In August of this year, Oklahoma University (OU) Sooners suspended their running backs football coach, DeMarco Murray.
- Why do you think a team would suspend a coach? (Answers will vary: students may guess that he wasn’t good at his job or had made poor choices.)
- If you were a coach looking forward to the coming season, how might you respond to the suspension? (Complain, say it is not fair, get angry, claim the allegations weren’t true, etc.)
Share the following information with your students:
“DeMarco Murray, who is entering his fifth season at his alma mater, will serve a one-game suspension this season after the NCAA determined he was involved in recruiting violations… According to the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, Murray impermissibly contacted prospects and their families before he was allowed to.”
While DeMarco Murray indicated he wasn’t aware that the COVID-19 rules allowing him to recruit early had changed. However, once he learned of the updated rules, he agreed he had violated them
- What do you think of the way Coach Murray handled the situation by accepting responsibility, even though he didn’t know the recruiting rules had changed? (Accept all reasonable responses.)
It could have been easy for the coach to blow up in anger or keep focusing on how he didn’t know the rules had changed. Instead, he was willing to accept responsibility—and the penalty of being suspended from one game.
- What can we learn about handling correction? (We can have a teachable attitude, rather than a defensive one, when it comes to correction.)
- When has your response to correction kept you from something good or led to even more correction? (Answers will vary.)
- Why is it sometimes hard to have a good attitude when corrected? (Answers will vary.)
Even when the person correcting us cares about us, our first response to correction may be defensive. Let’s find out how someone responded to God’s correction and what that outcome tells us about the benefits of finding the right attitude when we are corrected.
