Before he went any further, Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy assured fans the team would be OK.
"Relax. Relax. Relax. We're going to be fine even though Edgerrin [James] is not going to be back with us; we're going to be fine," Dungy said before the crowd erupted with cheers and applause.
Dungy's speech touched on his experiences with spirituality and his journey as an athlete in front of about 1,000 people in Emens Auditorium Thursday night.
The coach told listeners how he accepted Christ when he was about four or five years old, and said his spirituality found support through his family. Having two uncles and his grandfather as ministers and his mother teaching Sunday school would promote spirituality, and Dungy said he was thankful for that.
When Dungy attended the University of Minnesota, an 11-hour drive from his boyhood home in Jackson, Mich., spirituality didn't come easy.
"When I was there I was what people probably thought: this is a nice guy, this is a dedicated student, and this is a dedicated athlete, and I don't know if anyone would have known that I had anything going on spiritually," he said.
When Dungy entered the NFL draft at 21 years old, every team passed on the chance to have Dungy on its squad. Dungy said he was depressed for a day, but the following day, he realized not getting drafted was a blessing because he could choose where he could play as a free agent. Dungy signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers after college and won a Super Bowl with the team. In Pittsburgh, the men he met on the team changed his life.
"I ended up being roommates with one of those guys,
Donnie Shell, and these guys were really, really solid, committed Christian athletes," he said, "And for the first time I got to see what that looked like. At that point when I was 21 years old, I realized I had accepted Christ because I wanted to go to heaven."
One night Dungy shared with Shell how he was frustrated not playing because he had mononucleosis.
"He said: 'Let me tell you what's going on with you. You have learned where the Lord is in your life and all he is trying to do now is find out if he's in first place or if he's in second place,'" he said, "'And you're saying that you're a Christian and you're saying that God is important to you, but it doesn't look like he's the most important thing. It looks like football is the most important thing.'"
After Dungy thought about what Shell told him, he realized Shell was right.
Dungy said he has two regrets in life, and they don't have to do with football.
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