2025 – an unprecedented year. A record-setting seventeen NCAA Division I college football coaches were let go. Seventeen! And it’s not as much the number as it is who they are, including: o.
Brian Kelly at LSU, James Franklin at Penn State, Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State. These and others on the list are all well-respected coaches with long histories of winning programs.
Brian Kelly for example. He is the winningest active NCAA head coach with 313 wins over 35 years. He has the most in Notre Dame’s history. He was hired from Notre Dame in 2021. His 10-year contract was $9.4 million, annually. Since being hired by LSU, his teams have 29 wins, including 17 conference games. Only Georgia (22) and Alabama (19) had more.
Not only that, while at LSU, 39 players from the 2024 team made the SEC Academic Honor Roll, the most in school history. While at Notre Dame, eight of his players earned the prestigious CoSIDA Academic All-America honor. Also during his tenure, Notre Dame consistently ranked among the nation’s top four in NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate.
Now very astute leadership at LSU have decided to replace him! In fact, they believe it’s worth $52 million to buy him out of his contract. Many of the same leaders who just 4 years prior believed he was worth a $95 million 10-year deal. What are they thinking?!
What were those leaders thinking?! Mind-blowing! And yet, come to think of it, it’s a mind-set that affects not only the decision makers at a university, but me as well. It is the universal elephant in the room that no one dares to talk about. Much more, do anything about.
The unspoken reality is you, me and everyone else, we’re all vulnerable to being replaced. This is because the world appraises our value by what we do. In fact, the undercurrent question “What have you done for me lately?” looms over all of us. It’s communicated in business settings, the entertainment industry, the sports world, places of worship even in personal relationships. It’s a pervasive paradigm. It’s just the way it is.
Or is it?
For too many years in my life I lived the fear of being replaced. I lived out of the paradigm “What do I have to do so I’m not replaced?” I strived to achieve. And it resulted in college as performance anxiety and ultimately clinical depression. A lot of people would label it burnout.
At times the fear resulted in my replacing myself before someone else did. And I underachieved. Either way I was in a no win situation.
Like Brian Kelly.
Praise God that’s no longer my working paradigm!
Let me tell you a story. In fact, from my first hearing, it’s been more than a simple story. Rather it’s a parable that’s offered me a totally new way of approaching the world in which we all live. It’s been so impactful in my life, I want to share it with anyone who is open to hearing.
It’s the true story of the S.S. Republic. This steamship was carrying a load of gold coins minted in the New York vicinity to New Orleans in 1865. However, it didn’t make it. It sank in a violent storm midway. For almost 150 years, no one knew its location. Until, in 2003, an excavation ship, the Odyssey, discovered it in 1700 feet of water off the Georgia coast. Having been at the bottom of the ocean for that length of time, much of the gold was covered with a black encrustation formed by marine bacteria. But knowing what was underneath, the excavation team applied a chemical compound to remove the crust. After doing so, many of the coins were still stacked in mint condition fully displaying the pristine gold!
Hearing this story, thoughts exploded! I had it all wrong! I had believed the world’s paradigm for valuing myself and others. But in my hearing, there was an epiphany. This is God’s story! And I’m in it!
Truths emerged that connected me more personally to His creation story. Since childhood I had an authentic and sincere belief God was not only real but also personal. My relationship with God solidified my freshman year in college. But I did not have a healthy view of myself in it. I was living the dichotomy of His having limitless worth contrasted with my lack thereof.
For too much of my life I’ve struggled with an “inferiority complex.” I have compared myself unfavorably to others, not realizing my true significance. Obviously there are others who think of themselves better than others. Either way, and the continuum between, is not only ineffective but ultimately damaging. I lived under the continual tension of “what will people think . . .of me?”
The “storm” that sank me on my journey of life included generational and cultural factors which include a great grandfather that was the town drunk. “Black crust” formed over who I am without my knowing. I couldn’t know and I couldn’t see.
With this “parable” the following truths surfaced for me, setting me on a trajectory of an increasingly freer and more fulfilling way to live:
- The gold coins were minted. We humans were made. The coins were minted from gold. Gold has an elemental, molecular essence — “essence: the basic, real and invariable nature of . . . that in being which underlies all outward manifestations and is permanent and unchangeable, the very substance of.” Like the coins, we humans each have a physical essence based in our DNA. But, unlike the coins, we humans are created by God and our true essence transcends our physical being. Each one of us is created by the eternal and unchangeable Spirit of God, the Creator of all! Therefore, our true essence is eternally spiritual and priceless! “So God created a man and a woman and shaped them with his image [essence] inside them. In his own beautiful image, he created his masterpiece (Genesis 1:27 TPT).
- The coins had value. But as human beings, our value is priceless because God created us as unique individuals. “ Lord you know everything about me . . .you are so intimately aware of me, Lord . . .you know the words I’m about to speak . . .you have laid your hand on me . . .you formed my innermost being, shaping my delicate inside and my intricate outside. (Psalms 139:1-3, 5, 13 TPT)”. God created only one Adam and only one Eve. And He created only one you and one me.
- But, because of the “violent storm,” before the gold coins get into circulation, they’re lost. Likewise, we humans are lost before interacting with the world in which we are born. fail to reach their destination and the purpose for which they were made. Likewise, we human beings, each and every one of us, fail to live out our essence, our true identity, because we are physically separated from our Creator and the existence we’re designed to live. As a result, we fall short of our destiny and the purpose for which we were made [this is the Greek word hamartia which is most frequently translated as sin.] “The Lord God commanded the man [Adam], saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die (Genesis 2:7 NASB) . . .And He said, . . . Have you [Adam and Eve]eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?. . . The man said, . . . ‘I ate.’” (Genesis 3:11b-12b NASB). . .therefore the Lord God sent him [and Eve]\out of the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22 NASB). “When Adam sinned, the entire world was affected. Sin entered human experience, and death was the result. And so death followed this sin, casting its shadow over all humanity, because all have sinned (Romans 5:12 TPT). We are all lost in the “violent storm” of the sin of this dog-eat-dog world in which human beings fight one another to be valued. As a fellow human being, I join the battle, fighting for my unmet, God created human need to be valued for who I am. We all sink into the bottom of a dark, watery grave. And like the gold coins, a “black crust” forms.
- The value of who we are is covered by the “black crust” of this dysfunctional world and its philosophy which conveys I need to earn my value . . . continually. We humans have a myriad of different ways with which we agree with this philosophy; but we all agree with it. This shared paradigm dictates valuing one another by the outward manifestations of accomplishments, physical appearance, what we know and who we know, etc. Not until a process of refinement, in which the “crust” is removed for us, are we truly free. Freed to be who we really are, uniquely created by God in His essence. Concurrently, freed to experience God’s destiny for each of our lives. If you will, being created in His image (our spiritual DNA), to fulfill a purpose He has for each of our lives.
- Much like the coins, we are powerless to find, save or restore ourselves to our true essence and purpose. We are incapable because we are physically separated from our Creator and the world for which we were created. Ultimately, there is a bottomless chasm dividing us from the knowledge of our true identity created from His essence. “What an agonizing situation I am in! So who has the power to rescue this miserable man from the unwelcome intruder of sin and death? (Romans 7:24 TPT). . .I’m a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse?” (Romans 7:24 CEB)
- Think about it. The gold coins did not lose their value. Their value was not lost; they were. Their worth actually increased because it wasn’t just the value of the gold, it was also that these were uniquely the coins from the sunken treasure of the S.S. Republic. This value is so much more for us as human beings.
- In fact, like the coins, we are so valuable, each and every one of us is worthy to be found. He knows our priceless value, He made us! “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the things he planned for us long ago.”(Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)
We didn’t make ourselves, we can’t find ourselves, we can’t restore ourselves. We each are powerless to our sin and our ever present sinful nature. But, unlike the coins, God has created us human beings with a capacity no other living being has — faith. “Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see. The elders in the past were approved because they showed faith.” (Hebrews 11:1CEB)
We can have faith, choose to believe, we are His masterpiece! We can choose a different philosophy from the world’s. We can act as if it’s a reality that we don’t earn our value, we receive it! We can and will receive it because. . .it is the ultimate reality! Our value is based on who we each are, not what we do! And that’s forever! We are each — one-of-a-kind, throughout time — irreplaceable!
Gold, it’s in us all! But we can’t see it. We’re lost. Before any of us have the capacity to choose, we are programmed to believe the lie of this world that “it’s up to me” whether or not I’m valuable and wanted. Just as the gold coins needed to be found for their value to be realized, each of us needs to be found. Our true essence cannot be realized outside of a relationship.
We, in reality, are created in the image of the perfect relationship. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image. . .” (Genesis 1:26 NASB). Most Christians believe this being the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Every human being throughout time has been hard-wired needing to be completely known, accepted and valued — by someone.
Psychiatrist and Jesus follower Curt Thompson is known for saying, “Every human being comes into this world looking for someone looking for them.” It has to happen with others who are committed to discovering that in themselves and others. We cannot do that alone.
Let’s do it together. Following, I will share more of my thoughts on true significance and purpose. You will be given opportunities to choose through experiences whether or not to be known. Then, if you decide, you can take the next step and share that — with me and/or someone you trust. This is now something I can’t keep to myself! Hopefully you will feel the same.
Irreplaceable . . . priceless . . . from now on!