In this episode of Faith & Clarity, Dr. Mark Turman is joined by Dr. Ryan Denison and Bobby Dagnel for a thoughtful conversation on the intersection of sports and faith. Together, they explore why sports hold such a powerful sway in our culture and how competition can reflect deeper themes of beauty, courage, sacrifice, and struggle that point beyond the game itself.
The conversation touches on the rapidly changing landscape of modern athletics, including NIL contracts, the player transfer portal, and the growing concerns around sports gambling. Ryan and Bobby also reflect on the unique spiritual opportunities found in sports, how teams, locker rooms, and competition can become places of influence, character formation, and faithful witness. This wide-ranging and engaging discussion invites fans, athletes, and believers alike to consider how faith can shape the way we play, watch, and engage with the world of sports, and how God can be at work even in the arena.
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Topics
(0:00) Introduction to Faith and Clarity
(1:28) Meet the guests: Dr. Ryan Denison and Bobby Dagnel
(2:41) Sports as a universal language
(7:03) Bobby Dagnel’s journey as a sports chaplain
(14:11) The global passion for sports
(18:08) Theology of play and Sabbath
(22:49) Sports metaphors in the Bible
(29:11) The evolution of college sports
(32:12) The impact of NIL on college athletes
(35:31) The growing problem of sports gambling
(41:57) Understanding the transfer portal
(51:11) The role of faith in sports
(56:14) Conclusion and final thoughts
Resources
- National Collegiate Athletic Association
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- Sign-up for a Denison Forum newsletter: DenisonForum.org/subscribe
About Bobby Dagnel
For over four decades, Bobby Dagnel has dedicated his life to serving the local church. Utilizing the biblical insight and practical wisdom that guided his three pastorates, Bobby’s retirement now focuses on the encouragement and motivational enrichment of student-athletes, coaches, and leaders. Bobby and his wife, Patti, have been married for 42 years and are the proud parents of a daughter and a son, and the prouder grandparents of two grandkids.
About Dr. Ryan Denison
Dr. Ryan is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum and the author of The Focus newsletter, contributing writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from B. H. Carroll Theological Institute and an MDiv from Truett Seminary. Ryan has also taught at B. H. Carroll and Dallas Baptist University. He and his wife, Candice, live in East Texas and have two children.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Dr. Mark Turman serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of the Faith & Clarity podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Lake Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry degree at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for thirty-five years, including twenty-five years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas. Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of our day from a biblical perspective, helping believers discern today’s news and culture through the lens of faith. Led by Dr. Jim Denison and a team of contributing writers, we offer trusted insight through The Daily Article, a daily email newsletter and podcast, along with articles, podcasts, interviews, books, and other resources. Together, these form a growing ecosystem of Christ-centered content that equips readers to respond to current events not with fear or partisanship, but with clarity, conviction, and hope. To learn more visit DenisonForum.org.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to Faith and Clarity. I’m Mark Turman. We’re here again, trying to equip you with hope through the issues of our day, helping you grow closer to Christ, rather than to be deformed by fear and by other things that discourage us. Today we’re gonna have a great conversation about the intersection of sports games and how they relate to our faith.
You know, I don’t know if you realize this or not, but it came clearer to me recently that sports and games and just the ability to play are kind of like music, food, or art. They’re just you ubiquitous in something of a tour to force within our life. Sports and games have the ability to express beauty and goodness.
Courage and struggle. A lot of things that just really epitomize what it means to be a human being. Sometimes they demonstrate both the best or the worst of the human spirit. And we’re gonna talk today with a couple of friends about how faith and sports or play [00:01:00] intersect together. How can how can our faith really inform and form the way that we engage, either as players or as participants and fans and how how it goes the other direction as well.
How can our participation in games and sports, how can that really inform and kind of, direct our faith? Just kinda wondering if those things that, if those two things are a two-way street, I think they are. So let’s roll, let’s jump right in. My guest today are familiar, at least on some level. Dr. Ryan Denison is our senior editor for Theology.
He’s been on our podcast a number of times. Ryan, welcome back. We’re glad to have you. Good
Dr. Ryan Denison: morning. Glad to be here.
Dr. Mark Turman: All right. We also have a longtime friend, Bobby Dagnel and I are from the same hometown in East Texas, and we have followed similar career paths, have many of the same mentors. But Bobby like me, has pastored churches for 40 something years.
Right, Bobby? That’s [00:02:00] correct. And, one of the things that’s been unique to Bobby’s journey is that not only has he been pastoring churches, but he is also served as chaplain most recently for the Texas tech football team and athletic department. And before that, the Alabama football team. Lots of good years in various places, particularly in Lubbock.
And I have a child that lives in Lubbock these days, so I’m there fairly frequently and have gotten to know West Texas in the last decade on a level I never thought was gonna come. But it’s been a good season to be a Texas Tech Red Raider. And maybe we’ll get you to tell us a little bit about that world.
Some but before we get on, just set the context here a little bit. Boy, sports are everywhere all the time, right? We just finished the college football Championship. We’ll get into that hopefully a little bit. This podcast is gonna land right before the Super Bowl. So we’ll just call this our Super Bowl edition.
Interesting enough, the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy [00:03:00] will also be starting the same weekend as the Super Bowl. And looking down the road a little bit the rest of the world would want us to remember that the summer is gonna bring the World Cup Soccer experience. And a lot of that is gonna happen here in the United States.
So as we get started, I think I know the answer to this, but this is mostly for our audience’s benefit. Guys. I want to ask you, how would you broadly describe yourself when it comes to sports? And I’m gonna give you four options. One of those is forget it. I don’t care anything about sports. I’d rather go to a concert or a movie.
If that’s you, you may be checking out of this podcast already if you’re listening. Another option, guys, is, hey, you’re friendly to sports. That is. You don’t mind sports. You might have played a sport sometime in your past and you’d go to a Super Bowl party, but you’re going mostly for the friends in the food and the halftime show.
You’re not gonna pay pay much attention to the game. That’s another option. The third option is you’re a [00:04:00] fan. You have favorite teams, you have favorite players, and you generally have a weekly awareness of at least your favorite team or your favorite player. And then the last option, which I really think probably applies to both you guys, but I’ll let you on, answer yourself.
And that is you’re a fanatic. You have a fixation on one or more or all of major sports events, teams, players, and your fixation on sports really is a significant spiritual temptation toward idolatry. Those are the four categories. Forget it, friendly fan or fanatic. I consider myself a fan. I like several teams.
I know something about players and especially during baseball and golf season, I have certain people that I watch consistently. My wife is in the friendly category. She will go to a Super Bowl party, she’ll sit and watch some of a game, but she won’t care too much about it. And she’ll spend at least an equal [00:05:00] amount of time focused on her phone rather than on the game.
So where are you guys on this spectrum of description?
Bobby Dagnel: Rodney?
Dr. Ryan Denison: Good for me. I’d probably go on the fanatic side of it for, fanatic for baseball and basketball fans like borderline fanatic for football. And then I really want to be a fanatic for hockey and just don’t have the margin or the knowledge to really get into that yet. But. When playoffs come around, playoff hockey is awesome.
I just can’t keep, can’t find the time and energy to keep hope, keep up with it during the regular season, but for me it’s, it’s probably more fanatic than fan.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay.
Bobby Dagnel: I would say I, Bobby, how
Dr. Mark Turman: about you?
Bobby Dagnel: I would say I’ve evolved somewhat. At one time, I would say, yeah, I’m even hesitant now to use the word fanatic, because if you look up fanatic, it means a person who’s imbalanced in their thinking.
It’s not really a monik that I [00:06:00] want. In fact, I used to tell our players, I said, you know, you have to play for your brothers beside you because you don’t play for the fans. Because, you know, fan is short for fanatic, and for, you know, you, you’ll never please a group that’s imbalanced in their thinking.
You know what, what has evolved? You know, when I was a young man, I probably just enjoyed the fanatical side of competition, of beating an opponent, you know, and and that applied to any sport, you know, who’s, who’s going to dominate another opponent. And but I think what’s evolved for me through the years is just I almost looked at it as.
An appreciation the artistry of it. I know the discipline and the commitment and the sacrifice that these guys go through. And really, and this, and this would apply a broad range, whether it’s literary skills, musical skills, athletic skills, just knowing the discipline that it takes to perform at the highest level.
I just have great admiration for that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. And that’s, [00:07:00] that’s a great word for us to, to start with for sure. You guys tell us a little bit just briefly Bobby starting with you about just how your interest and, and the intersection of faith in sports, where did that come about and how did you kind of, how’d you kinda walk into the door of being a chaplain in a sports context to begin with?
Bobby Dagnel: You know, my, you know, our, our pre podcast conversation is probably just 180 from Ryan who had some aspirations of going into chaplaincy early on. And mine just kind of arose organically. Churches where I served after seminary, I’d gone to First Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa, and several coaches, football coaches, strength staff attended our church position coaches.
And as they got to know me, I got to know them and they kind of knew my story. I mean, I, my background’s in sports growing up, playing sports. And they started saying things like, man, you need to start coming to practice. Our guys need to know you. You need to know them. And then it evolved into, [00:08:00] Hey, would you be available to do a chapel for us on a Friday night at the hotel before the game on Saturday?
Then that would evolve into, Hey, why don’t you just travel with us? And so it, and it seems like that opportunity you know, when I left there and went to Hemphill, Texas for my first pastorate, you know, I, I was plugged in with the high school football team, and again, it was through the relationship with coaches of how, you know, how I ended up in those roles and same thing in, in Lubbock again.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Okay. That’s great background. Ryan, you, you have some history in this area as well, so talk about how your interest both in sports and in faith have kind of come together. I know you had a lot of excitement about doing this podcast on this particular topic, so talk about how that kind of has grown in your own life.
Dr. Ryan Denison: I’ve, I’ve loved sports for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been drawn, especially kind of the, the [00:09:00] people side of it and the team side of it as much as the competition side, sometimes even more my favorite, the reason baseball’s my favorite sport is the team building aspects of it are just I just find them to be fascinating with the minor leagues and everything else.
When it comes to actually watching the games, I enjoy it, but I enjoy the, the team side of it more. And so as when you get into that, you start to become a fan of players as much as you do teams. And I think one of the really cool things about. Sports in general is it gives people a platform to share their faith when they are a Christian.
That is unique to our culture, really in a lot of ways. There’s not really a lot of other I mean, maybe you could talk about actors in some forms, but there, sports seems like it’s unique within our culture in terms of giving athletes permission to share the gospel publicly and a way that a lot of other parts of our culture don’t.
And so I’ve always found that interesting and encouraging when you see it. And it’s been, it’s also given me ano another way to kind of follow people and, and enjoy the, [00:10:00] and enjoy the game when you can root for players like, I, I hate the Philadelphia Eagles with a passion, but there are certain players on that team that I really find myself rooting for because of their faith in large part.
And I, I think there’s, there’s elements of that as well that I think it just adds another level to the enjoyment you can drive from the sport that I has really deepened my my fando.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah we’ll just call out a, an apology from Faith and Clarity to all the Eagles fans right now, and we hope you don’t.
I
Dr. Ryan Denison: I
Dr. Mark Turman: do. We hope you don’t depart from us at this moment, but you, you just have to understand how, you know, cowboy fans just have to live life in a certain way and, and yeah, yeah. You, we understand and we know the few, and we know the feeling is mutual from our friends in the Philadelphia area, so For sure.
Dr. Ryan Denison: Absolutely. I mean, could I really be a Cowboys fan if I didn’t hate the Eagles? Just the same way could Eagles fans really call themselves Eagles fans? They didn’t hate the Cowboys. I mean, that’s just, it is, that’s part of sports.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, definitely a litmus test in every, in every real way. Bobby, for, for our[00:11:00] purposes today you are for us, something of an insider because of your chaplain work.
The amount of time you’ve spent inside of locker rooms, particularly college D one locker rooms, how would you describe the presence of faith in the teams that you’ve intersected with, and how have you seen the presence of faith grow or even diminish over time?
Bobby Dagnel: Yep. Thank you, mark. That’s a good question.
You know, the, the interesting thing about the dynamics of a locker room is that religion is prevalent. And I distinguished that from, you know, a, a genuine formative faith. In that there, you know, I always say from, I told our players one time in recent years at Tech, I said, you know, between, between our pre-game meal and kickoff we will have prayed six times.
For me, offering a blessing at the meal for the pregame meal doing chapel immediately following, I’ll pray at the end of that we get to the stadium. They walk out into the stadium [00:12:00] before they start changing clothes, they break up into position groups and they pray, go back to the locker room.
They gather hands in a circle around the locker room, do the Lord’s Prayer, and then when it’s time to be called up to go out the head coach calls on me to offer a prayer, and then they run out of the locker room to the end zone, and they offer another prayer. And so that’s six times that we’ve prayed in the span of three hours.
And so I’m not helping.
Dr. Mark Turman: Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with
Bobby Dagnel: that. No. But I, I think for a great many, it’s you know, it’s a rabbit’s foot for them, you know, they’re wanting a good, you know, in their mind they’re praying for a good outcome. And the, the opposite side of that is those who have a formative faith in their life.
That their faith very much informs who they are and how they make their li, how they live their life, and the choices and decisions they make. You know, with those acknowledge. The Lord after the game when they’re thanking the Lord Jesus. You know, for this [00:13:00] opportunity the ones I know that have had the most formative faith are the guys whose faith has empowered them, enabled them, and has shaped their choices and decisions on a daily basis that stack up the good behaviors that lead to the outcome that they desire.
These, these were all guys who take their face seriously. These are process oriented individuals and they’re not outcome oriented. They’re understanding, they have the maturity. Understand that if, if they immerse themselves in the process on a daily basis, statistics are on their side, that the outcome is going to be favorable.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Or, and, and if not, they’ll they’ll be able to handle it
Bobby Dagnel: Yes.
Dr. Mark Turman: In a way that’s healthy rather than destructive.
Bobby Dagnel: And, and those that do take it seriously, I mean it they truly do see their, their athleticism as a gift from God and their seeking and this short window that they have to use it as a platform [00:14:00] to impact others.
And they know that it’s a unique window of time in their life that they’ll never have again, and they’re trying to seize the opportunity.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good, a good word. And kind of raises this other question of you know, as an American culture. Are we in some way unique? I mean, we, you know, the reason I started with this at the beginning was, you know, all children play.
You don’t have to, you don’t have to teach children that they need to go play. They just want to play. And it’s just natural to being a kid. And unfortunately, we sometimes have this idea that sports is limited to young people and, and at the highest levels, certainly. But we all have this passion for playing some kind of game and we we get confronted with the reality of what our skills can do and take us to a certain level, that type of thing.
But even this morning, Bobby, I was listening to the radio when I got up to get ready for work today and the, the host of the morning show, they wanted to interview a British [00:15:00] sportscaster who covers American football games for the audience in the uk. And the reason they wanted to talk to him, they got him on the radio this morning.
Was because he seemed to have a new and fresh level of excitement about calling a professional football game that they weren’t hearing in American commentators in the last number of weeks. And that kind of brought the idea of we ought to at least mention the World Cup soccer experience, even if we’re not big soccer fans, which Americans seem to be somewhat coming around to embracing soccer on a global scale like the rest of the world does.
But is our passion and sometimes fixation on sports as Americans, is that unique to us or is it just common to all people in all places all times.
Bobby Dagnel: My, I think the, I think Americans would pale in comparison to the global community to what they call [00:16:00] football, what we call soccer. I, I think our fanaticism kind of pales in comparison to what you see on a global scale to their football. But I do think there is something innate in all of us, I think, in being fearfully and wonderfully made. I think God has empowered us through, you know, through this certainly as believers knowing that we’re empowered by the spirit of the resurrected Christ to become more than what we’re in this process of becoming.
And I think there is an innate drivenness that we, that God has given us to be utilized. And I know through the years, and I, I know that our most mature players see each day as a testing of their, of their capacity, of what. They can do of trying to grow this giftedness that God has given them.
And so I do see that kind of passion and desire to become more and more and just to continue to raise the bar in their own personal life.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it just, it just, it seems [00:17:00] to be just woven into the deep fabric of human beings. I know. I know. When I was helping lead mission teams into the mountains of Honduras, we would hike for hours and carry gear on the backs of, of mules and we would carry medicines and bibles and the projector to show the Jesus film.
But we always packed a dozen soccer balls and a pump. Because even in a remote village, you would have people, as soon as you blew up a soccer ball, people of all ages, men and women, boys and girls, they would start getting their machetes out. They would clear field and they would make a goal and they would start playing soccer as soon as the ball got tossed out of the bag.
And that’s just the way it goes in a lot of places in the world. Which Ryan kind of made me go back to a memory some, I don’t know, 35 years ago maybe I was pastoring in East Texas. I drove to Dallas for a church leadership conference. One of the seminars that [00:18:00] was offered in that conference was a conversation about this topic today about for, about faith and play or sports.
And it was the only time I heard anybody raise the conversation of a theology of play. And I just wanted to get a few thoughts from you and maybe a few follow on thoughts from Bobby about. Do you think that we should work more on this idea of a theology of play? I started wondering, does it have any connections to what the Bible teaches us about Sabbath and about rest?
You think there’s anything there for us to try to think on and work on when we’re reading our Bible and thinking about our sports as well?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I, I do think it can be helpful as a balance to the temptation to take our faith so seriously. I mean, so many of the things in scripture are about what God expects from us, how to be in close relationship with him, how to avoid sin in our lives, that it can be really easy to begin to [00:19:00] forget that God also created us to enjoy life.
I mean, God didn’t have to design a world in which we could have fun. He didn’t have to design a world in which we could play, but he chose to do so and he chose to do so for a reason. And I think that reason is that he wired us to, he, he finds pleasure in watching us have fun. He finds pleasure in us having joy in our lives.
And I think whether it’s sports or play of any sort. I think it’s a chance to not only embrace that joy and find that joy, but oftentimes to do so in community with others. Because there really is as Bobby was talking about, there are aspects of just community building that come through sports or that come whether it’s, or even just playing a board game with people or playing in any sort when it’s involves other people, it can deepen and strengthen relationships in ways that you can’t really accomplish when it’s more of a goal oriented or serious endeavor.
But when it’s, when that friendship, when that time together is built around enjoyment, [00:20:00] then it really does develop a level of community that’s not present otherwise. And I think that is one of the aspects of play that we see in scripture. One of the aspects that we really need to, to take advantage of.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Bobby, you have any thoughts in that direction?
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, I sort of think the, the loosening of the bow stringing is important. You know, in the the idea of respite and Sabbath I think is a part of that. You know, it’s the, of course, the interesting contrast is what some of these highly driven and I’m, I’m speaking out of an athletics world of what highly driven, motivate, highly motivated individuals what they consider fun.
I recall a conversation with Jonathan Allen who was a first round draft pick out of Alabama defensive lineman with, and was taken by the commanders. And he was being, he was in an interview and he was talking about, and I thought it was interesting and, and this shows you the, how the process is so ingrained in that particular program.
They were asking Jonathan in an [00:21:00] interview about. The sacrifices he had to make as a player. And he said I did not have a normal college life. He said, I, I wasn’t, he said, I can only think of three individuals in three years of his three years at Alabama that could have a normal college life and perform at the level that was expected of him.
Anyway, he was talking about all his sacrifice and, you know, and how he worked to become who he was. And, and the reporter said in response that doesn’t sound like much fun. And Jonathan Allen’s response was winning national championships is fun.
And you know, there’s individuals who are wired that way.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it just, yeah. And just anyway, just so many interesting things to think about, and we’ll get to this in a minute. Just about, especially on the college level. And maybe even. Getting lower into the high school years, but just how your, your play, your sport ends up turning into work and what [00:22:00]happens in your perspective when that happens?
And many people, you know, you guys have alluded to this, other people will say, you know, I, I wanted to turn, I, I loved this sport and I wanted to do, I wanted to be connected to this sport for the rest of my life. I have a good friend who excelled at very high levels as a golfer when he was in college.
And when he got outta college, he want, he didn’t ha he didn’t manage to get on the tour, but he wanted to be involved in golf. And so he started working in the golf industry. And what he found was not long after that, he wasn’t able to play golf anymore because he was working so much helping other people play golf.
And and so he is I lost my golf game because I was working in the industry of golf rather than in the environment of just playing golf. And it kind of changed his perspective for a while. But let’s bring it back around Bobby for a second to how how sports kind of reveals to us as you and I were talking earlier this week about the [00:23:00] nature of faith, how faith, how actually sports might actually be able to help us in the character formation that the Bible wants us to pursue in Christ.
So much, especially at the level of teams that you’ve worked with at Tech and in Alabama and other places. Success in any endeavor, but including sports requires ambition. You talked a lot already in our podcast about discipline. How did those qualities kind of align themselves with some of the things that God calls us to?
When we’re looking at scripture about what it means to be a follower of Christ, how do those things parallel each other in your mind?
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve found it, of course, I, I, I, I see things through those eyes. And, and that was one of the things that was. Appealing to me as a new believer was the, the athletic metaphors that were found in scripture.
And mark, one of your mentors and mine, the man who actually led me to the Lord, what was [00:24:00] significant in that conversation? The evening that he actually led me to Christ was, you know, just having come out of my athletic career ending. He used a great mini, in fact, he used all sports metaphors to talk about what it means to be a follower of Christ, and then challenged me at that point, you know, and the idea of being challenged to become a follower of Christ certainly appealed to my personality and embracing that as a challenge to become that, to become the person that, that, that.
You know, that God’s created me to become. And so I, you know, I, I see that platform. I see athletics as an arena for faith to be expressed in the disciplines of the faith that translate to athletic development as well. I mean, the apostle, I mean, what Paul saw I, I think Paul was a fan of athletics ’cause he, he understood sacrifice of, of these athletes.
And, and, and it seemed to be the expectation of Paul. I mean if you’re [00:25:00] using, using First Corinthians nine that, you know, he talks about the great sacrifice, the great self-discipline that, that they endure for a temporal crown. And then his parallel challenge is if they’re willing to put forth that much effort for something that’s temporal then how much more so we should be able be willing to do so in the eternal.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, just as, as we were thinking about that earlier in the week, just preparing it just, it kind of occurred to me that basically every sports metaphor in the Bible comes from the pen of the Apostle Paul. And that’s true if you accept that Hebrews might have been written by Paul. I kind of stretched my mind.
Maybe you guys can correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not sure of any other biblical writer, John or Peter or anybody. I can’t think of anybody else that uses sports metaphors other than the Apostle Paul, is that I don’t think I’m right about that.
Bobby Dagnel: If you, I mean, you could maybe consider John who, it’s not a [00:26:00] direct athletic parallel, but he for whatever reason felt the need that he and Peter were running together to the grave, and he beat him there.
So I never understood the point of that. There was just some personal competition going on there, and he wanted his audience to know that he won.
Dr. Mark Turman: It is, it is kind of an an odd comment in the Easter story, and it, it is, you know, John, John is almost always trying to push the attention away from himself except for that moment right there, right?
Dr. Ryan Denison: You do wonder if maybe he just spent a lot of his life with Peter talking about how he was the first one into the tomb, and it’s no, we need to clarify this a little bit. He was the first one in, but only because I got there and had the sense to stop. And so
Dr. Mark Turman: yeah, you could, you could hear him telling this story over and over and over again, and, and John always saying, now Peter, make sure you get this right.
Remember that, remember you get this right about who got there first.
Bobby Dagnel: And I’ve always found it too, like the conversation between the [00:27:00] disciples, you know, when they’re discussing who’s the greatest and hmm. At first, you’re kind of appalled that they’re even having that conversation. How do you sit at the feet of Jesus and hearing his teachings and then concern yourself with such things of who’s the greatest?
But you know, to even consider Jesus’s response, he didn’t, you know, he didn’t rebuke them, chastise them oh my goodness, I can’t believe you’re so shallow. You’re talking about this. He seemed to just redirect those energies, those innate energies towards something that was productive, kingdom wise.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. And that’s a, a really great segue to where I want to go next, which is one of the challenges of sports at almost every level which is what I’m just calling for a moment, celebrityism. And we certainly have real challenges with this in the greater context of the kingdom of God and the local church.
A lot of challenges around, people becoming celebrities, celebrity pastors, whatnot, whatnot. [00:28:00] And the influence of big money. And maybe set a little context for this. I was in a leadership seminar a few years ago, and really great really humble, really wise ministry leader was leading this seminar.
But he said to all of us, you know, you need, you guys need to make sure that now in, in addition to your work as a pastor or a church minister, whatever role you have right now, you need to go and get your domain name and claim it for yourself. And, you know, he said, you know, Hey, you, you need to go get mark turman.com or mark turman.org, and you need to nail that down because you know, you, you, this needs to be your platform.
And at some point, you may not be at your church or in your role, and you’ll need to have, quote unquote, your own thing. And we see a lot of that in the world of sport. You know, I did some research this week. I learned the story of Livy Dune, or Dun, however you pronounce her name. She was an [00:29:00] LSU gymnast and now has 10 million people that follow her on social media.
She’s moving into possible roles in film and television, that type of thing. I’m just wondering what some of y’all’s thoughts are about some of these challenges and wondering if, if Money Profit Celebrityism is threatening to take the joy out of sports by turning it into so much of an industry.
Bobby, what’s your take on that?
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, the the, the game is changing and, and again, I’m just speaking from a collegiate sports level. I mean, NFL has already been an entertainment venue. And I guess sports, professional sports, all sports are a entertainment venue. Billions upon billions of dollars involved in that industry.
The college game is evolving. It I get people who say it’s hard to be a fan. What I keep in mind is these are 18 to 22 year olds that we’re [00:30:00] talking about 23 year, 23 year olds. NIL is changing dynamics. And this may be a topic for another conversation, but, but. You know, what I see is the players are not changing so much, the monies.
I do think a challenge is how do you keep young men motivated who have that kind of financial capacity now I think it’s challenging for adults who reach a place of financial capacity to stay motivated in their own growth and development. So imagine an 18 to 23-year-old now having a million dollars a year.
You know, I saw a recent signee reports are that Tex new quarterbacks $5 million quarterback which is more than the collective bargaining agreement he would’ve made as a rookie. Probably but you know, the Libby Dunn, I think has the highest NIL valuation or had the highest NIL valuation in the country at one time.
I do encourage fans, don’t lose the enjoyment of this. These are still, I call the kids that we’re enjoying [00:31:00] at 18 to 23. The game is evolving. It’s, it’s going to evolve more than what we’ve had this year. But you know, and going back to the hero side of this people are drawn to their heroes in the church world.
You know, the pastor that, I mean pastor in First Baptist Church, Warren that served down there 35 years. Pastor graduated from seminary. That was his first pastor at say 35 years. That’s my hero. You know, but you never hear about that faithful pastor. It’s always the guy who has the booming growth and that sort of thing.
You know, it’s been interesting watching the dynamics of Texas Tech football fans, you know, now that they were competitive, won the Big 12 championship of how quick they jump on the bandwagon. They had just been vilified for as long as I, the 15 years I was associated with them. I’ve rambled there and made no point whatsoever.
But the, the game is evolving into something that we’re just not familiar with. [00:32:00]
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s just, there’s just a lot of dynamics in play. And I, I do want to get into just understanding a little bit more about how college sports are operating these days. ’cause there’s been such a big transformation there.
But before we move on, Ryan, I just wanted to get you to comment a minute, a minute just about the idea of, of, do, do Christians need to think about themselves as a brand? Kinda like that guy that was recommending that I go get my own domain on the web. What are, what are some of the challenges, some of the biblical things that might confront us when we start trying to think of ourselves as individual brands?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it can be helpful in the sense of the reason someone’s brand is valuable is that they excel at what they do most often. That’s not always the case, but especially in a sports context, it’s usually the athletes. If you’re the third string center on the football team, chances are your brand’s not as good as the starting [00:33:00] quarterback.
Because like you’re just not as public a face, you’re not as prominent on the team. And what you do still has enormous value to the team, but it’s not as public facing. And I do think there’s something to the idea that as we think about our brand as Christians, is that brand aligned with God’s calling for our lives?
Are we content with God’s calling for our lives? And if we know what God’s calling is, are we pursuing that passionately? Are we trying to live that out the best we can? And are we, ’cause ultimately our brain as Christians is followers of Jesus. Literal, literal Christ is literally what that means. And I think being aware of that in the context of seeing our brand is when we act. Publicly in our faith, we speak on behalf of Jesus. We represent Jesus. And the same way someone that you see, you see sponsors drop athletes when they go through controversy and all that kind of stuff. Jesus is never gonna drop us.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t do damage to his brand when we claim to serve him well. And don’t do that well. And so I think it can be [00:34:00] helpful in that regard, is just a way, another way to, to think about our responsibilities as Christians. If we take it to the extent of I need to develop something that’s mine, I think that can be problematic.
I could see that being a way for the, for Satan to kind of get in and take something that God could genuinely use to help others know him better and make it about us. And that’s, that, that’s never gonna be God’s calling for our lives, is to make our lives about us because that’s scripture’s clear. Our lives are meant to be about Jesus and how to serve him well.
And so I think there can be good and bad to it based on our motivations behind it and what we go into it with. But it is an interesting concept and an interesting way to think about it.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s just, you know, whether it’s from the context of a sports platform because you have abilities and you perform well there, or in, you know, it could be in business, it could be in other forms of art or that type of thing.
You know, social media and the interconnectedness of technology and the [00:35:00] web give all of us some kind of an opportunity to quote unquote create a brand out of ourselves. But I like what you said about, you know, if we’re gonna make it about ourselves, that may not be wholly and inherently wrong, but as believers it’s not supposed to.
Ultimately every endeavor in life’s not ultimately supposed to be about us. And we live in a world, in a culture of hyper individualism. And branding yourself or trying to make a platform for yourself can have some real inherent dangers in it. Whether you’re coming out of sports or any of these other environments before I get you guys to explain the transformations within the college world of sports, I wanted to chase the rabbit trail for a minute about the growing phenomenon that is not new.
It’s been here with us for all times, but it’s shown up in some new ways, and that’s the problem of gambling as it relates to sports. And we’re seeing this particularly around young men [00:36:00] as fans of all kinds of sports. But now we’re seeing seemingly new and growing number of stories coming out of players involved in teams, throwing games you know, manipulating their performance because they’ve bet on the game secretly.
I wanted to get both of you maybe starting with you, Bobby, to talk about just what you’re watching, what you know, obviously concerns you about the phenomenon of sports betting, either in an individual capacity, that person that may be listening to us who is harboring some kind of a secret activity relative to gambling.
Even take it on a macro level if you want as we see big influences within the sports world. What’s, what’s your perspective relative to, to the problem with sports gambling, Bobby?
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, and I think it’s going to be a growing problem. I think and I know nothing, this is not something I’ve observed in the, in the locker room.
I do [00:37:00] think it’s going to become exposed that more of our college players, professional athletes are involved in this. I think it’s I mean there’s an addiction. These are addictive personalities that, that you’re dealing with. I mean, these are personalities that are, I mean, they’re all or nothing in everything that they do.
They’re all or nothing. They do nothing in moderation. And so I think it’s just going, the more the, and the reason I allude to the college side is that as the money grows so will the gambling and the opportunity as players to maybe manipulate outcomes in some way. I think their addictive competitive personalities will carry over for those who are drawn to that, that it will carry over there as well.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Ryan, what are your thoughts on this topic?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I, I agree that it’s gonna continue to grow as a problem. And I, I think a lot of the reason why is just, if you look at the, the marketing side of Sports, DraftKings, all [00:38:00] these other all these other gambling websites are just becoming more and more of sports becoming more and more dependent on these gambling sites for their revenues as TV contracts go down and as things change, I mean, I, I remember listening or following a conversation among several of the Dallas Mavericks be kind of bloggers and, and YouTube podcasters that I follow, and they talked about how they don’t think they could run their shows without, they could afford their shows without advertising from gambling sites because it’s so prolific.
And when you, when you make gambling essential to the money side of sports, you make it essential to other sides as well. And it really is unavoidable at, at this point where there, there’s no going back on it. And I think it’s helpful from the, to understand that though, from the perspective of if this is here to stay and it is here to stay, it just increases the need to figure out what to do with it because we can’t lament the way that things are or wish it would just go back to a past that’s never [00:39:00] coming back.
And we have to figure out what to do going forward. We have to figure out new ways to new ways to protect the athletes from themselves. New ways to protect the sports from, from people that could make a lot of money on outcomes going a certain way. And I, I think the good news is that it’s been around long enough now, and it’s entrenched enough now that I, I do think you’re starting to see more people recognize the dangers and the problems.
And so I’m hopeful that it, it’s not gonna be this won’t be a, this won’t be a long-term issue from that perspective. I, I do think they’ll figure it out because they need to. And just because they’re overall sports is, are pretty good at protecting themselves when they need to. You saw that with steroids and throughout baseball for example.
And I, I think this will, we’ll look back on this in 20 years as sort of, I think something along those lines.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Bobby, you had a thought.
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah. The, our programs, I know at the Power four level all the programs are going to Great Lakes to keep this issue in front of our student athletes. They’re [00:40:00] keenly aware that the that the monies disposable income that they’ve had, that they’ve never had before this, this is gonna become problematic for many.
And so they do constantly try to keep this issue in front of them. It’s talked about every semester, it’s kept in front of its players.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. And that’s a great, a great thing that they’re doing. And, and this is a prolific problem. Like I said, it’s just in some ways it, it becomes a potential attack on just this very fundamental desire to just enjoy something and to.
To play competitive experiences on, on a healthy level, not on a destructive level but then to monetize it. And we, we sin seem to have a tendency to try to monetize everything that we get involved with for a period of time. And it, and it, it’s not just the players who are tempted at times in this direction to manipulate outcomes, that type of thing.
But sports, gambling for [00:41:00] the fan is becoming a real, a real concern across the nation, around the world, in fact. And we’ve done podcasts. We write articles about some of the problems with that from the perspective of Christian faith. First, you know, just one thing I’d call out here is if, if you find yourself gambling and you don’t want your family to know about it, you don’t want your spouse to know about it, you don’t want your, whoever that’s important to you.
If, if you would be embarrassed that that was brought out into the light that you’ve been gambling. That ought to be an immediate red flag to you, that there’s something that you need to look at harder. And you know, I’m not gonna go in a diatribe about gambling at this point, but gambling can become an addiction.
And like all addictions, the devil wants to draw you into the darkness and keep you in the dark and not bring it out into the light. And that’s something that you need to pay attention to because as it comes to sports, it’s a real, real problem, connection that we’re gonna hear more about, as you guys have pointed out.
All right, I wanna go down this road. I got into a [00:42:00] conversation with some friends recently about the changes in college sports. There’s a lot of criticism that came out over the last couple of months about how the college football championship experience went this year. A lot of people calling for major changes.
Our, our friends up at Notre Dame had a particular perspective on this whole issue. But. I just, you know, okay. I am in the fan category. You guys are leaning at least toward that fanatic level, not meaning it as derogatory Bobby. But there’s two pillars in the transformation of at least D one college sports division one sports, which is something called NIL, which stands for name, image, and likeness contracts.
And then the other pillar is called the Player transfer portal. Now, this is not your audition to become ESPN Analyst guys, okay? This is not your audition for that, but I want each of you to take one of [00:43:00] these. Ryan, if you’ll explain to us briefly what NIL means for college athletes, and then Bobby, if you’ll take a moment after that to explain the transfer portal as it relates to, to players, which oh, by the way, was in the national news just yesterday.
We’ll come back to that. But Ryan, help us understand what this name, image, and likeness thing is that now dominates the way players and, and teams and donors and colleges. How does all that work?
Dr. Ryan Denison: It’s, it’s largely built around the idea that players should be able to make money off themselves, off their own name, off their own image, and off their own likeness.
And it used to be that you, if you were a, if you were a college football player, college, any sort of college athlete, you couldn’t, you would get in trouble for going to get paid to sign autographs. Like I remember Johnny Manzel getting in a lot of trouble for that. During, among other things he’s a different story, but in a lot of ways.
But it has I think in a lot [00:44:00] it’s been, it’s one of those interesting ideas where on the surface, it, it’s a good idea. I agree with the idea. People should be able to make money off their own, off their own image. The schools are making a ton of money off their image, so the players should be able to make that as well.
And and if we’re honest, a lot of that was already going on behind the scenes. It was just a matter of if you were gonna be overt enough about it to get caught or if some, or if one of the athletes was going to be foolish enough to. Show, like basically reveal themselves as having been paid. And so I, I do think on the, on the plus side, it, it’s, it’s a good concept and it should be, it’s, it’s right I think for athletes to be able to make money off their own name, image, and likeness.
The problems come with just, it’s kind of taken a lot of those previous problems that were in the background and shoved them into the light in ways that I think programs are still trying to get a grasp on.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s a phenomenon unlike anything we’ve seen out in the open. It may have been there for years in the [00:45:00] background and schools and players and programs, we get penalized for it by the ncaa.
But we, we’ve taken a whole new tack on it. And that’s how you’re seeing some of these players with. Very big contracts related to how they use their image to endorse products and that type of thing. Bobby, tell us about the transfer portal. How does that thing work and really seems to be a big challenge relative to loyalty when it comes to programs today?
Program? Tell us about the port, the portal.
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, the, you know, the transfer portal gives players opportunities and the rules are ever changing on that as to when you can do it. But there’s windows of opportunity when your coach leaves being one of those, when your head coach leaves, you have opportunity to enter into the transfer transfer portal.
There’s always a risk because if you do not get picked up on the portal some programs will not allow you to come back. And so there’s, there’s a, there’s a risk involved in entering the portal. The. [00:46:00] You know, one of the things I used to co when all this first started, you know, I told Coach McGuire I said, you know, we can lament about this.
And I said, there’s gonna be some older coaches that have difficulty transitioning to this. They’re gonna spend so much time and energy lamenting about the good old days of college athletics. But the challenge is gonna be how do you get on the forefront of this? Just embrace it. It’s what? It’s, and then how do you become better than anyone else at doing this?
The challenge, and this is what again, why I have such regard for Joey McGuire. You can go out and buy a roster. You know, tech was criticized this past year for their $28 million roster, you know, is the purported number that was spent. But there are programs that spent far more not to mention the reality that everyone is buying a roster now.
And the challenge though is bringing that roster together. Creating a team, creating community, creating a brotherhood. Joey McGuire is the best that I’ve encountered at doing that. And the little [00:47:00] things that we do you know, they have, we have a team breakfast every Thursday morning at different restaurants throughout the community.
They’re divided up into 10 different groups. The, the names change the personalities change in those groups. Each week they’re mixed and meshed and and they have breakfast and, and you have to come back at the team meeting that afternoon on Thursday afternoon and tell something about each one of those new teammates at your breakfast table that you did not know before.
And but just little things that he’s been able to do to mesh and create a brotherhood in a very short amount of time. Because that culture is really what creates the type of program that he’s been able to build and the success that he’s had.
Dr. Ryan Denison: Some of my favorite NIL stories are where like an entire offensive line will be sponsored by the local like Golden Corral or something like that.
And so there’s, there’s some really fun ways to do it too, that take advantage of stereotypes that help where everybody involved truly [00:48:00] benefits. And that’s the way it should work. It should, is that everybody involved, should,
Bobby Dagnel: should I somewhat was on the bubbles, you know, on all the first, when the conversations first started about NIL and all of this.
And then, you know, it really started in up 28, 20 19, the conversations were being had that this could be down the pike. And the conversations that evolved and the debates that evolved through that were interesting. What really pushed me over the edge from just being we’re giving them a scholarship.
They’re giving a, they’re given a cost of living stipend, that sort of thing. Is I started hearing so many athletic administrations across the country during COVID. We just wanna do what is best for our student athletes. My cynical side knew that that had never really driven the decision making processes of administrations.
It’s how do we make more money? And so that’s really what kind of pushed me over to the other side, advocating for the athletes being able to benefit from their own [00:49:00] name, image, likeness.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And you know, it was always an interesting thing that, you know, previously that if you wanted to transfer from one college to another, you had to sit out a year.
And those kinds of things, those, those rules never applied to coaches. And so you kind of scratch your head when you hear, hear some of those things, but you know, there’s lots, lots more to come. As you said, it’s evolving. It’s gonna continue to evolve. We don’t, we don’t know. Initially when we do something, we don’t know if we’re making it better or worse until we apply it some, and that’s gonna be true here.
And you know, it won’t be long before we start having some kind of conversation about high school athletes. Oh, no doubt in, in some of these regards as well, especially when you’re, you’re playing in a sport that has also become an industry. And one injury can change your future in a dr in a, in a single instant, right?
And every player knows that that is a possibility. Every time they go to [00:50:00] practice, every time they go to a game they’re one play away from not being able to play their game ever again. And then, you know, lots of research out there and lots of numbers, right? When you start doing the numbers, every level that you mature into a sport, there’s less and less opportunity for you to get to play based on.
The number of of spots available. So there’s a lot to think about and a lot for not only players, but also families and coaches and teams. Every, almost every time I turn around, there’s some story about a player who’s ended his career for one reason or another. And when you ask him what he misses most, he misses the relationships, right?
He misses the comradery, he misses that connection that he had to his teammates, to his coach, to that type of thing. And that’s something that we ought to really value, in my opinion, that the Bible teaches us the value of relationships, sports whether it’s a business or a team, creates opportunities for [00:51:00] that.
And we ought to try to figure out how to handle that in the best way possible for everybody involved. Which kinda leads me to maybe a couple places where we can land our conversation today. Bobby, you’ve done great work, have had great experiences being a chaplain. You’ve seen what Christians in these environments can do when they’re passionately walking with Christ, whether they’re a coach maybe they’re a leader or a player on the team in some way, or they relate to the, to the team and to the school in a certain way.
What, what would you say about the opportunities of being a witness for Christ in these environments? What’s the opportunity that’s, that’s living there?
Bobby Dagnel: It’s a, for coaches, it’s a it’s such a great platform for influence and, and shaping the lives of young men with qualities and virtues that are eternal and everlasting that transcend the game because that is really an issue.
I’ve seen, and I’ve done it long enough [00:52:00] to where that I’ve seen players struggle transitioning from their career, their playing career into everyday life and conversations that I’m having with them when they’re 28 and 29 years old and 30 years old now, just struggling to get traction in life.
And one of the things I always point them back to is the qualities that they’ve developed. The, the, the ability to be where their feet are pouring their self into mo into the moment, not thinking about outcomes, living the process. And, and that’s the coaches that I’ve known have understood that this was a God-given platform to shape the character of young men’s lives in a way that will give them, you know, a life after football.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And that’s just something I hope every one of them takes seriously. And Ryan, I I just wanted to kind of give you the last word in this regard in terms of a, a [00:53:00] call to prayer. For all of us that are in this conversation today, which is Ryan, what would you suggest would be some things for us to think about when we, when we go to pray for folks that are in this environment?
Bobby called it out a minute ago. You know, Hey, these are 18 to 22 year olds. If we’re talking about players, athletes in the, even in the middle school or grade school level, the high school level what would you suggest to us about how we might pray for players, for their families, for their coaches, for the administrators that surround all of these structures?
And then maybe a call out that you could give us for how we ought to pray ourselves about how we would approach sports, either as players or as fans. Some of our fandom needs to be redeemed in a very big way. That could be a whole other podcast in and of itself. But how would you encourage us to pray about others that [00:54:00] we cheer for, celebrate watch and how do we pray for ourselves when it comes to the way we look at sports
Dr. Ryan Denison: For others?
I think one of the main prayers in addition to just health, especially if they’re in a contact sport, just it’s amazing if you start a prayer asking someone to stay healthy or asking both teams to stay healthy, it gets a lot harder to then be the worst version of yourself towards them when you’ve already prayed for them.
And so I think health can be a great way to start. And just in general pray for good health and athletics. Also, just for the person, pray that they won’t lose themselves or define themselves by their athletics. ‘Cause Bobby talked about earlier, this, it really is a game where for the most part.
Most of these young people, even if they play up through college, college is gonna be kind of where the sport ends. And if from a very young age they’re defining themselves by, I am a football player, I am a basketball player, I’m a baseball player, that’s what I do, that’s who I am. Then graduating from college or [00:55:00] going off to college is a really tough time to try and restart your identity or form a new identity based on something else.
And so I think sports can be great in the sense of teaching us life lessons and teaching, helping us develop discipline and principles that are really helpful, but really just praying that kids won. Young people won’t make that the foundation of who they are and how they see themselves. As, I think a great place to start and as when it comes to praying for us, I think remembering that it’s not meant to be the foundation of who we are.
We’re not fans of teams as primary to who we are. Our identity needs to stay in Christ, and our identity needs to be founded in Christ. And if there’s anything about the way that we live, whether it’s in sports or any other aspect of our lives that doesn’t fit that identity, then it’s gonna create conflict in us and it’s gonna create situations where we have to choose.
Do I, okay, do I want to live today? Do I want to experience this moment as a Christian, or do I want to experience this moment as a fan or a fanatic or, and when we have to, when we [00:56:00] look at it that way as a choice that we have to make, then I think it can, it can help guard against some of those temptations to race, sports, or any other thing we’re very passionate about, beyond where it should be on our list of priorities.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a good word. A lot, a lot for us to think about, right? Because sports games play just woven into the way God made us. And like every other gift that God gives us, we need to learn to steward it well and not let it get twisted or warped out of what God intended it to be. And like I said Ryan earlier in the podcast, I think God, like every parent just loves to watch his kids have fun.
I’m a grandparent now. Bobby’s a grandparent. You’re a father with two kids that are active. And it is just so fun to watch your kids discover their abilities and, and find something that they enjoy and really just have a great experience being with others, playing on a team. That’s just an exciting thing for a parent and for a grandparent.
I think God [00:57:00] loves to see us. Do that. I hope that has brought a smile to his face, just us having this conversation as three guys who love sports and love the Lord, and are just trying to figure it out for ourselves as well. And I just wanna thank you guys for being a part of the conversation. A lot more that we could pick up and maybe we will.
But as you go into your Super Bowl and Olympic season we pray that our conversation’s been helpful to all of you. And we just wanna thank you for listening today. If it’s been useful, please rate review us on your podcast platform, share it with others, and we want to, we just again say thank you for being supporters of the Faith and Clarity podcast, as well as Denison Forum.
If you’re looking for more resources, you can find them at denisonforum.org and we’ll see you next time on Faith and Clarity.
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