Excellence Playbook

True Champions Talk about the Heart and Soul in Sports

Fellowship of Christian Athletes

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780800726935
• eBook ISBN: 9781493404216
• Topic: Theology & Religion

Insights from Popular Sports Figures Show True SportsmanshipIn the competitive world of sports, it's not always easy to see where Christian values fit. With these compact books, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes encourages athletes to raise their standards of performance and have an eternal perspective on sports and life.The Excellence Playbook helps athletes and coaches honor commitments, pursue innovation and creativity, value quality over quantity, and become wise stewards of spiritual, material, and relational resources.

1
The Big Win

TONY DUNGY

Winning Super Bowl Coach of the Indianapolis Colts

Don’t you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize.

1 Corinthians 9:24

For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the Game.

Grantland Rice, “Alumnus Football”

From the peewee leagues to the professional ranks, there is one constant truth when it comes to coaching: practice makes perfect.

No better example of this time-tested principle can be found than with former Indianapolis Colts’ head coach Tony Dungy. Known for practicing what he preaches (although saying the soft-spoken leader preaches would be somewhat of a stretch), Dungy, who now serves as an analyst on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, has taken his disciplined methods beyond the football field and into his personal life. That’s why he is such a strong proponent of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ four core values.

“If you just practice one day a week, you’re never going to be as good as if you practice every day,” Dungy says. “And that’s what it’s all about, really. It’s reading and understanding what God wants you to do and then putting it into practice. When you come up a little short and don’t quite get it, don’t give up. Continue to work at it. Say, ‘Okay, Lord, I fell a little bit short in this area. Give me another opportunity so that I can continue to work on it.’ The more you practice those values, the easier they become, and the better you get at them.”

Of those four core values, Dungy has especially been equated with excellence throughout his coaching career. It’s a characteristic that has shone brightly during his greatest victory (Super Bowl XLI in 2007) and his greatest tragedy (the passing of his oldest son, James, in 2005).

Former Colts linebacker Tyjuan Hagler—who played for Dungy from 2005 to 2009—is one of the many eyewitnesses to that fact. “I’ve learned a lot about how strong his faith is,” Hagler says. “When the tragedy occurred, we went down [to Tampa] for the funeral. When we were waiting, we were seated in this room; and when he walked through the door, he had the biggest smile on his face. I was just thinking, He’s got the biggest smile on his face, and he is just hurting so bad inside. That really touched me.”

Hagler likewise experienced Super Bowl bliss with the Colts in February 2007 and can honestly attest to Dungy’s even-keeled approach to excellence. “He’s the same guy,” he says. “When we won the championship, he praised God. He gave the honor to Christ, and he said that without Christ, none of us would be here right now. He did the same thing when he lost his son that he did when we won the Super Bowl. He put both situations in God’s hands.”

FCA president and CEO Les Steckel has likewise observed Dungy over the years and gotten a firsthand look at Dungy’s quest for excellence. Steckel was the offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2000 when Dungy served as that team’s head (1996 to 2000).

“One thing that people don’t understand about coaching in the NFL is the tremendous pressures,” Steckel says. “Tony Dungy taught me a great deal about handling those. Under all the pressure, I knew that his stomach was turning, but his demeanor was awesome. That countenance that he continues to display to this day was one that we all wish we had in pressure-packed times in our lives.”

According to former NFL head coach and current ESPN analyst Herman Edwards—who was an assistant coach at Tampa Bay from 1996 to 2000—Dungy also displayed excellence by readily taking responsibility for the team’s failures.

“Anytime we had a bad day on defense, people would ask him what happened, and he’d just say, ‘Well, we just have to tackle a little bit better,’” Edwards recalls. “He never ran down the players out there. He would just say that we needed to coach them a little better, and at the end of the day, he was right. That’s what we needed to do better.”

Tampa Bay cornerback Ronde Barber, who played for Dungy from 1996 to 2000, uncovered another aspect of the excellence Dungy strives for: patience. Dungy is a great exhibitor of this characteristic, which is spoken of in Proverbs 19:11—“A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense” (NIV).

“Not everything is solved with haste and urgency,” Barber agrees. “You can be urgent and patient at the same time. Tony was always good at keeping everything in perspective.”

Perhaps the most astute observation of Dungy comes from running back Shaun Alexander, who clearly recognizes the role that one’s purpose in life plays in relation to excellence.

“[Dungy] accepts the calling he has been given,” Alexander says. “He is called to glorify God and be a champion. He walks it, talks it, lives it. You see it in his eyes. He will compete and fight until the end, all the while smiling at his opponents.”

Dungy’s definition of excellence, on the other hand, is a bit more straightforward and, true to coaching form, textbook in nature.

“Excellence is doing something at the very highest level it can be done using all your capabilities and everything God has given you,” Dungy says. “Sometimes that gets lost. We don’t always think of excellence as a Christian concept, but I think God does desire us to be excellent at what we do.”

Dungy can think of many examples of excellence in athletics, such as legendary head coach Chuck Noll, for whom he played at Pittsburgh from 1977 to 1978. But in his mind, no one can surpass the level of excellence that his parents, Wilbur and CleoMae Dungy, modeled for him growing up in Jackson, Michigan. “My parents were definitions of excellence in teaching,” Dungy says. “It was important to them to be the best that they could be—not for personal reasons but because that was their concept of serving. They wanted to serve people in the best way possible.”

“I think excellence is something we have to be cognizant of,” he adds. “Just because we’re Christians doesn’t mean we should take the approach to just move forward and let the Lord handle it. We do have a responsibility to be the very best we can be in whatever field we decide to take up.”

Dungy believes that Christ-centered excellence is usually either taught incorrectly (with the emphasis being toward personal benefit as opposed to God’s glory) or isn’t taught at all. His first exposure to the concept came at an FCA camp where he learned about Paul’s athletic reference in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27. In particular, Dungy was drawn to verse 24, which says, “Run in such a way to win the prize.”

“That’s the first time it hit me that, according to the Bible, we aren’t supposed to be satisfied with mediocrity or think that winning is the wrong goal to have,” Dungy recalls. “It says run to win, but understand what the prize is and understand that we’ve got to compete for spiritual things and long-lasting things. There’s nothing wrong with being excellent, and that verse has always stuck out to me.”

One of the dangers of achieving excellence comes in the form of pride—that is, when the individual who has achieved success because of their excellence takes the credit and in turn uses it for their own personal gain. Dungy has seen this play out in the lives of many athletes and has likewise seen the shallow results.

“If you’re running to win, but you have only earthly goals in mind, it will be short-lived,” Dungy says. “It will be a withering type of thing. You have to have those spiritual goals in mind. Things do get in the way of being excellent. Some of those things are pride and self-centeredness, but you still have to do everything as unto the Lord. You have to try to keep those types of thoughts out.”

Dungy also says our purpose behind striving for excellence must always be balanced and in tune with God’s plan for our lives. Otherwise, we might become like the rich man Jesus talks about in the parable He shares in Luke 12:13–21. The landowner, blessed with a bountiful crop, decides to build bigger barns for his abundance and then says that he will “take it easy” (v. 19). But the rich man is in for a rude awakening: “God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’” (v. 20).

“That’s where you have to understand what’s spiritual and what’s long-lasting,” Dungy says. “Where is your soul? That’s the thing that’s going to last. We do have misguided priorities if we’re just thinking only in terms of excellence. Everything has to balance out. Excellence without service or excellence without teamwork is excellence for only your purpose. It all has to come into balance.”

For coaches and athletes, excellence is often defined in terms of wins and losses. Those who find themselves in the winner’s circle are deemed excellent by virtue of their accomplishment, while those who struggle to win often have their excellence questioned.

Similar yardsticks are used in other areas of life. Business, entertainment, arts, science, fashion, and most everything in popular culture are all judged by the world’s standard of success, which creates a tricky road that must be carefully maneuvered—especially for believers and followers of Christ.

“You have to try to keep your priorities straight,” Dungy says. “You have to look at the world from a Christian point of view, which isn’t always easy to do. There are going to be times when you don’t win. There are going to be times when you get fired, and you can’t let that affect your self-esteem. You can’t let it affect your outlook, because we have to measure ourselves by a different standard than the world’s standard.”

Dungy believes that wins and losses are one of sports’ great inspirations to excellence, but he also fully understands the danger that lies within that dynamic. For instance, too often society falls into the trap of demeaning and devaluing anyone who fails to reach a certain level of succe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Four Core
• Introduction: Leave a Mark
• 1. The Big Win
• 2. Free to Play with Passion
• 3. Good Habits
• 4. Pushing Through
• 5. A Better Representative of God
• 6. Lasting Legacies
• Thanks
• Impacting the World for Christ through Sports
• FCA Competitor’s Creed
• FCA Coach’s Mandate
• Back Ads
• Back Cover