Here’s my 2008 interview with Brian Sipe.
“The Kardiac Kids” were at it again. The 1980 Cleveland Browns, led by quarterback Brian Sipe, earned that nickname for their uncanny ability to come from behind for a heart-stopping victory. Sipe, facing a third and 20 from the Green Bay Packers’ 46-yard line with 16 seconds left to play and the Browns trailing, found wide receiver Dave Logan downfield for the winning touchdown.
In the final game of the regular season, the Browns beat the Cincinnati Bengals on a field goal with 1:25 left. The victory secured a division title for Cleveland and put them in the playoffs for the first time since 1972. Sipe passed for 4,132 yards and 30 touchdowns and was named the National Football League’s Most Valuable Player.
Today, Sipe is still leading his team to the playoffs — not only as a player, but as a coach. He has been the head coach for seven years at Santa Fe Christian High School in Solana Beach, Calif., just north of San Diego. The Eagles’ record with Sipe as coach is 66-10, including four section championships. There are only 385 students at Santa Fe Christian, making it a Division 5 school, the smallest. But in 2005, Sipe decided to compete against Division 4 schools, which can have a student body of up to 1,700,
Then he went a step further. He scheduled the first game of that season against Torrey Pines, the two-time defending Division 1 champion, which had a student population of 3,300 at the time. The two schools are neighbors, just four miles apart.
“I think that the kids got tired of hearing people say, ‘Oh, Santa Fe Christian, you’ve got a great program for a small school.'” Sipe says. “We decided to take a shot at Torrey Pines.”
This David and Goliath story didn’t quite turn out as the biblical account. The Eagles lost to Torrey Pines. But Sipe could not have been more proud of his team.
“If we played mistake-free football, we could beat those guys,” Sipe says. “But we turned the ball over five times, and to lose to them 28-14 with five turnovers — we gave them all they could handle.”
In 1985, when Sipe retired from football, he and his wife, Jeri, began attending church, believing it would be beneficial for their family.
Photo courtesy San Diego Union-Tribune
“I was confronted with the truth,” Sipe remembers. “It was a message with authority. I decided that I needed to be honest about what the Bible was saying, or I needed to throw it in the trash.”
The Bible did not end up in the garbage. Instead, Sipe took seriously what it said: that Jesus had died for him and his sins, that He rose from the dead, and that by believing in Him, he could have eternal life. Today, as Sipe grows in his relationship with God, he has an impact on his players.
“I recognize that God allowed me to have all those experiences in the NFL,” Sipe says, “to have some credibility with these boys that a lot of other men would have to struggle to achieve. People want me to say that coaching football is a ministry. It’s not a ministry any more than anything else we do.
“Who I am and my relationship with Christ is my ministry. And these boys have an opportunity to see me during the pressure of games and making decisions, my relationship with the coaches, all those different things. They want me to take them to a championship. And that’s my job. But along the way, I want them to see a man who is leading them through those stressful times and does it in a way that glorifies God.”
The Eagles have a motto: “To be my best, alongside our best, against their best, as a warrior in the service of our King.” Sipe says that the motto stresses each player’s responsibility to his teammates and God. Sipe’s football program requires that each member of the team view their role in relation to their teammates, not as an individual. The motto is intended to inspire players to consider their future roles as husbands, fathers, and friends. His coaching philosophy is that every player has to contribute.
Photo courtesy Cleveland Browns
“Every week I challenge the players to get off the bench,” Sipe explains. “That means you’ve got to figure out some way to contribute. The longer you are on the bench, the more somebody is out on that field than they should be. And he’s getting tired. The more people who play, the fresher we are, the better football team we are.”
Sipe has given some thought to what it means to honor God as a football player.
“There’s a team that’s our archrival, another Christian school,” Sipe relates. “And sometimes it’s the down-and-dirtiest, nastiest football we play all year. The kids push the envelope in terms of their demeanor and sportsmanship.
“I was challenged by this idea of what God-honoring football looks like. The conclusion I came to is that when you’re playing football, you really can’t be thinking about God. It’s like life. And I think we can beat ourselves up and say, ‘Oh, I’m a lousy Christian because I should be thinking about Jesus from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep.’ However, the truth is that life is a distraction. And nothing’s more distracting than having a guy across the line from you who wants to tear your head off.
“To me, God-honoring football is football where the kids are committed to preparing and to being the best that they can be, so that when they are alongside their teammates, the two of them together can work and be the best that they can be. To honor your commitments, to do it in an upright way — I think that brings him glory.”
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This article first appeared in Breakaway magazine in January 2008.
