I wish I still had the cassette.  My Dad made the tape in the mid-1970s.  He made many of them.  When he discarded them, a few years after they were relevant to him, I found a way of, well, finding them.  

What were these tapes?  They were tapes of football coaches giving speeches at the old National Coaches Clinic in Louisville at the Galt House.  He went every year.  In the mid-1990s I went.  I was coaching football.  Twenty years earlier when I was 7, not 27, I came across a tape.  There were many, I can tell you.  But…there was this one that I kept coming back to long before I hit my 10th birthday.  

You know that scene in the movie “Rudy” about the kid who went to Notre Dame to play for the Irish.  It was his life’s dream.  There is a scene where he is listening to a recording of Notre Dame Coach Knute Rockne giving his team an inspirational address.  Rudy is a kid and he recites word for word along with Knute Rockne.  It is a very effective scene.  It is a scene I can relate to much more than most will ever begin to try to.

I was there.  I was listening to a speech given by a coach.  He could have been from Baylor.  He wasn’t.  He could have been from Auburn.  He wasn’t.  He could have been from Ohio State.  He wasn’t.  He could have been from Southern Cal.  He wasn’t.  He could have been from Colorado.  He wasn’t.  I reference a couple of these because when I went to the coaches clinic over twenty years ago I heard Bill McCartney from Colorado and I met and sat with John Cooper.  He was Ohio State’s head coach at the time.

It wasn’t one of these high profile guys I learned from as a child.  He was a Big Ten coach.  Ironically, of all the tape of coaches yammering away that I listened to, the one that I can still hear rattling around in my head is former Indiana University coach Lee Corso.  Yeah.  That Lee Corso…Gameday’s Lee Corso.

He gave a speech, much of which I can still recite and have referenced in writing.  He talked about discipline….team discipline.  Not making mental mistakes that cost the team in penalty yards.  Hanging on to the ball so you don’t cost the team by a fumble.  He was great.  

In the midst of his speech he yelled and emphatically repeated “You Gotta Have Respect for AUTHORITY!”  

It is Biblical, respect for authority.  Romans 13.  I know this well.  I referenced this passage once when I wrote a letter to a guy that I had interviewed for a job with.  I was ripping him a new one…but I spoke the rights when I told him that I understand the concept of respecting authority.  

That concept, “respecting authority” is putting me to the test these days.  I thought it put me to the test once upon a time when it was “all about me”.  Thought I knew something when I wrote that letter to the school administrator who turned me down.  

I didn’t have a clue.

I never thought in a million years I would be put in a position where I would have to compromise my respect for authority when it came to the office of the President of the United States.

I believed in the words Lee Corso talked of in his speech in 1970-something.  I would say a great many of the guys in the room that day believed him too.  I am not so sure what they believe now.

I have said it before…and I have said it with pride…I am a Republican.  I hope I don’t have to change that. I think my party will find its way once again some day.   But…I am convinced the President-elect has no concept of respect for authority.  He is too busy twittering…tweeting.  He is a computer boy…not a president.  

And for him to get in a war of words…or should I say “tweets” with the likes of John Lewis on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day…all I can say is…God help us.  God, you are the authority left for four more years.  Please see us through this mess without getting innocent people killed.  You, God, are our only hope.  I can’t rely on this president.  He has yet to find the high road. 

This is ironic, given that the “Evangelicals” supposedly got Trump elected.  God help us.  I am a Christian.  I still hold forth to the axiom from a great song I learned as a child…”And they’ll know we are Christians by our Love”.  

I have heard no love or compassion come out of Donald Trump’s mouth.  He is a walking, talking, tweeting cesspool.  How the Christian lemmings went over his cliff is beyond me.  I know a great many good people who, for whatever reason, sing the Trump Gospel.  We apparently came from a different place and time when we were learning the true Gospel. 

Love got left behind when Trump was elected President.

Can I respect this authority?  No…no I can’t.  I will sin for four years.  God forgive me.  

And God help the United States of America.  God save us.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson