For twenty-seven years, I lived in the sport for eight months at a time. Sharon and I shared that life for nineteen of our fifty years of marriage. It was a constantly spinning carousel of coaches, players, and support staff.
Each year we would build relationships, commit deeply, and serve faithfully. Each year we would lose some, graduate more, and send others on to new teams. The steady rhythm of coaches and players moving into and out of the program was both joyful and grievous.
Hours were invested on practice sidelines, recruiting dinners each winter, long bus rides each fall, exciting victories, and soul crushing defeats on alternating Saturdays. We were in it with the team, all day, every day. Now, thirty-one years after beginning, I am an occasional visitor, more a memory than a real presence. I am well connected with a few coaches, but barely know a handful of players by name.
The pregame meal and chapel have an air of familiarity, but I am clearly a guest. My presence on the sideline was once deeply engaging and valuable, but now I am more like a relic, mostly invisible when I am not just in the way. I find myself chatting up players from the past, also visitors now, and telling stories from ten years ago. It’s like I’m in a parallel dimension, here in reality but mostly an observer.
I am forever grateful for my years of service in college football. The relationships built and the lessons learned have been invaluable. My relationships with countless individuals continue, but my relationship with the sport has dramatically changed. The momentary pain of the latter is easily overcome by the enduring joy of the former.
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