A Coach for Football...and Life: Turner Gill

Hmm. If Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck would have offered just a bit more money in his contract negotiations with this young athlete, the University of Nebraska might never have landed one of it's most outstanding quarterbacks.

Check out this enlightening Sports Spectrum interview with Turner Gill.

A few highlights?

In ’85 I accepted Christ. One of my friends that I knew in Nebraska and also when I played in Montreal, that kinda helped put things in a lot better perspective, he helped me accept Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. And that helped me through the opportunities that I had. To look at it with joy, peace and comfort, knowing that I had a purpose in life. I had to understand my purpose and how I was wired. I was wired to teach the game of football and teach people about Jesus Christ and then to keep doing it in the right way. (To) change this profession, and change college football in a way that would be gratifying to God to help marriages and to help men to help them understand what their purpose is in life. Because those two areas in our society, and really three, spiritually, and being a father or husband and doing those things, those are so crucial according to God...

So for me, being a head football coach, God was teaching me that when I became a head football coach, “Make sure that your doing things to help marriages, don’t do things that are going to decrease the relationship with man and woman because of the time commitments.” And that’s any job, but definitely in the coaching profession. It is time consuming, and it is something that you have to be on top of in making time to spend with your spouse, your wife. And also trying to teach these young men what their purpose is.

In our society, according to God, what is each man’s purpose? Not just to go play football but it’s to prepare these young men to be, number one, men that love God, and men that know how to be the leader in the home and know how to treat women. So all of those things are what God has put on my heart and that’s my purpose as a coach, but really more as a man. That’s just what I do, I coach. But I’m a man of God trying to follow Christ and His teaching. And this job that he’s given me as being a coach is to help marriages, and to help young men know their purpose...