Autumn Kickoff

Football Season. The most wonderful time of the year. Well, at least in my house. This morning I woke up to 50 degree weather and dreams of running backs dancing in my head.

Since I was in the womb (no exaggeration here) the Fall was a season sanctified solely for football, not just the mere act of watching it but living and breathing it as well. My dad was a walk-on kicker at the University of South Carolina for his first two years and he's been addicted ever since. Our most fond memories have been in section 804 of Williams-Brice stadium rooting on our beloved Gamecocks.

Somehow, I became the Prodigal son and left not only the university but the state in 2005. After only missing 5 home games my entire life, I've missed all but one the past five years. In a way, the mourning never ceases because each approaching season reopens those wounds.

Yet technology has allowed me to not miss a snap. But while the actual game is what gathers us, it was the pageantry surrounding it that kept us coming back. I attended every single sold-out home game in the midst of a 21-game losing streak not because I was riveted by the product on the field but because I loved the people around me.

I cherished eating my weight in wings in between tossing the football with my buddy Rivers. I lived to make the rounds between fraternity tailgating lots, my dads' spot, and the cockabooses. The fare varied from kegs of beer to crab cakes to frogmore stew. Even if the cocks fell flat, the party never would.

But beneath all the fan-fare was an ache to see our boys finally live up to our other-worldly expectations. There were moments when they made us believe, players like Sterling and Sidney, but despite our flirtations they never got the girl. Until now.

Today we embark on a totally new experience for any gamecock fan. We are the defending East champions and have been predicted to not only reclaim that title, but according to some we have a good shot to play for it all. I keep pinching myself waiting to wake up from this dream. And maybe I will tonight, but I don't think I will. This will be a season that I will always remember even if it is with a clause of "if we'd just hit the tight end, he was wide open" because it has taught me to hope again.

And I know that our school and our passion is not unique, that across campuses nation-wide today others will be carrying out their own traditions wondering if this year could be the one, wondering if the drinking they'll be doing tonight will be in celebration or to drown their sorrows. But of course, if your team is playing the Gamecocks, there is always next year.

Go Cocks!!!

Expecting to Lose

I have struggled with who I am, how I am defined. Throughout my life, I would give myself to certain interests and seek to be defined by them; whether it be dinosaurs, football, music, girls or even drugs. I would devote myself to be filled with every tidbit of info I could find about these interests and would find gratification in the search. But I have also felt a common thread through each of these things, I would lose.

Football has been the clearest example of this losing for me. My high school team lost 29 straight games during my career and went on to lose 20 more after I left. To be the captain of that team and to love something as much as I loved football, that hurt. I can't even give words to how it felt to lose so much or how demoralizing it is to think we never had a chance. And to add to this, the team that I gave my attention to, the South Carolina Gamecocks, were perennial underachievers. The first time they ever won a post season game came 100 years into their experiment with football back 1995.

We've flirted with success here and there but only to find our hands empty. After a while, you just expect to lose. I have realized that the one word that best sums up my self-opinion is 'loser.' Football seems small compared to the failed relationships, the drug abuse, practically flunking out of college, and severe depression that became my story.

God has this thing for giving new names. The great persecutor of the early church Saul, rode the meager christian out of town and into death, but God defeated him and gave him a new purpose and a new name, Paul. He would go on to write 2/3's of the New Testament and was almost single-handily responsible for bringing the faith to all of Europe. And yet he never forgot his first name, 'chief of sinners' and because he never forgot, the power of his new name was unsearchably immense.

God is giving me a new name too. Once a loser I now find myself living under the moniker of 'victorious.' Its a hard pill to swallow. Even though I sobered up, made it through college with honors, and have the greatest relationship of my life with my wife, I still am scared that I will lose it all, that I will lose even my new name.

And it was in the midst of this fear and uncertainty that I watched the Gamecocks win a second consecutive baseball national championship. And not just win it, but do it in style. Pulling off near-miraculous plays when all seemed lost, breaking the all-time records for consecutive tournament wins, to do it against near-insurmountable odds like your best player playing with a broken wrist. And best of all, I kept expecting them to lose and I was so wrong.

This team comes from a place that knows nothing of winning. The schools athletics seemed so doomed to lose that the local papers refer to the 'chicken curse' as stifling all the opportunities for victory. But this group of self-proclaim nobodies won in way never seen before. And while most simply enjoyed the spectacle, I was floored with the sprig of hope these gamecocks were bringing me.

I am not destined to lose.

Life has thrown me some wicked curve balls, I've had my share of brokenness but my expectations are changing with my name. I am beginning to believe that I might just win. And that, my friend, is the greatest hope I can imagine.