When I read my friend Kevin Goll’s recent tribute to his father and the connection he and his family shared with Baylor University athletics, it was only after a brief moment of absorption that a wall was knocked down for me.
Like Kevin, I lost my father earlier this year. I have dealt with the impact of losing my dad in many ways, but intentionally, I’ve been waiting for a moment to accept that he is no longer going to sit near me in McLane throughout the fall or be a late-night call as I’m traveling back home to reflect on the football game.
To take you back, one of my fondest memories of having that connection with Dad — a Baylor Football Letterman who made minimal impact statistically for a program that would win the 1974 Soutwest Conference Championship just a few months after he graduated and moved into high school coaching era, bypassing his final year of eligibility — was a late night drive from Waco back to East Texas discussing a win over New Mexico in 2001.
Baylor had won that game, 16-13, on a field goal in overtime, and the entire three-hour trip home was spent reflecting on the Bears being 2-0, as my buddy who went with us to the game was sleeping in the back. It was short-lived, as you already know, but I was a boy who was overcome with optimism and confidence in what was to come. Dad kept me tempered, but he also let me dream.
He had seen a lot of Baylor football, but it wasn’t until my excitement turned into a passion that our bond around Baylor sports was the hinge of our relationship. I like to say I rekindled his enthusiasm during the downward trend of the program that had pushed him, like many others, away.
It was abysmal, but I remained adamant that it would get better. I didn’t have a clue if it actually would, but the optimism from that time has stuck with me and is always there to remind me that there is always hope.
Middle school locker room fist fights following a blowout defeat to Texas A&M? Yes, that happened. Following back up to school the next day with notes on Baylor’s recruiting class was going to change the trajectory of Baylor football? That happened as well. For those who know me, they understand how that wasn’t going to fly.
Your laundry basket of t-shirts didn’t sit well with me then, and they still don’t.
My optimism stemmed from the love I had developed for Baylor. Not from sitting back and figuring out which team I liked best in the Top 25 or how many of my buddies had a t-shirt in their collection.
It was the walks around campus that were ingrained into my memory before I understood the depth and history of the University. It was from hearing the stories about the many buildings on campus that had been standing for decades, and how my parents met on the same paths that we would walk as a family.
The Bears and The Bookstore.
The bonfire, pep rally and fireworks at Homecoming.
The blackbirds and squirrels. The Green and Gold swings. Pat Neff Hall lighting up after a victory.
Reconnecting with my parents’ old friends, whom I felt like I had known my entire life.
Now with three kids of my own, those things make an impact in an entirely new way on my life. Yes, wins and losses are important, but like most people who root and cheer for the Bears, there’s something different about living it.
Dad and I had minimal exciting memories about football together for several years. Most of the excitement was peppered around other sports outside of Baylor. And yes, we were passionate because of the BAYLOR name on the front of the jersey.
But my optimism still stood for the front porch sports of Baylor. A university that was bigger than passive success in the night that went unnoticed. I believed it could bring to life the success I had long felt was possible. Maybe, yes, Baylor was a smaller private institution located in a moderate town just a short drive from two of the largest public institutions in the country, with the resources to simply wake up each morning with an undeniable advantage.
But why should that fact push Baylor away from being one of the most distinguished athletic programs in the country? For certain, I knew how Dad’s decision to attend Baylor and introduce me to Baylor impacted me greatly.
As the football program started to turn the corner under Art Briles from 2008 to 2010 and basketball under Scott Drew in 2003, I remember my discussions with Dad beginning to shift. We didn’t know what the future held or if it would be the pinnacle.
We definitely didn’t realize the journey we were about to go on.
For the next decade plus, those discussions with Dad about overtime wins over New Mexico and devastating losses to inferior opponents were disappearing. They were replaced with memories of us circled around a TV, shrieking when Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy, walk-off kicks in McLane and game-winning tackles in Arlington.
I didn’t connect the dots at the time, but that Heisman ceremony was 10 years after that late evening drive from Central to East Texas. So much water had passed under the bridge in that moment.
Another 10 years later? Baylor won 12 games, its third Big 12 Championship and a Sugar Bowl.
Over the past 20 years, the possibilities we had discussed, which seemed like a fairytale at the time, were unfolding in unprecedented ways. These results weren’t just surpassing bowl game hopes; these were blasting those expectations out of the water.
Next Friday evening, when I enter McLane Stadium and take my seat in the same spot where my family has been sitting since the stadium opened in 2014, I will hesitate for a moment. I know I no longer will be able to look over my left shoulder to give Dad a thumbs up, complain about a call, go ballistic on a terrible pass interference or celebrate a walk-off game-winning field goal with him again.
But what I will be able to do is create those memories with my family — his family. And that’s because of those things he showed and taught me many, many years ago about Baylor University. It’s not a love of the physical things that bonds us together.
It’s the memories that we create with everyone around us in the midst of football games that bring us near. That’s what this is about. And I’ve learned that more in the last seven months with Dad gone than I did in the decades prior, and I’m extremely thankful he was able to use Baylor Football to do it.
