For Wilshire Baptist Church
As a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and Baylor Bears, I’ve been both amused and annoyed by the speculation in recent days about the futures of their head coaches. There were a lot of people who wanted to replace Dallas’ Jason Garrett because they believed that would bring a return to winning. And a lot of folks were worried that a departure by Baylor’s Matt Rhule would bring a return to losing. But let’s be real: coaches are important, but they don’t actually play the game.
During this past season, neither Garrett nor Rhule caught or dropped a pass, made or missed a tackle, threw a laser spiral or got sacked. They stood on the sidelines and didn’t generate any personal statistics for carries, catches, completions, yardage, touchdowns or interceptions. I concede that coaches create schemes, draw up plays, assign positions and can motivate up to a point. But coaches don’t execute the schemes and plays on the field. Execution is in the hands of the individual players, and their success or failure depends in large part on whether or not they work together as a team.
Football is a team sport. So is life. Sometimes our teammates are engaged and in sync with us, sometimes they aren’t, sometimes they have their own goals and agendas. And our teams are constantly changing due to injury, infractions, distractions and a million little things that impact what we face every day. Some days we’ll win and some days we’ll lose. Some days we’ll be the hero who pushed the team forward; some days we’ll be the one who missed the tackle and let the team down; and some days we’ll be injured and sidelined, leaving others to step up and get the job done.
My point is that our drive to win and succeed needs to be tempered by acknowledgement that we don’t control the outcome. The best we can do is to be the best teammate we can be; to be the best friend, neighbor, spouse, parent, child, colleague, teacher, student, classmate, church member — even the best stranger that someone meets on the street.
Sorry to offer a lame sports analogy sermon today, but with the announcement on Tuesday that Baylor’s Matt Rhule indeed is leaving, I allowed myself to get caught up for a while in the false importance of that news. Certainly I am disappointed, but there are so many other things happening in our community and in our world that are so much more important and require our full attention and best effort.
Here’s hoping that this new year finds you at the center of the best team of your life. See you out on the practice field.