. I asked if she still went to the games since her grandkids had all graduated. She said her and her husband talked about not going anymore, but they liked to watch the kids so much they decided to keep attending. She then said, “We adopted your two girls and went to the games to specifically watch and cheer for them.” She also said, “When your girls graduate, we will adopt a couple more kids to go and watch.”

Since I broadcast games on the radio, people approach me in town and want to talk about the local high school teams. One day another grandma was talking to me about the local teams. I asked her if she still went to the games. She said, “Heavens no, at my age I have no business being out after dark with my bad eyesight, but I listen to the games every Tuesday and Friday night from September through state basketball.” And she also said, “Before every game, I pray for the kids in the games, the coach, the parents and fans who drive to the games.”

Recently, I read a story about when the communists in 1917 took over Russia. They killed most of the priest and nuns and blew up churches to try to convince the people to stay away. The only ones left coming to the few churches left were a few old grandmothers who continued to clean and pray. Lenin said, “That is okay, in a few years, when the grandmothers die, no one will know we had churches in Russia.”

The writer of the story went to Russia shortly before the Berlin wall was torn down, about 70 years after Lenin made his statement on grandmothers. The writer of the article said there were some old grandmothers in the sanctuaries cleaning and praying in the churches they visited. Those grandmothers most likely weren’t even born yet or were little kids when Lenin said what he said about grandmothers.

Faith was somehow being passed on and the flame of Christianity was still burning.

So do you have grandmothers watching over your football team and hanging around your churches planting flowers, cleaning, cooking and praying? If not, you need to recruit some!

Those grandmothers might be just what we need to keep the game of football alive in America. I can just hear grandma now, “Just get on out there and go out for the football team, it was good for your grandpa, your uncles and your Dad and it will be good for you too.”

I just recently watched this interview with Lieutenant General Hal Moore. A part of his life story in 10 minutes is something else. How he got into West Point shows the determination that he had. We all should take a lesson. Rest in peace General, for I am sure you qualified and made the cut.

We see a football player score a touchdown and then kneel down and make the sign of the cross. A baseball player makes the sign of the cross before he steps into the batting box. A basketball player makes the sign of the cross before shooting a free throw. What are they actually doing by making the sign of the cross? This is not just a Roman Catholic thing. I have seen the sign of the cross done in Episcopal, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches. This video I have recently watched explains it all very well.

One hot summer day my brother, our next door neighbor and myself were discussing what we were going to do on this day. Someone said, “Let’s go to the dump.”

The county landfill was about four miles from our neighborhood and we all loved to go there. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure and when we went with our fathers on Saturdays we always took the junk and brought home something.

This was in the days before the landfills were fenced off. There wasn’t even a locked gate and you could go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and no one was ever working out at the landfill, when we would go.

So we rode our bicycles to the dump that summer day. When we got there, the first thing we saw in the dug out area of the dump, where the trash went, was a huge pile of cardboard boxes, with an even bigger pile of wooden pallets right beside the boxes.

We decided to ‘help’ the county, so we piled those wooden pallets on the pile of boxes. We then scrounged around until we found a book of matches and we started the boxes and pallets on fire. (The county in those days would burn everything before they buried the trash.)

After we got the fire going good, we noticed a big pile of car and truck tires on top of the hill over looking the area where the fire was burning. So we went up on the hill and started rolling tires down the hill into the fire. Now we really had a huge fire with great clouds of black smoke filling the sky.

The next thing we noticed, up on that hill, was a pickup coming from town on the dirt road. The pickup was traveling at a high rate of speed. Soon enough that pickup arrived right next to where we were rolling those tires into the fire. We noticed a county works sign on the pickup door as the man got out. The man immediately started yelling, cussing, swearing, screaming and I can still see his angry face in my minds eye. He wanted to know what we thought we were doing. We told him we were helping out the county by burning up all this trash. Our answer just gave him time to catch his breath and he started screaming, cussing and yelling at us to get out of his landfill and never come back!

So we got on our bikes and headed for town. We learned several things that day. Number one was don’t go to the dump without our fathers. Number two, we learned every cuss word known to man. Number three, we had a great story and adventure to tell our friends.

Everyone has a story to tell. Stories have been used throughout the history of mankind. In today’s world are you doing anything that will be a story someday to pass on to your wife, husband, kids and grandkids?

The Bible is a book that it is filled with stories that are fun, sad, inspiring, truthful and disappointing. They were stories told over and over until someone wrote them down on paper.

Why God is Losing to Youth Sports?

Travel Teams and Empty Pews

Youth Sports vs Children Ministry

Your Youth are in a Bad Place

I was getting ready to call a coach for his preseason team information for the Kansas Pregame magazine and was getting excited. This particular coach was coaching three sports at his high school and they had won multiple state championships. I wanted to hear his thoughts on how he did things at his school.

So after we had talked on the phone awhile and I had most of his team information, I asked him about those state championships. He totally surprised me with his answer. He said, “State championships are great, but what my players learned at church youth groups on Wednesday nights was far more important. I said back to the coach, “That sounds like a story, tell me more about this.”

The coach said when he was right out of college and became a head coach he worked his players hard, off season and in season. He said it took seven or eight years before they finally won a state championship.

He also said his wife and him had started a family right after college and it took a dozen years before his own kid was involved in middle school athletics. He then, for the first time, noticed that if the coaches of those middle school sports kept their teams late on Wednesday nights at practice, his own kid couldn’t get to youth group at the church.

So he started thinking about what he was doing as the head coach at his own practices. He was keeping kids late in practices on Wednesday nights causing the same problem for his own players.

He then went to his team and told them he was going to let the players go at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday nights from now on so they could get to youth group at their church. He also wanted the players that were going to youth group to invite their friends that didn’t go to church or youth group to go with them.

He said his players were very happy to get out of practice one day a week early and responded by asking their teammates, which were not church members, to go with them and they did. He then started hearing from parents and youth group leaders and they were all pleased about what he had done.

The coach then said to me, “We still continued to compete for state championships and won a few more.”

1 Timothy 4: 7-8 For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

A friend, who used to play football with us, back in the day, got himself into some trouble peddling drugs at college when he was eighteen years old. He ended up in prison for a few years. After he got out, we had a good visit one night. I asked him, “How was it being in prison?” He never would tell me anything specific, other than it was terrible. He did tell me though, “If I ever do something where the police come to get me, and I know that I will be going back to prison, that will be the day I die, because I am not going back to prison.”

Years later, we met by chance at a gas station up on Interstate 70. I asked him if he was a Christian and had he made peace with his creator, because someday in the future I would like to see him in heaven? My friend said to me, “Yes, I have made peace with my creator, but since I have chosen to live my life like I have, I will be dead a whole lot sooner than you. So when you die, and get to heaven, I will be waiting at the Pearly Gate to welcome you in.”

No matter what we have done, no matter how deep a problem we have ourselves in, God will take us back with open arms. We are the ones that must turn 180 degrees around and stop running from God. Turn and face him today and he will come to meet you.

All of us are in some way, the Prodigal Son or Daughter.

Luke 15: 11-24 A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me. So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.

Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.

So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his slaves, quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found. And they began to celebrate.

A couple of weeks into my sophomore year of high school football, we went to the actual football field to practice special teams. I was assigned to the scout team kick off unit. We lined up and kicked off to the varsity kick return unit.

My position was right next to the kicker. As the return man caught the ball he ran to his right and I kept my eyes on him and closed in ready to make the tackle. Suddenly I was hit, but never saw who hit me and was knocked unconscious. When I came too, a senior was standing over me slapping me in the face saying, “Are you okay?”

I said to the senior, “Where’d you come from?” The senior answered, “I clipped you.” I said, “Why’d you do that?” He answered, “Coach said we had to knock down our assigned guy to block or we wouldn’t be starting Friday night, so screw you sophomore!”

I learned several things that day in practice:

1. There ain’t no referees at practice, so anything goes.
2. Keep your head on a swivel looking around and don’t focus exclusively on the ball carrier.
3. Sophomores were nothing but fresh meat for the varsity to chew up.

My feelings about getting even with this player were always confined to the football practice field during scrimmages. Some of our football players never felt that way. They wanted to get even immediately and then we had wrestling matches or fist fights at practice.

I knew an underclassman that waited four or five years and then found the guy he hated at football practice at the bar, challenged him to a fight and then beat the crap out of the guy.

Here is what the Bible has to say about revenge.

Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

For a young guy full of testosterone this one is hard to live by, but the God of the universe is telling us the best way to live. Which of course we ignore most of the time and do it our own way.