c. 1997 Religion News Service
NEW ORLEANS _ Choked with emotion, Mike Ditka rested his hand over his heart and took a deep breath.
“God puts people in places for a reason,” Ditka said. “Gang, I had no intention to coach again. I’m here because it’s his will.”
It was May 3, less than four months after he had been hired to coach the National Football League’s New Orleans Saints, and Ditka, standing in front of a packed conference room at a Christian men’s prayer meeting, spoke with the conviction of a preacher. It was no act.
In the months after his speech, it has become clear that Ditka, 58, is as consumed with God as he is with football.
“You must plug in daily to the only source of power that counts in our lives, and that is the Lord,” said Ditka, a Roman Catholic.
No, he hasn’t undergone a metamorphosis from cantankerous coach to choirboy. He still can be hostile, intimidating and profane. Yet, other signs reflect a spiritual transformation for Ditka since he was fired as coach of the Chicago Bears in 1992.
Consider: Ditka made one of his most important off-season decisions during a three-day Jesuit retreat, surrounded himself with spiritual men and began reading the Bible with heightened interest. In short, he centered his life on God.
Among the results are a Saints team bound in part by a shared faith, the presence of religious advisers who talk of curses and faith healing, and some players who spend as much time with the Good Book as the play book.
“Strong spiritual beliefs are essential to get through life,” Ditka said recently. “But that don’t mean we’re not going to try to kick the other guy’s ass.”
But as his team staggers through the second half of the season with a losing record (4-7 as of Nov. 19), Ditka no longer sounds like the same coach who led the Bears to victory in the 1986 Super Bowl.
“This doesn’t have to be a success in the eyes of man,” Ditka said of the prospect of a similar triumph in New Orleans. “It may be, and I believe it will be. But it doesn’t have to be …
“God put me in this situation, and maybe it’s to turn me around. I believe that’s what is happening, and I rather enjoy it.”
For more than a decade, the Saints nurtured a spiritual presence. But never, said several team officials, was that presence as strong and visible as it is now.
Every NFL team except the Oakland Raiders has a chaplain, and most teams have active Bible study groups. But the Saints go beyond the traditional bounds of Bible study and team prayer, using the services of an extended spiritual support staff.
In addition to longtime team chaplain Jim Fast, the religious retinue includes the Rev. Robert Seay, a Catholic priest from New Orleans who says he has a special gift from God to heal those suffering physically and mentally. He said he is willing to try his gifts on the Saints.
Then there is Jacob Aranza, who runs a non-denominational Christian ministry in Lafayette, La., who said he thinks New Orleans’ history of voodoo and witchcraft may have saddled the Saints.
“I honestly believe there’s been almost a curse on the team,” Aranza said.
Several team members have embraced Aranza, who leads the coaches’ weekly Bible study and counsels players. He first spoke to the team last year at the request of Fast and returned this season at the urging of Bill McCartney, the founder of Promise Keepers, the Christian men’s movement. McCartney is a former University of Colorado football coach who remains close friends with Saints defensive coordinator Zaven Yaralian, a former Colorado assistant.
But Aranza only partially credits McCartney for his role with the Saints.
“To me, it was a divine appointment,” Aranza said.
Despite some talk of curses and faith healing, the Saints’ spiritual movement is more mainstream. Between 10 and 18 players on the 53-man roster attend weekly Bible study.
According to several players, the environment has helped keep the team together in times of turmoil.
“If you’re playing with guys who have the same beliefs and feel like you do, you can weather anything,” defensive tackle Wayne Martin said.
Ditka said coaches and players are not pressured to participate in spiritual activities, but he stressed the need for more spirituality in today’s society.
“There’s more demonic behavior in our society than Satan has ever seen, maybe in the history of the world,” Ditka said. “Why? Because we’ve taken God out of everything.
“Then we have people that want to criticize the Promise Keepers. Why? It’s a good cause. It’s something to uplift the wife and the mother, and yet people say, `There’s another agenda.’ I don’t think so.
“Their only agenda is to be the best person they can be in the eyes of God. And that’s what these guys (Saints players) are doing. That’s what it’s all about.”
Ditka said he is comfortable making decisions in a spiritual setting, and that is what happened with the Saints’ quarterback situation last spring, when veteran Jim Everett and young Heath Shuler were competing for the starting job.
On May 8, three weeks after acquiring Shuler from the Washington Redskins, Ditka, offensive coordinator Danny Abramowicz and team owner Tom Benson drove to a Jesuit retreat in Convent, La., where they and 99 other men spent three days in virtual silence. When the weekend ended, Ditka took action.
Everett was released. Shuler was promoted.
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Ditka’s commitment to God has more to do with his own life than it does with his team.
He is proud of his 1986 Super Bowl ring, but Ditka said he loathes the man he became in his final years with the Bears.
“All of the sudden we get a lot of acclaim and notoriety, and we start to take ourselves seriously,” he said. “That’s when we’re in trouble.”
Ditka first turned to God in the 1970s, as an assistant coach with the Dallas Cowboys.
“I realized I was unhappy. I was shallow. I didn’t care about people nearly as much as I should have. So I went home and I really prayed about it, and it made a difference. That was the beginning.”
He began reading the Bible. He joined a Bible study. He attended Mass. He embraced God.
After being hired to coach the Bears in 1982, Ditka said, he eventually started cursing coaches, players, fans and reporters and raining fire and brimstone on anyone who questioned his methods.
When he suffered a mild heart attack in 1988, he came face to face with his mortality. Yet not until 1992, his final season with the Bears, did he see the man he had become, consumed with winning, consumed with himself.
“At the end, I’d closed myself into a nutshell, and I stayed there and tried to do it all myself,” he said. “It was terrifying.”
In the months before he was fired as the Bears’ coach, he began contemplating who he wanted to be: someone who could control his temper, tame his ego, trust those around him.
Those changes were in place four years later, when he was introduced as the Saints’ new coach on Jan. 28, 1997.
With the city cheering, Ditka proclaimed he wanted to climb the mountain one more time. What few knew is he intended to take a different path, a path he had mapped out with spiritual guidance.
But on Sept. 14 in San Francisco, during the Saints’ third game of the season, Ditka snapped.
With the Saints trailing 23-0 at halftime, he blindsided his team with a vicious tirade and had to be pulled away from a confrontation with cornerback Eric Allen. Two weeks later in Chicago, he practically was foaming at the mouth during a 20-17 victory over the Bears.
Said Ditka of his sideline behavior: “I went nuts. I mean, I was an absolute basket case.”
Same old Ditka, critics snickered.
With a hint of regret, he vowed not to launch into any more ugly tirades and said: “I make mistakes. I wish I was right all the time. I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to quit trying.”
Since the Chicago game, Ditka has been eerily calm.
“I believe we’re going to be judged on our love for each other, how we treat people,” Ditka said. “Do we really show enough love for the people we love? I don’t. You say, `Well, that’s the way I was brought up.’ That’s bull _ it was the way I was brought up, but so what?
“It’s never too late to change. You got to understand that there’s a reason to change. Really, that it is God’s will.”
MJP END PETER
