An Open Letter to Mark Richt

This is a letter that I wrote openly to Coach Mark Richt, the head coach of the University of Georgia football team.  It’s not necessarily about religion and certainly isn’t intended to be an official church communication.  Just some of my thoughts.

Dear Coach Richt,

We’ve never met and probably never will.  I’m also pretty sure I’m not the only person to write you an open letter and send it out, but I feel the need to.  I assume much about what your work has been like and maybe that’s why I’m writing this.  I was taught that you should always look for the similarities you may share in other people and in that you might learn something from them.  I’m an ordained minister, specifically Christian, and if you want to get down to brass tacks I’m an Episcopal priest.  I hold the degree of Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Georgia, where I graduated from in 2002.  You were just settling into Athens when I left to pursue my vocation.  I miss Athens – it’s a great city with some really great people, and my time at the University of Georgia is something that I’ll treasure forever.

I love football.  I’ve never really played the game other than in the back yard with my cousins (who growing up were basically like my brothers and friends and actually did play organized football).  But I’ve watched it all of my life.  On T.V.  In High School stadiums.  At Sanford Stadium.  I even spent a summer pressure-washing Sanford Stadium as a job while I was there in college, and then cleaning the place during football season.  I’d get to arrive early at the stadium and stock the bathrooms with toilet paper and make sure everything was ready and then would get to watch the game.  The next day, a Sunday, we’d get there early in the morning and would line up with blowers on our backs and blow the entire stadium.  It was dirty, nasty work.  It made me appreciate the work that janitors and custodians and maintenance people do every day and not just to earn beer money during college.

I also love Georgia.  I wear a lot of Red and Black.  I have Georgia Christmas tree ornaments, have had Georgia floor mats in my truck, a box of Georgia band-aids.  Occasional references to Georgia football show up in my sermons on Sunday morning or during the announcements.  It’s gotten a bit weird because I used to live and preach in Georgia, first in Suwanee and then just an hour south of Athens in Greensboro, but now I live in suburban New York, Westchester County, and some of the folks here who haven’t been blessed with experiencing Georgia football or the SEC think I’m maybe a day late and a dollar short sometimes.  But there is a thrill in wearing a hat with Uga on it, and walking down Broadway in New York City, or inside the Magic Kingdom down in Orlando, or anywhere, and having a stranger come up to you and say “Go Dawgs!”  I can attest to having called the Dawgs on the subway once, on the L train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, with some friends and fellow Georgia grads, but I will neither confirm nor deny if there had been any beer consumed on that day.

I love God, of course, given my line of work.  I know that you do too and you are not ashamed to be a man of faith.  I say good for you.  That’s probably why I like you so much and probably why I’m sad about what’s happened with the Georgia football program.  For the past 15 years, you’ve been the coach.  Sure, I admire and respect Vince Dooley and know that he’s a good man.  I know that there were a few years of questionable leadership on the football team.  But then you came.  You’ve been a bedrock for the football program.  Solid.  A winner.  Successful.  On and off the field, you’ve been nothing but a class act.  It’s great to have seen your family grow up in Athens.  It’s awesome to see how strong your marriage is.

There are so many players I can name that leave Georgia and go on to the NFL and are the type of men that I can look at my sons and say “That guy is a great athlete AND a good person”.  There are a ton of them.  Gurley, Stafford, Green, Moreno, Boss Bailey, I’m going to leave a whole lot of guys out, not because they don’t deserve name recognition, but just because I could go on and on.  I love some of those guys on the field this year, especially Malcolm Mitchell, because he’s got great hands and is fast but also loves to read and encourages others to do so too.  So many young men come to Georgia, play football under you, and leave for the pros or for any number of walks of life, and I believe that they are better people for it because of you and your leadership.  You teach them not only how to win at football but how to win at life.  You show them how to represent where they are from and who they are with integrity and pride, not foolishness or for show.  You play by the rules, even when the rules are shortsighted or outdated, even when the rules hinder the potential of those young men you try to shepherd.

I think you have the ability to look at a person, a young man, and see beyond their race, economic circumstances, level of intelligence, religion, creed, ethnicity, etc. and see the potential that God put inside of them for greatness.  And you bring it out of them.  You let them shine.  You show them how to succeed and almost more importantly, you show them how to handle when they come up short.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve yelled at the t.v. a few times when I thought that you could have made a better call. I’ve gotten frustrated with time clock management, or play choices, or who should be quarterback. I don’t think you are perfect or some kind of miracle worker.  I’ve certainly seen you lose your cool a few times on the sidelines, but I’ve never once doubted that you are a man of integrity, faith, honesty, and courage.  It has made me proud to be a Georgia fan knowing that the players on that team are being taught how to handle not just the football but how to handle life with dignity, class, kindness, and service.

That’s why it hurts, Mark.  Because someone decided that they needed to make a change.  This is where the preacher and the coach are alike:  there are people out there that expect and demand perfection, whether it’s in the win column or in the Sunday attendance record and they are too caught up in a pipe dream of some human-created glory to see the beauty of consistency, patience, peace, humility, forgiveness, trust, and love.  They fail to see that there is actual winning happening.  Games are being won, lives are being changed, people are being given a sense of hope and belonging.

Let’s be honest here.  It’s just a game.  There are starving children out there.  Broken families, ISIS, people shooting up churches or movie theaters, unclean drinking water, illiteracy, tons of stuff way more important than football.  But to see you standing on the sidelines, playing it so cool, letting those guys have fun out on the field, encouraging them to be their best – that always gets me excited.  Excited for Georgia football.  Excited for life.  Excited for the potential that is being tapped into with those young athletes.

I guess I just want to say thank you.  Thanks for being a great coach and making it great to wear red and black on Saturdays (and every other day).  Thanks for making the lives of countless young people better by teaching them to respect themselves and their families and communities because they have value and worth that goes beyond any accomplishment on an athletic field. Thanks for winning a ton of games and bowl games and national recognition and all of those statistical things that sports fans love.

Thanks for committing to the G.  Always.

I don’t know what’s next for you and I’m not sure how I feel about what’s next for Georgia Bulldog football, but I know that wherever you end up (and I hope it’s in some way at the University of Georgia), I’m going to root for you and your team.  That’s part of what I do as a priest – I root for people, especially people that are doing God’s work “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12), a body as disparate as the Bulldog Nation and as tight as a church or football team.  You do that work.  And I’m sure you’ll continue in it in some way.  Let me know if I can help.

Peace,

The Rev. Joe Greene

Rector, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Larchmont, NY