The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God
—galatians 5:19–21
Attractive young women send NFL players nude photos with offers of free sex. Others hang out in hotel lobbies waiting for the team buses to arrive so they can present themselves and a girlfriend for a group party. And then there are the crazies, who try to climb into players’ dorm windows during training camp or call them at home during dinner with their families.
The Bible is filled with examples of men who have been felled by women: Eve tempted Adam into betraying God by eating the forbidden fruit. Delilah wooed Samson into cutting his locks. And David committed adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba, then sent her husband into battle to be killed.
Sex has been man’s downfall throughout time and will likely be the downfall of our sons and grandsons and great-grandsons. No doubt, we are often our own worst enemies, eagerly engaging in sex acts and calling ourselves “lucky.”
Sexual temptations are bad enough for ordinary men, with ordinary looks, ordinary talents, and ordinary wealth. But it’s far worse for celebrities. Women are drawn to money, power, and fame. And men spend lifetimes trying to acquire those measures of success to secure a woman’s love.
NFL coaches, players, and chaplains agree that of all the temptations that can derail a promising athlete, sex is the hands-down winner. Gambling, alcohol, steroids, recreational drugs, bad friends— they all trail sex by a mile.
New York Giants defensive end Justin Tuck says he watches teammates hounded by women who are so beautiful and shapely, ordinary men can’t get a “hello,” let alone a date. He knows the pitfalls and offers this cold, hard truth to rookies and other new arrivals to the Giants’ locker room.
“I tell them, ‘It’s probably not because you’re handsome,’” Tuck says. “They want to get pregnant.”
The average NFL salary in 2011 was $2.25 million, with rookies guaranteed a minimum of $375,000, according to the NFL union. No more than 3 percent of that can go to the agent, another 40 percent goes to taxes, and the part that’s left over is what makes that 320-pound defensive tackle, with the protruding belly and persistent snoring, one of the sexiest men alive.
No man is immune. The most ardent Christian can fall. God is clear where He stands on sleeping around. Sexual immorality is addressed in numerous Bible scriptures.
First Corinthians 6:18 urges, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
In 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5, Paul wrote, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God.”
And in Exodus 20:14, 17, God’s seventh and tenth commandments read: “You shall not commit adultery. . . . You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Practically speaking, it leads to diseases and can undermine the family structure. And yet, players still find themselves lured into meaningless, loveless sexual encounters with women in ways that undermine their physical and emotional health, their financial security, and in some cases, the longevity of their NFL careers.
Tuck had been married four years and had a baby when the 2011 season began. He had sex before marriage and has told friends and teammates that he regrets it.
“To this day I wish I could take it back,” he says. “My wife was a virgin before we married, and I wasn’t. Just knowing that I could have saved myself for her, and there would have been nothing impure about it . . . I wish I could go back.”
NFL locker rooms are a place where anything and everything is discussed in the open. It’s not uncommon to hear players talk about their dates and sexual adventures in explicit detail. And the stories, if believable, can be mesmerizing.
But there is also a small, perhaps less vocal group of players who say sex is overhyped and plays too great a role in a player’s notion of self-worth.
Tuck says he’s had many discussions with teammates, both Christian and non-Christian, who have concluded that sex isn’t the end-all and be-all that it’s perceived to be on television or when a good storyteller is spinning his yarn.
“I’ve had guys say to me, ‘It’s not as macho as you think it is,’” Tuck says. “Once you hit twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty years old, you start to realize that it’s just a false pretense. The idea that the more girls you sleep with, the bigger the man you are—it’s not the case. I don’t have any profound way of saying it, but I tell the guys the honest truth about it.”
Washington Redskins safety Oshiomogho Atogwe says premarital sex amounts to “trading future glories for temporary pleasures. “You are looking for something exciting and fun, but what you are giving up is worth so much more,” he says. “When you haven’t known anybody, that’s way more precious when you grow with each other [in marriage] without the excess baggage. That’s so much more valuable than those times when you had some fun. To me, the witness of staying pure speaks a lot more loudly than almost anything else man-to-man because it’s man’s biggest struggle.”
It’s ironic, Tuck says. He’ll sometimes see young players emerging as great talents on the field, but in their private lives, they are so desperate to be accepted by their teammates and friends that they’ll do whatever makes them popular no matter the consequences.
Sometimes that means sleeping with a woman to share a story and be one of the guys. Other times, it might mean getting a tattoo.
“It used to be cool,” Tuck admits. “You’d say, ‘Oh, that’s a cool tattoo.’ But now everyone has one. I think it’s cool when guys don’t have tattoos because it means they didn’t fall into that trap of ‘I’m going to do something because everyone else is doing it.’
“I’m going to be my own person. I’m going to be me. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But that’s why it’s a show of strength and leadership.
“We all know that you are supposed to remain pure before marriage, and I think if you have the strength to do it, it shows something special about a person,” Tuck acknowledges. “It shows that you are a bigger man and can resist temptation.”
To be fair, saying no to sex gets easier with age. The drive subsides, we become more disciplined and better at weighing the risk versus the reward, we have spouses to take care of our needs, and frankly there are fewer women who want to have sex with us.
It’s much harder to say no when you are a teenager and you’re the only virgin in the locker room. No one wants to be the geek—or at least, to admit to it.
“It’s tough facing it when you are a teenage boy or a college boy because it’s the uncool thing,” Atogwe says. “Everyone is so interested in being among the popular crowd or cool crowd, and this is definitely the uncool thing. But it’s not like you are going to lose your friends over it.”
Atogwe says even though he’s a married adult, he still faces some of the peer pressure and uncomfortable situations that teenagers do. He plays with rookies who are sleeping around and veterans who are running around on their wives, which he disapproves of. And he still has to share a locker room and have interpersonal relationships with them. This is no different from non-football players who share office space and have to listen to their co-workers’ “glory” stories on Monday mornings.
Atogwe decided that while he can still be their friend and teammate, he just can’t get involved in some of their activities. So maybe that means he doesn’t go out with them on Friday night.
“I can’t go out with you because I know what living like that, how that offends God, and I know how that is going to affect your life going forward,” Atogwe says. “I am your friend, and I’ll share with you and laugh with you and love you. And I’ll do anything I can to help you if you need me. But I just can’t go there with you.”
God isn’t cruel. He doesn’t give us sexual urges and then ask us to deny them. He gives us a wonderful opportunity to explore our sexuality with great joy and wonderment. What He asks is that we do it in a committed relationship rather than in frivolous encounters with groupies and other women who have their own agendas.
First Corinthians 7:1–9 says:
“It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
While the passage makes it clear that it’s who we sleep with, rather than how much sex we have, the point seems to be lost on many players as they jump from one bed to the next as proof of their high social status and desirability or for their own momentary physical pleasure.
Tuck has seen his share of the celebrity life. He’s had women try to crawl in his windows at camp, and he once watched a woman leave a teammate’s room after sex and then walk down the hall and knock on his door for a second go of it.
“That’s when you know she is just trying to get pregnant. It’s the money, no question,” he says. “Those girls are with you because of what you do and what you can provide. But when your career ends and the money stops coming in and their lifestyle has to change, that’s when you wind up divorced. If they marry you for the money, once the money stops, what’s keeping them attracted anymore? Like I said, it’s probably not your looks.”
Washington Redskins chaplain Brett Fuller said sex is one of the most popular discussion topics among players at Bible study because it’s such a big part of a man’s life and a player’s celebrity. Even players who truly want to stay pure struggle with the smorgasbord of sexual offerings.
“It’s not just at training camp,” Fuller says. “It’s at the gas station; it’s when they are at the grocery store; it’s all the time.”
Here’s what he tells his players:
“Number one, the young lady who is doing it probably doesn’t have the purest of thoughts. They want something more than your love; be very careful and wise.
“Second, I realize it is a lot of fun. But practically speaking, there are a number of diseases you can get, and it’s not likely that you are the only man this woman is sleeping with. A monogamous relationship is important.
“Three, you are called by God as a man that is saved for one woman and her for you. Don’t spoil it by spreading yourself so thin that you see somebody else’s face on your wife. Save yourself. I promise you, it’s worth it. There is value in being pure.
“Lastly, rather than looking for the person who is Mrs. Right, you become Mr. Right. You don’t want to marry a woman who has been sleeping around with everybody—why in the world would a woman want to marry a man who has been sleeping around with everybody? Concentrate on being Mr. Right and I promise you, you will build a foundation for your marriage that starts while you are single.”
Tennessee Titans quarterback Matt Hasselbeck has a beautiful, athletic wife whom he fell in love with almost from the time he met her during their freshman year at Boston College. He speaks of her glowingly and then pauses to acknowledge that under the right circumstances, any man can slip and fall, ruining his marriage, his family, and his life.
From his first year in the NFL, Hasselbeck surrounded himself with teammates who would hold him accountable and be a friend if he was ever in need of one.
“Sex is a temptation all the time, and it lasts your entire lifetime,” he admits. “Where you hang out and who you surround yourself with are really important in avoiding trouble.
“I have so many friends that are really solid guys, and they have slipped and fallen. I guess the lesson is, if you think you are too righteous to slip, then you have been fooled. It can happen to anybody.”
Hasselbeck remembers his first year in the league with the Green Bay Packers. He’d gone to a Bible study during training camp, and it was packed. Players are often scared they are going to get injured or cut from the squad, so training camp is a time when everyone gets religious.
That first night, Pro Bowl defensive end Reggie White, the team’s most devout Christian, said he had a few words he wanted to share with the Bible study, so the team chaplain gave him the floor.
He wanted to talk about the women who would be descending on camp and how he personally handled it when a woman approached him.
“He would say something like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m married. I do not want to talk to you. Get away from me,’” says Hasselbeck.
“I was like, ‘Come on. That’s so extreme.’ But he said it was a riskreward thing. He was like, ‘No. I’m going to draw the line right here.’
“He was saying that if you draw a line right here and then stand right next to it, if something goes wrong, it will be easy to fall over the line.
“But if you draw a line and then stand back ten yards and something goes wrong and you fall, well, now you are nowhere near the line.”
In other words, there is no reason to walk right up to temptation. Keep some distance. If you talk to enough women at a bar or club, whether it’s just a friendly conversation or not, you are more likely to succumb. Every single guy gets needy. Every married man goes through tough stretches with his wife and romanticizes the good times before he got married and was a chick magnet.
But Hasselbeck says it goes beyond sleeping around. Even the hint of infidelity or flirting can be damaging to his marriage, his reputation, and his family.
Take, for example, fan photographs.
“Everyone wants to get their picture taken or an autograph. And that’s great,” he says. “But I’m conservative about what I sign or where I sign it. Some people want to get real close, and I’m careful about where my hands are and what my body language is.
“Ask yourself: What if this goes on the Internet? How is this going to make my wife feel? Say it’s some girl, her child, and me in the photo. I’m like, ‘Oh, hey, let’s throw the husband in too,’ or let’s make sure the body language is appropriate for the situation. But then sometimes you notice how she is standing, and it’s like, ‘Oh, what is the right thing to do and then click. The shot is taken.”
Hasselbeck met his wife, Sarah, when he was a seventeen-year-old freshman at Boston College. They dated through college with one two-week break and later a semester break. He wed at twenty-four, and the couple now has three children.
Married eleven years when the 2011 season began, the Hasselbecks had built up a certain amount of trust. But Hasselbeck says that can be a pitfall for couples who depend on it too much.
“The number one need for a woman is to feel loved, and that’s one reason a woman needs to hear ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you,” he shares. “As a guy, you are sitting there thinking, You know I love you. I’m sitting here on the couch next to you. I married you. What more do you need?
“But they are naturally drawn to wanting the security of being loved unconditionally forever and knowing it’s not going to change. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much trust you’ve built up; it’s one of those things that has to be priority number one.”
Hasselbeck said it’s not the obvious mistakes he’s worried about. If a woman were to approach him and offer him a sexual favor in her car, he’ll quickly blow her off and move on. Instead, he’s concerned about the ones that are more subtle. The ones where the woman seems like just a friend, and a little at a time she asks more and more of a player until the athlete suddenly realizes he’s developing feelings. Hasselbeck says players, and probably men in general, get in trouble when they start rationalizing the relationship or the meetings with the woman—it was a friendly lunch, just a friendly kiss, just a back rub—until you guiltily tell a friend or your wife, “We weren’t doing anything.” By then, it’s already gone too far.
Hasselbeck is a veteran, so when he travels he isn’t required to have a roommate like he did as a rookie. But he has one anyway. He says that he’s never planned on cheating on Sarah, but with another person in the room, he knows nothing is going to happen, and it probably makes it a non-issue for Sarah and the kids too.
“If my kids ask, ‘Where’s Dad tonight?’ [Sarah] can say he and Mr. Whoever are in St. Louis. They share a room. ‘Oh, OK.’ There is security in that,” he says. “And that’s true with the temptation to use a remote control or view things on a laptop too. It’s you and another Christian guy, where your morals and values during the day are the same as they are at night, and you both have accountability.”
Temptation doesn’t always come in a glitzy night club, a dark secluded meeting place, or an Internet chat room.
Sometimes, it’s in broad daylight, when a player’s wife is standing right next to him. Or when he’s playing with his kids at training camp. Or when he’s picking up a gallon of milk from the grocery store.
NFL players’ wives know the groupies are all over town. They are married and single, they are very young and very old, they make passes at the players day and night, and they do it whether his wife is standing next to him or is nowhere in sight.
Cabrina Womack, wife of Arizona Cardinals offensive guard Floyd Womack, says wives look out for one another and close ranks when groupies appear at player functions.
“Some women will approach the girl and say, ‘Who are you here for? Who is your man?’ The wives are very cliquey and protective of their husbands. So if we see a groupie, we give them the side eye. We try to make them feel uncomfortable,” she says.
“When you see a girl just kind of standing there, you are automatically like, ‘Well, we’re going to go over and see who she is.’ Maybe she’s going to say, ‘I’m such and such’s girlfriend or wife, but if you don’t have an answer, you are getting the side eye, the nasty names. They just don’t tolerate it. It’s almost like a wives’ code. If I have a girlfriend, I don’t bring her to functions. You just don’t do that. You don’t bring a single girlfriend to a function around other players and other players’ wives. That’s unacceptable.”
Danisha Rolle, wife of former Baltimore Ravens cornerback Samari Rolle, says some of the fooling around comes out of a frustration with marriage itself and the misunderstanding men and women have about how their roles and relationships change when they transition from boyfriend/girlfriend to husband/wife. It’s not just an “athlete” problem, she says; it’s a “people” problem, no matter their profession, wealth, or talent. It’s just heightened for players because of their celebrity.
It’s like this: After years of being told he’s the greatest player to come out of his hometown, he starts dating. And during the courtship, the woman is trying to impress, attract, and win over her future husband. She squeezes his muscles and tells him how strong he is. She pulls out pictures from a party and tells him how handsome he is. She talks to him late at night after a round of passionate lovemaking and tells him what a wonderful lover he is.
Then they get married.
Suddenly, ole handsome farts, snores, and thinks taking out the trash is beneath him. The friendships he once enjoyed with other women and the chitchat with a pretty girl in an autograph line or at the agent’s office look suspicious and get nixed by the wife. And the wild, adventurous sex in the car, in the woods, on the kitchen table is . . . unbecoming of a married woman.
“When you are dating, you’re being courted,” Danisha says. “That’s when you are still in that honeymoon phase where he’s lingering on your every word or sentence. You’re being attentive and caring, and it isn’t until you are married and you relax and you feel like, ‘I got you now.’ It’s not always that obvious, but it’s subconscious. The date nights you used to schedule lessen, and the day-to-day takes over.”
If you are married, you get it. If you are single, no matter how many warnings you receive, you won’t believe it until you are married. That’s just one of life’s truths. But one thing is certain, chaplains say: if you have chosen the right spouse and are committed to walking with God through eternity, these are small sacrifices for a lifetime of companionship and love.
WALKING THE WALK
Corwin Anthony, a former NFL tight end and Miami Dolphins chaplain, joined Athletes in Action in 2000 and became the pro ministry director in 2006.
As a player and chaplain, he’s known athletes who have taken advantage of their celebrity to sleep with multitudes of women. And the one thing he’s learned is that no matter how much sex a player gets, his cup is never full.
“There were so many guys who you would observe from a distance and say, ‘He’s got the money, the babes, the fame, and all the parties he can go to. Wow.’ And then we’d sit down and talk privately in a one-on-one situation, and I’d hear: ‘I’m lonely. I’m miserable. I have no real friends. I’m addicted to sex.’ . . . I’d hear this from the star players; guys who were at the top of their games and really riding high with everything a young man could desire,” Anthony says.
Anthony would respond by sharing the Word of God and talking to them about changing their lifestyle. But sometimes, a guy just isn’t ready to change.
Anthony’s grandfather, Rev. Lee Anthony, was a pastor, and Corwin heard the Scripture from a young age. He understood Christianity, but like most young men, he wasn’t terribly committed. As an athlete, he had pretty girls readily available to him. And once he enrolled at UCLA and got away from family, there were just too many good times to be had.
In 1987, he met UCLA’s team chaplain, Mike Bunkley, who challenged him to change his life. Anthony was feeling the urge to return to his Christian roots, but wasn’t ready to give up the parties or the sex. Inside, he was in turmoil. Like many of his charges today, he started ducking the chaplain.
“The commandments that God gives us are not meant to keep us from having fun, but to protect us and provide for us,” he says. “But it was the sex that was one of the biggest reasons I didn’t want to fully commit to Christ.”
There’s not a man on earth who doesn’t understand exactly what Anthony was going through. Some might say that he hadn’t gotten his fill or sown his oats. There was some part of him that needed to feel he’d gotten “enough” to make him feel like a man.
Very few men attending a university with thousands of available young women look over the quad as they are heading to class and think, I only want to be with one of them.
This is why team chaplains like Anthony—especially those who have played the game and walked the walk—are able to make an impression on today’s players. They understand the significance of asking a young man to give up free sex and adoration for an even more satisfying walk with God.
It’s one thing to take the high road and refrain from sleeping around if you are Jimbo at the grocery store and no one wants to sleep with you. It’s quite another to refrain from enjoying multiple partners if everywhere you go, women want to have sex, and they are all saying it’s “OK, just for fun, no strings attached.”
If a player seems receptive, but still hasn’t bought Anthony’s sales pitch about self-sacrifice and the godly life, he tells the player the story of a pretty, young gymnast named Kim Hamilton, whom he met in college and started dating.
She’d overcome poverty and her father’s drug addiction to become a four-time NCAA gymnastics champion, a six-time All-American, and a UCLA Hall of Fame inductee. Her book, Unfavorable Odds, took ten years to write and is definitely worth a read.
“I had my eye on her for over a year,” Anthony tells his athletes. “I’d committed my life to Christ and was reading and studying my Bible, and then we started dating. And I’m thinking, God, this is not fair. I’m trying to live free, and You finally put this girl in front of me. . . . So I hid my faith from her because I was afraid that if I acted too much like a Christian, she’d leave me.”
The relationship became intimate, and Anthony was overcome with guilt. He was struggling to live a double life: praying and preaching about God’s hopes for our salvation in one moment, and then making love to his girlfriend the next.
One day, he just sat up in bed and said to her: “I have to stop . . . I have to stop having sex.” Corwin explained to Kim that while God wants us to enjoy all the pleasure that comes from sex, He wants us to do it within the context of marriage. So they decided to abstain.
Their hearts were in the right place, but they found it difficult not to backslide. “We’ll just kiss” never works, he says. And so they went through good periods and bad periods and periods where they just gave up and went at it.
Their battle with sexual impurity weighed on them, and the couple would break up and then get back together. In time, Corwin and Kim found one another, and they have now been in a loving marriage for more than twenty years.
“Every young person is in the process of growing and learning what it means to be with God and to have Him in their lives,” Anthony says. “Naturally, you don’t get it right at first. I look back at myself when I first committed my life to Christ and my life did not change overnight. I was still making mistakes, but I was also growing and learning, and that’s part of it. So, I understand what the players are going through, and while I sympathize, I’m going to tell them the truth.”
FAME NEVER AGES
It’s not just the players.
Minnesota Vikings coach Leslie Frazier, now in his fifties, is married and has three children, including a son who plays defensive back at Rice University. Frazier, who played defensive back for the Chicago Bears from 1981 to 1986 and has spent the past two decades coaching at the college and professional ranks, says women a generation younger still approach him when they learn he is a former player and now an NFL coach.
“It doesn’t matter whether you come from New York City or Podunk U; people want to be around celebrity, which is why reality TV is so big today,” Frazier says. “If they can be associated with celebrity, it kind of gives them status and improves their self-worth or self-image in their own minds, so that sometimes causes girls to gravitate to you. It’s not because you are a handsome guy, but because you can intercept passes, score points, or throw touchdowns. It’s your celebrity. And maybe one day you are going to be a rich guy along with being famous.”
Frazier said most people assume players are tempted the most during the NFL season, but that’s not true. Players are most likely to find trouble in the off-season, when they lack the structure that comes with attending practice and team activities and they find themselves with lots of free time and money to spend. It’s worse on younger players who are still immature and usually don’t have family obligations or marital relationships to keep them grounded.
Frazier remembers former Bears like Vince Evans, Roland Harper, and Al Harris pulling younger players like him, Mike Singletary, and Jeff Fisher aside to talk about their lifestyle away from Halas Hall and to discuss how they should handle themselves in different environments. “I took it to heart,” Frazier says. “One of the things they impressed upon me is, ‘Don’t try and do it alone. You need to get plugged into a church. You need to get plugged into a small group.’ What they were saying is that if you get out on an island by yourself, the temptation is so overwhelming, you are going to fall prey to it. You are still human. You still have the same desires that any other man does, you know?”
Shortly after he joined the Bears, Frazier, who was one of the starting cornerbacks when Chicago won Super Bowl XX, would oftentimes be approached by a friend, or a friend of a friend, who would ask him to come to a party. His notoriety as a Bears player would be great for the gathering because it would encourage more people to show up—especially women. “Well, I am twenty-two, twenty-three years old,” Frazier says, reflecting on those days. “If I show up at that party and some girl starts hitting on me, it’s going to be hard to get in my car and drive home, you know? So what I tried to do is avoid those kinds of situations as best I could. I might say, ‘I’ll see if I can make it,’ knowing that I wouldn’t because if I showed up, I’d fall prey to that temptation.”
CHILD CELEBRITIES
The battle doesn’t stop with the players and coaches. Anyone who has seen reality television in recent years knows how dad’s wealth and celebrity can make the kids just as popular (and vulnerable) to the high school sex and party scene. It’s about status, albeit, unearned, that makes them the cool kid whose dad played or coached in the NFL.
The fathers aren’t stupid. They know this. In fact, NFL fathers who have been exposed to NFL groupies might be the hardest dads in the world to fool.
Jeff Saturday, the longtime Indianapolis Colts center who signed a two-year free agent contract with the Green Bay Packers this off-season, has eleven- and five-year-old sons and a nine-year-old daughter. He says he’ll keep the sex conversations practical rather than getting too heavy into religion.
“When you’re fourteen and you are with a girl who’s telling you she’ll do anything you want, that’s tough,” he says. “Every man who isn’t a believer will tell you this is something you should do. This is what makes you a man. That’s not true.
“You can’t put yourself in a position where you know you are going to fail. Once you are on the couch in the dark, pants coming off, it’s really too late. You have to make this decision on your own, and it has to have a conviction deep inside you.”
Mike Singletary, whose youngest son was thirteen and his oldest twenty-three in the fall of 2011, took a different approach.
“I told my sons that the most important thing is that we want to honor God with our lives,” Singletary shares. “Before you go anywhere and do anything, make sure you have your mind made up.
Don’t go somewhere and ‘What if this woman comes up? Maybe if she’s a blonde. Maybe if she’s tall. Maybe if . . .’ No. You know what? It’s no. I’m not going to compromise. I have to answer to God.
“I want my sons to be men of honor, and I tell them about the mistakes I made because no one talked to me about those things, and I just tell them the truth.”
Denver Broncos safety Brian Dawkins played in his ninth Pro Bowl following the 2011 season, placing him in a tie with former Tampa Bay safety John Lynch for second most Pro Bowls at the position, one behind former Washington Redskins safety Ken Houston.
Dawkins says talking only goes so far. Kids get tired of lectures. He’s depending on his kids seeing how he treats one very important woman every day to guide their behavior.
“It’s not so much what I say to them; it’s more that they see how I treat their mother every day,” Dawkins says. “I want to be a reflection of the proper way to treat women. I know the temptation is going to come; it’s only natural that they’ll start looking at girls in that way. But I want them to see the women as someone’s sister and mother instead of as an object. Once they start seeing them as an object to have or take, that’s when they get in trouble.”