CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…
©
As I watched the Florida State-Notre Dame football game
last night, I thought of all the problems FSU has had with star quarterback,
Jamies Winston [charges of shoplifting, rape, and public obscenity] and of
FSU’s history of such players. That sort of thing didn’t happen under Coach
Darrel Mudra.
He had been fired at Florida State after only two years, for
not winning enough games fast enough, even though he won more his second year
than his first. Eastern Illinois University was glad to pick him up.
The year before, the EIU panthers had won only one game.
In Mudra’s first year, they won the national championship.
His career record was 200-81-4, 70.9 %. He’s in the
national football hall of fame. His nickname is “Dr. Victory.” His expertise
and reputation were in taking long-time losing programs and turning them into
winners. That’s why FSU hired him. Despite all that, FSU gave Mudra only two
years to turn their floundering program around.
Bobby Bowden, who succeeded Mudra at FSU, has said that
it was Mudra who really turned FSU football around and made it possible for him
to win.
Mark Dantonio, the hugely successful coach at Michigan
State U, says that there is no secret to football success. “You recruit one
good young man at a time. You help them become better persons, academically,
socially, relationally. As they become better persons, they become better
players.”
It takes more than two years to turn good young men into
better young men. It takes even longer to take young men who have never been
expected to be good and get them to see that being a good football player is
not as important as being a good person.
It takes a long time to turn anyone into a good person.
Darrel Mudra attended worship services at my church when
he coached at EIU. I was a long distance runner in those days and often used
the mile-long woodchip trail around the university athletic fields, including
the football practice field. Sometimes Coach Mudra would be standing under a
tree, watching practice from a distance, as I ran. I’d stop and chat and give
him tips, the way people who know just a little about something like to advise
folks who know a lot about it.
A number of the football players came to church, too. I
asked them about Coach Mudra, who was famous for always coaching from the press
box, not on the field. “He hardly ever talks to us about football,” they said.
“He asks us what we want to do with our lives, what our goals are, who we want
to be.”
One of the questions Methodist preachers are asked as
they apply for ordination is: Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?
It’s from John Wesley’s “Doctrine of Christian Perfection.” We are not expected
to be perfect in knowledge or ability, but we are expected become perfect in
love, to be good people.
Wesley said that perfection in love is the work of a
lifetime, but it is what God expects of us, not just to be good players, but to
be good persons.
On this Sunday morning, I give thanks for the coaches who
help us become better persons, and trust that in the process we shall become
better players.
John
Robert McFarland
The “place
of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is
explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]
I
tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.
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