A Bulldawg Story

I’m a lifelong Georgia Bulldog football fan. One of the things that makes it particularly easy to root for the ‘Dawgs’ these days is their head coach, Mark Richt. Mark is a top quality head coach who also happens to be a very upfront Christian man.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Facing the Giants”, there’s a scene where the high school coach is in the locker room before the big state championship football game. In walks a strapping man who is referred to just as ‘Coach’, who proceeds to encourage the high school coach on the game, but more importantly on playing for the glory of God. That ‘Coach’ is Mark Richt, and the little movie cameo tells you a couple of things about him. For one, it tells you how big football is in the state of Georgia, where the movie was filmed. He comes into the movie and isn’t even named, yet the viewer is supposed to know this appearance is a BIG DEAL in the movie. But more important, the fact that Richt is willing to come into an overtly evangelistic movie and lend his cache tells you something about what he wants to represent.

This past October ESPN ran a feature story on Richt in a lesser known aspect of his life – his role as husband and father. The piece describes the Richt family’s adoption of two small children from the Ukraine. Mark Richt is a major college football coach, but his impact seems to be significant off the field as well.

Check it out.