A recent headline caught my attention: “T.J. Finley Enters Portal Again.” T.J. Finley was Auburn’s quarterback for a bit, so naturally I noticed the name. Finley went to Auburn after starting his college QB career at LSU. Things didn’t work for him at either SEC school, so he then transferred to play for the Texas State Bobcats prior to the 2023 season. Apparently, cats just aren’t his thing (LSU and Auburn are tigers). For his final season of collegiate eligibility, he will be neither a bobcat or a tiger. He will be a hilltopper. That’s right. TJ Finley recently transferred to Western Kentucky to play quarterback for the 2024 season.
Four schools in four years. LSU. Auburn. Texas State. Western Kentucky. A season-ending injury, a head coach fired midseason, and more recently, another QB committing to Texas State, Finley has had his share of moderately bad luck, but it’s fair to say he keeps rolling the dice to hit it big. Let’s hope felines just aren’t his thing and he can enjoy ascending a hill. Actually, let’s hope Finley can settle. Let’s hope Finley can simply enjoy playing football. Let’s hope he can — somehow, someway — find contentment.
Aren’t you glad we aren’t like him? (Grin.) Oh, and it’s not just T.J.! Jumping in the transfer portal and playing football for multiple schools throughout a collegiate career is a swift and growing trend in the sport. There’s money to be made and looks by NFL scouts to be had.
Speaking of NFL, do you know the percentage of college football athletes who make it to the NFL? Less than 2%. Yep. 1.6% of players ever make it to the big leagues. Roughly 250 guys a year move to the professional level. Know how many players entered the portal between August 2022 and May 2023 (ten months)? 8,699. Nearly 9,000 college football athletes are now entering the portal to try to find their “fit.” Their place. Their stardom. Their name in lights. Again, aren’t you glad you aren’t that? (Grin again.)
To be sure, I don’t know T.J. Finley. Nor do I know any of the guys in the portal. I am quite certain there are good, right, and solid reasons for some to transfer to another school.
However… Four schools in four years? Thousands and thousands entering the portal? I get why so many players are leaving Alabama (I mean, why go there in the first place? Grin yet again). But why so many? And why are so many doing it more than once? My guess — because these college football players are precisely like us. In their minds, the grass is greener on a hilltop (see what I did there?). They think, like we so often do, that maybe in a new place, with a new coach, with new surroundings, with a new atmosphere and new culture — they will thrive.
Again, I don’t know these kids. And I most definitely believe there are circumstances, times, and situations that demand new starts. Yes and amen. But I can’t help but believe that most of these athletes ( like most of us) will find that the same frustrations and insecurities and issues they had at Place A will follow them to Place B. To quote the great theologians the Avett Brothers:
The weight of lies will bring you down
And follow you to every town
‘Cause nothing happens here
That doesn’t happen thereSo when you run, make sure you run
To something and not away from
‘Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane
To chase you anywhere
What makes me so sure? Shall I ask you to back and reread the section about T.J. Finley? Four schools. The grass wasn’t green at LSU. The grass wasn’t greener at Auburn. The grass wasn’t greener at Texas State. We can only hope the grass is nice and lush on top of a hill in Kentucky. But we all know it’s true: unless T.J. Finley decides to simply enjoy playing quarterback (or, admit he hates it — whatever the case), he will graduate a hilltopper wondering where it all went wrong.
And that, dear readers, is why the Finley headline that caught my attention cut deep within me. It wasn’t just mere curiosity about a former Auburn quarterback. I read myself into that headline.
I am not, nor ever have been, a collegiate football quarterback. But I am guilty of having wondered at how life could be in another spot. Maybe I’m the only pastor of whom this is true. But this one has been guilty of being discontent at churches and, in the Southern Baptist sense, entered the portal of sending out a resume or two. I may frown at T.J. for playing for his fourth school. But I am currently pastoring my fourth church. Apples and oranges? Sure. Are there times it is good and right and necessary and God’s will to leave a church and go to another? Most definitely. But could it be that a failure at previous churches has been that I didn’t allow myself to be present, in that place — with the people God placed right in front of me?
Wendell Berry, when speaking of pastors in Hannah Coulter, said, “They’re always in a hurry to find a better place, which means they will find themselves in no place.” Pastors. Quarterbacks. Accountants. Humans. Perhaps the T.J. Finley headline caught my eye because, though different, the root issue (contentment) is similar, if not the exact same?
I am guessing (hoping!) you are like me in your own way. Thinking another job (or occupation) will fix things. Imagining another spouse will make everything better. Daydreaming of moving to another state or city or country, thinking it’s what your life needs. Contemplating how another boss will relieve most of your stress. And, again, there are times for some of these things.
Could a lesson for us here (for me, at least) be to enjoy the life we/I have been given? Not the life that I had hoped for or imagine, but the life I have? The situation I am in? The circumstances surrounding me? The people in front of me? Is it not true that God is present in the present? He is with me, here. Not over there (wherever my discontented mind takes me). He is here. In this place. With these people. In these circumstances. Navigating the varied situations with me. Here.
Perhaps one of the sneaky schemes of the devil is to get us thinking life would be better somewhere else. If he can get us on that path, and keep us there, we will totally miss God here, now. If he is successful at making us discontent — then we will spend most of our days without the presence of God in the present. Maybe T.J. Finley will enjoy playing quarterback on that greener grass. But before you look longingly at that the top of the next hill, see if you might experience the fullness of life (God’s presence) right where you are.
Here in Tucson, at the University of Arizona, when our coach left, instead of transferring with the coach our star quarterback and wide receiver decided to stay right here. (Noah Fifita, QB; Tetairoa McMillan, WR and third team AP All American) In addition, they decided to distribute some of their NIL money to their other teammates who were not getting that outside income. Obviously, a lot of people make the choice to stay where they are without any guarantees, and trust that God is present.
I’ve read that this is one of the most pernicious effects of social media: making us constantly dissatisfied with what’s in front of us, unwilling to accept that *this* might be the limit of what is available to us in life. It’s a very American notion, the idea of constantly breaking away from established places and people and communities to “make it” somewhere else, and now it’s being transmuted into a global phenomenon. Why stay where we are and try to fix things (or just accept them as they are) when we could try our luck elsewhere? Why not leave it all behind? Somebody else will fix it, surely. How devastating to our actual communities, our families, our sense of place and self.