It Matters

To my Bulldog friends, congratulations. You get to bark for another year and I have to listen to it. And so it goes in football rivalries. I can't wait until Christmas when my UGA sister-in-law rubs dog-salt into my wounds. And now, moving on.....

A few months ago, a friend of mine recommended, and sent to me for my reading pleasure, a couple of books. One of the books was about LSU football and Tiger Stadium. The other was a book by Tom Osborne. You might remember him from the days when he was the head football coach of the Big Red Machine…the Nebraska Cornhuskers. More recently he has been working with another Big Machine that seems to be mired in Red Tape….called the U.S. House of Representatives.

In any event, the book Coach Osborne wrote and was recommended to me was:

Faith In the Game: Lessons on Football, Work and Life

The first chapter of the book is really the theme of the book. The chapter is entitled, “Character”. He writes that a person’s character is best defined by their private behavior. That is, what a person does or doesn’t do when they think no one else is looking. Osborne quotes former UCLA head basketball coach John Wooden: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are; your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

The other chapters deal with Faith, Honesty, Loyalty, Goals, Paying a Price, Unity and Teamwork. Quite frankly, when I read the book, I became inspired. Coach Osborne’s words almost had me ready to run through a tunnel with teamates clad in red.

These are the lessons that a game such as football are supposed to teach. Lessons of life. Lessons of character. Lessons of faith, and goal setting and honesty and teamwork. The lessons that any good or great coach should aspire to impart to the team they have stewardship of.

And then I read today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Three Gwinnett County football players on the Meadowcreek High School team, including the starting quarterback and two starting receivers, kids 17 and 18 years of age, were arrested and charged with two separate armed robberies. I could hardly believe it! Were these kids learning any lessons at all other than how to throw and catch an oblong ball?

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Just look around the SEC. Since Florida won the national championship in January, 2007, there have been 9 football players arrested for various crimes. Since Nick Saban arrived at Alabama, there have been 10 football players arrested. Six University of Georgia football players have been arrested since January.

And the NFL? As of last week, there have been 35 NFL football players arrested since December 2007 for crimes ranging from possession of concealed firearms while resisting arrest to burglary and assault.

I have a 12 year old son. He wants to emulate his favorite players. They are his role model. He pretends he is wearing their number when he and the other neighborhood boys are in our front yard playing their version of Red Fox Farms Super Bowl.

Does the character of their role models mean anything to them? You bet it does. Because they are saying, “I want to be like……I want to be……” I wonder who the boys in Gwinnett County were trying to be like.

Oh, and lest I forget…..arrests at Auburn under Tommy Tuberville? There hasn’t been one since February 2006, which was for underage drinking. And the punishment Tuberville gave that player was a 4 game suspension. As I write this I am knocking on wood because I know there could be arrests today.

Character matters. As Coach Osborne put it, it’s the first and most important lesson of football, work and life.

WJLaneSR