Tradition. The word gives me conflicting feelings. There are so many positives and yet so many negatives. For years, I despised the mention of the word - partially because I hate the way people get bogged down in it and refuse to change and partially because I refused to realize how important it was to my own life.
But I recently had an experience that has shown me the importance of tradition and it has taken a few weeks for the lesson to sink in completely.
I spent four years working with the football program at Jacksonville State University (yes, the ones on SportsCenter after beating Ole Miss). I was there under legendary coach Bill Burgess. Coach Burgess used a hard-hitting, old school approach to football and life. He built a tradition that we were all proud to be a part of. It was an experience that was instrumental in my life. Even now, I use lessons I learned on the game and practice fields of that era.
Without getting into gory details of backstabbing and conniving politicians, most of whom are now dead and basically forgotten, Coach Burgess, the coach with the highest winning percentage in school history and the program's only national championship - won on the field and not in a poll - was fired and ran off of campus. It was shameful and disgraceful.
Years passed and the men known as "Burgess Boys" - all the assistant coaches, players, equipment managers and trainers that served under Coach Burgess began to organize and lobby for an honor for our great coach.
In the meantime our team went on a roller coaster ride. There was the incompetent successor of our coach, who managed to lose the respect of every person in the athletic department in a matter of months. And then there was the hiring of a man who had been out of coaching for years - a man that began to restore the program and try to connect the players to the heritage of the team. While the team had been successful in recent years there just seemed to be something missing.
So when the University launched a massive stadium renovation and expansion project the Burgess Boys knew just what needed to be done. Our coach's named needed to be on that facility somewhere. So many of my former colleagues took to the campaign. After months of publicity and pressure from Burgess Boys and every sportswriter that knew of the effort, the university finally agreed to cease the the attempts to wipe Burgess from the memory of the program. They agreed to name the field after him.
In a fitting ceremony, this season's home opener was a dedication of the new stadium and a renaming of the field. Our coach was honored at mid-field, the band played, the fans cheered, Burgess Boys came out in droves to encourage the players and a video screen played highlights from the Burgess Era and declared "This house was built by champions, for champions". The connection to heritage - our championship football tradition - was made. No longer would kids ask about the strange trophies in the lobby and wonder where they came from. Tradition was finally paroled and would once again be part of the program. That was what the team was missing all these years - the knowledge of where they came from. The confidence of knowing who they were when they wore "Gamecocks" on their jersey.
Since that evening I have thought about the implications of what happened - not only for the team but for me and my family. As I raise my sons, it is important for me to teach them who they are, where they came from and why they are important. The spiritual, cultural, familial, and educational significance of tradition is now evident to me even more than ever before. It is vital to their success.
And so I can add to the lessons provided to me by Jax State football. Over ten years after leaving the field house for the last time I have learned the importance of filtering out the difference between tradition and monotony, between heritage and humdrum.
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