It's almost over

Sadly, I have found that I am weaker than most people I know. The average for not keeping up with New Year's resolutions is sometime in February. Here it is, towards the end of January and I am still only batting .500. But that is not what I wanted to post about today.

Today, I wanted to talk briefly about a lighter subject than my usual fare. Today, let's look at football. For about 21 weeks a year (the length of the NFL season), football is high on the conversation list. But, I have found that once my team is eliminated from Super Bowl hope, the football conversations decrease. Then after the Super Bowl, football conversations all but cease until draft time and then it is quiet again.

For the first time in my memory, I actually am rooting for a team in the Super Bowl that is not the Green Bay Packers. I must confess it is a strange feeling to be pulling for someone other than the green and gold. But, you ask, can a Packer fan actually want the Bears to win? No, this one can't. As much as I admire what Lovie Smith has done down in Chicago, there is something wrong with cheering for your team's arch-rival to win. Yes, that means I would like to see the Colts win on February 4. But it is not because of fine football that I like that Colts, even though I think they have played some good football this season.

I want the Colts to win because of their head coach. Tony Dungy is a man that I respect more than words. He is a man who is an unashamed Christian. Lovie Smith is also a Christian man, so why Tony Dungy? Because of what he has said over this past year. In case you don't know, at the end of the season last year, Tony Dungy's son committed suicide. I can not imagine the pain that he must of felt, but his words are what ring clear to me. "My faith in Christ is what has got me through." And he said those words just one week after his son's death. Then I started reading what people who knew him had to say about Tony Dungy, and without fail, they knew that his faith would be the thing that kept him going through this personal tragedy. At that point, Tony Dungy became somewhat of a hero to me. Here is a man who has suffered what I believe to be one of the worst tragedies possible in the death of a child, and he points to Christ.

Then, this year, the Colts won the AFC Championship game, thus putting two black coaches in the Super Bowl and guaranteeing that not only will this be the first Super Bowl with a black coach, but that this will be the first Super Bowl won by a black coach. In light of this, Tony Dungy said, “The Lord set this up in a way that no one would believe it. The Lord tested us a lot this year, but He set this up to get all the glory.” Tony Dungy lives his faith.

And he has been so consistent in his walk with the Lord that everyone who knows him expects him to point to Christ. Now, I don't want to put him up on a pedestal so high that he can't live up to it. But because of his example of unwavering faith (and because he is not a Chicago Bear), I would like to see him win the Super Bowl.