Faith at the Center of the Circus of Sports
Published: October 10, 2011
Late in the 2001 professional football season, when Nathan Whitaker was the staff lawyer for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he went for a workout one afternoon in the team’s fitness center. On the way, he bumped into the head coach, Tony Dungy, and the encounter was fraught with awkwardness.
Sarah Beth Glicksteen for The New York Times
Nathan Whitaker, near a statue of Tim Tebow at the University of Florida, has written books with Mr. Tebow, now with the Denver Broncos, and the former N.F.L. head coach Tony Dungy.
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With the Bucs headed for a third-place finish at 9-7, rumors swirled that Mr. Dungy would be fired. Mr. Whitaker, in fact, had been assigned confidentially to prepare biographical sketches of the leading candidates to take over.
Yet he had noticed and admired the way Mr. Dungy held fast to his routines. He still drove his children to school many mornings and had them do their homework in his office in the afternoons. He still did regular Bible study with the other coaches. He still left work at 8 p.m. in a profession that expected 24/7 obsession, especially from a coach in trouble.
“I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your witness in the middle of this circus,” Mr. Whitaker recalled saying to the coach that day in 2001, using the Christian term for an example of faith. Mr. Dungy replied, “Sometimes I think God wants there to be a circus so we can show there’s another way to respond.”
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