For What Purpose?

Delivered Sep. 24^th 2007

BYU-Idaho Football Field

Jonathan Radford

I thought that it would be appropriate at the beginning of this new season of the BYFL to give what will be a gentle reminder to some, and completely new information to others. I do this largely in part, because in the past, we have struggled a bit as a league to understand the purpose both of the league and of our participation in it.

Let me say from the outset that we love the game of football, and that in a very real sense we want to play it in its most pure and honest form. I would certainly hope that we don’t have any among you who are participating as a way to enter the NFL draft, or gain a full-ride scholarship to a D1 program. In our league and in your lives there is much more that hangs in the balance. Our purpose is a much deeper one.

In the years that follow, beginning with this one, our league needs to act as a catalyst. We ask for virtue in our coaches and we ask for virtue in our players. We ask that you dedicate yourselves to your academic experience and to the life of service that must follow it. Paraphrasing John F. Kennedy, we say: “Ask not what this University can do for you, but what you can do for this University.”

I say this for your own benefit. In this league we want you to become better athletes, we really do, but we also want you to be better disciples and better students.

So let me state for you in rather blatant terms, one of the dangers that we face as we try to make this experience the right one. We have to be pure, both on the field and off of it. And there are a million little things that could destroy everything that we are trying to accomplish here.

As Amiel once wrote: “How true it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified.”

There has been in the past and certainly in the present a feeling of entitlement that has gripped not only our nation but this school. This emerging attitude stands at odds with the stated purpose of the University. And our purpose in this league, as stated by Elder Eyring is to “grow people.” And let’s be clear from the outset that “growing people” has a good deal to do with teaching and learning.

In this league, and in your lives, ignorance is the enemy. I agree very strongly with Elder Holland that there are a million little phrases, most of which that we learn in our very early years that I just hate. Particularly this one: “Ignorance is bliss and what I what I don’t know can’t hurt me.” I am here to tell you that NOTHING will hurt you more than what you don’t know. As Plato stated: “It is better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is at the root of all misfortune.” And when we speak about ignorance in this league we speak about willful unwillingness to learn.

Do we understand the absolute necessity in learning? Do we understand why Thomas Jefferson taught that “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was, and never will be?”

And do we fully understand what the Prophet Joseph understood when he told us that we cannot be ignorance? Please understand the eternal truth that it is light, or knowledge, that frees you and that it is ignorance that will bind you down.

Do not chafe under the burden of being taught a spiritual lesson. In scriptural terms, don’t kick against the pricks. Do not shut your heart to the lessons which God has to teach you. Football does not exist on an abstract theoretical plain where there is no God and there is no Christ. You have made covenants and stepping onto the football field does not release you from those obligations. The Gospel of Christ is in every aspect of your life, including football. He will converse with you through your triumphs and weaknesses on the field. That is, if you will let him. Open your heart to the things that will be taught.

Your most important lessons, the ones you will take with you and remember and cherish for years to come will probably not come from a quote or a simple scripture. They will come from a deep, personal relationship that you must cultivate with your creator. I cannot tell you, I simply cannot express in mere words the absolute importance of our dedication to Christ-and I cannot express to you the debt that we have incurred at this University and in this league. Your participation in it has come at the expense of millions of dollars from the tithing funds of “widows and the fatherless.”

Learn that you must give back. Contemplate what Elder Holland meant when he told a group of students at BYU that their academic effort “…must be different in degree but not in kind from the effort that a ragged bunch of irregulars made during a winter at Valley Forge, (or) that a beleaguered band of pioneer outcasts made in these valleys for the privilege of freedom and worship and growth…And I submit to you that your devotion to your academic opportunity and the life of service that must follow it must be different in degree but not in kind from that gift given by the Son of God himself, made for friend and foe alike.”

Please make a real effort to understand what has been given to you here at this University. And make a lasting commitment to give back all that you can.

I’ll close with a story of sacrifice. In January, 1982, Air Florida’s Flight 90 to Tampa, a Boeing 737 with 74 passengers slammed into the 14^th Street Bridge. The plane smashed five cars and a truck and then skidded onto the ice clogged river. Quoting Time Magazine:

For a moment, there was silence, and then pandemonium. Commuters watched helplessly as the plane quickly sank. . . A few passengers bobbed to the surface; some clung numbly to pieces of debris while others screamed desperately for help. Scattered across the ice were pieces of green upholstery, twisted chunks of metal, luggage, a tennis racquet, a child's shoe. . . .

Within minutes, sirens began to wail as fire trucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene. A U.S. Park Police helicopter hovered overhead to pluck survivors out of the water. Six were clinging to the plane's tail. Dangling a life preserving ring to them, the chopper began ferrying them to shore. One woman had injured her right arm, so [the] pilot . . . lowered the copter until its skids touched the water; his partner [then leaned out and] scooped her up in his arms. Then [a young woman] grabbed the preserver, but as she was being helped out of the. . . river by [a] fellow passenger . . . she lost her grip . . . . A clerk for the Congressional Budget Office who was watching from the shore, plunged into the water and dragged her to land. But the most notable act of heroism was performed by [another] of the passengers, a balding man in his early 50s. Each time the ring was lowered, he grabbed it and passed it along to a comrade; when the helicopter finally returned to pick him up, he had disappeared beneath the ice.

And this is from an essay entitled "The Man in the Water":

His selflessness [is] one reason the story held national attention; his anonymity another. The fact that he [has gone] unidentified invests him with a universal character. For a while he was Every man, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.

Still, he could never have imagined such a capacity in himself. Only minutes before his character was tested, he was sitting in the ordinary plane among the ordinary passengers, dutifully listening to the stewardess telling him to fasten his seat belt and saying something about the "no smoking sign." So our man relaxed with the others, some of whom would owe their lives to him. Perhaps he started to read, or to doze, or to regret some harsh remark made in the office that morning. Then suddenly he knew that the trip would not be ordinary. Like every other person on that flight, he was desperate to live, which makes his final act so stunning.

For at some moment in the water he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how gradual the effect of the cold. In his judgment he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in [his] world move away from him, and he deliberately let it [go]. . . .

The odd thing is that we do not. . . really believe that the man in the water lost his fight. . . . He could not, [like Nature], make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he [won].

The reason we will belabor this point with you is because we are, all of us, covenant people. We have all promised in the waters of baptism to follow Christ. We cannot claim to be Christians without taking a few steps towards Gethsemane ourselves. What Christ may ask of us may be very difficult to give. Now I’m not sure whether any of us will have the opportunity to “pass life on to another.” But at some point in this life, our character may be thus tried. And it is my hope that we will become the kind of men who would do as Christ would do-and that is to sacrifice. Please love each other, love your coaches and love this University and love the Lord-for he loves you and as he has stated: “If ye are not one ye are not mine.”

I leave my testimony of him and of his matchless power with you. And I do leave my testimony with you that you can find him, through sacrifice, on the football field.

In the name of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, Amen.