A Creed To Live By — CPA Football
The 2007 football seniors met for a leadership retreat at the beginning of the season. We worked through expectations, goals, and requirements for this season. In the six sessions, each senior was asked to consider what it meant to be a leader and a Biblical man.
One of our activities was to begin writing a CPA football creed. This was based on the inspiring “Commodore Creed” that Coach Bobby Johnson uses at Vanderbilt. We have challenged the seniors to work with the coaches to come up with a creed that expresses the special process of CPA football and includes our Christian perspective.
I split the seniors into three groups and made it a competition to see which group could come up with the best “creed.”
Here are some of their individual suggestions within the results:
“Alone we will fail; together we will succeed.”
“We suffer together so that we can persevere together.”
“Be bold to stand against culture.”
“Train and play like a champion.”
“Live with humility.”
“Honor your brothers.”
“Christ, Brothers, Soldiers.”
The coaches and seniors will work on this throughout the season and present the results at the football banquet in January. I know this will be a great process and these seniors will write an inspiring creed. They have Christ as their example and God’s Word as the standard.
Football is a special game. The pressure of competition and the physical contact create a need for “brothers.” The heat and humidity of tough two-a-days and the soreness of a body from intense hitting forge a relationship that is very hard to communicate. It is the hard work and sacrifice that make “Friday Night Lights” a significant rite of passage for millions of young men in our culture every year.
I am also confident that this process will be more than words. These guys are writing a creed that they will live by.
