Weekly e-News for September 11

Hey, everyone!

And…GOOOOOO, VOOOOOOOLS!!!

Wow!! Everyone is so pumped for this game!! Number 23 and number 19 on center stage, ESPN at 6:00 pm tomorrow, Saturday, September 12, 2015!!

We’re gonna checker board Neyland! How cool is that! I hope that guy who’s a Florida Marlins fan who always wears bright Marlins stuff and buys the ticket right behind home plate on every ESPN Sunday night baseball game so he can get on TV with his Marlins stuff on, doesn’t show up! It’d mess up the checker!

I am a little bit disturbed by a couple of things tho’…

Bowling Green State had 557 yards of offense last week against us! 433 thru the air! More than any team last year! And our defensive line is one of our strengths!

Gulp!

Butch says, about the OK offensive line,“They are very big. They are imposing. They are athletic. They are nasty. They do want to run the football!”

And the Okie line backer who was in the news so much (somethin’ ‘bout a gas crisis?) had three sacks in last year’s Sugar Bowl! And he had six tackles (two for losses) against us last year!

And I do have one other thing that’s bugging me some. 

Seems like we have a new slogan and I’m not sure what it means.

This year you can get T-shirts and bumper stickers that say, “My All”.

What’s wrong with, “I say it’s great to be a Tennessee Vol!”?

I know the new one comes from the sign coaches and players slap on their way out of the locker room to Shields Watkins Field (“I give my all for Tennessee”) I’m sure it means to them, “I give all my extra-curricular time and energy (when I’m not in class or confronting my homework load) to this team”

But I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to mean to me.

Does “my all” mean all my time? All my devotion? All my hopes? All my heart? All my…what!?

I LOVE sports! I love being a sports fan! I’m even trying to love being a Braves fan! We’re 56 and 85 and 23.5 games behind the Mets! 

I get a lot out of sports! 

But I don’t GIVE anything to sports.

Let alone “my all”.

Lately, in the mornings, I’ve been reading letters written by my homeboy, John Newton, hymn writer (“Amazing Grace”, among other hits) and pastor of St Mary Woolnoth in London. What a heart! On April 1, 1769, he wrote this to a friend, as he was getting ready for Sunday services…

“Saturday evening is returned again. How quick the time flies! Oh that we may have grace to number our days, and begin to view the things of this world in that light which they will, doubtless appear in when we are on the point of leaving them. How many things which are apt to appear important now, and to engross too much of our time, and thoughts, and strength, will then be acknowledged as vain and trivial as the imperfect recollection of a morning dream! 

May the Lord help us to judge now as we shall judge then, that all things on this side of the grave are of no real value further than they are improved in subservience to the will and glory of God…”

So, let us…

Cheer! Clap! Shout! Checkerboard the whole thing!

But save “your all’ for Him.

That’s it for sports!