Auburn Football: The Man Behind the Champions

I recently ran across an article about someone among the Auburn staff, who is the epitome of the word "underrated." I am not a researcher or a writer like some of my fellow peers on Bleacher Report, but I know this is something that needs to be written.  

Everyone knows about the players responsible for Auburn's national championship season. Rarely has the college football world been so divided on whether the "right" was done this past season.

However, I am not here to discuss about Cam Newton, Nick Fairley, investigations, or controversies. I will leave that to the volatile bloggers across the Internet. What prompted me to write this article was one of the sadder days in Auburn football. I am talking about the arrest of four players who had a bright future ahead of them. 

In the multi-billion dollar college football world, we treat even unproven athletes like celebrities. Put yourself in shoes of one of these highly sought-after athletes. Obviously, different people will imagine differently. Some would imagine themselves to be soaking all the attention, others would imagine themselves to be under pressure. That is just recruiting. 

Once these athletes step up on the field, now they have to either live up to their hype or prove that they are better than they were said to be by the recruiting services. Then they have to find out whether they can gel with their teammates. Imagine being 18-year-olds and going to have through the process. It is an environment that puts pressure on the athlete and their family.

They need someone to guide them through. The coaches are there, the team leaders are there, but sometimes that might not be enough. That is when you need another kind of help. You need someone who can help you more as a human being than as a football player.

As far as the Auburn team is concerned, I am talking about Chette Williams. He currently serves as Auburn team chaplain. However, he wasn't always a man of faith. This is where one needs to think twice before insulting athletes that a vast majority of us don't even know personally.  

Chette Williams was invited by coach Pat Dye on his team in 1981. While he came to Auburn with a dream, he fell into the same trap that the four athletes recently dismissed from the Auburn football team. He engaged himself into alcoholism, marijuana and other potentially fatal activities. His grades suffered as well.He didn't do any good to team chemistry either, and was known to be a bad influence on his teammates.

In the present-day world of online blogging, fans—especially opposing fans—love to insult and degrade such players, without even knowing them personally. We love to predict their future and say that they would not amount to anything. No doubt people said the same thing when Pat Dye kicked Chette Williams off the team.

However, that was not to be the case. Instead of continually ruing his wasted opportunity, Chette turned to his friend, then-halfback Kyle Collins. He started praying with Collins, and that is the moment where he realized his mistakes, the pain he had caused his family, his fellow players and the coaches.  

Chette has not used drugs such as marijuana and alcohol since. As far as he was concerned then, playing football was not his destiny, but helping those that do was.  

Once Chette graduated, he went to New Orleans to become a minister. He ran an at-risk ministry for children in Spartenburg, SC. This is when Auburn, and specifically Tommy Tuberville, came calling. He was asked to join the team as a chaplain, and counsel not only the players, but if need be, their families as well.  

From then on, he has been with the team through its biggest triumphs and its biggest challenges. According to Chette Williams, "Nobody is beyond redemption." It is what he is using to guide these kids through not only their journey as players on the Auburn team, but as young adults growing up wanting to make some sort of a difference. 

He hears their pains, their worries, their fears routinely and has access to their minds and their personalities, something that the rest of us don't, but something that still does not prevent us from passing strong judgments on them.  

According to WR coach Trooper Taylor, Williams was the glue that held this team together when it went through its trials by fire both on and off the field during its championship-winning season. All one has to do is ask the players on how much difference him and his work and attitude has made on Auburn. 

Do I have even little bit of inside information on how he helped players? No, I certainly don't. But I do know that Auburn would not have achieved what it did without is support and guidance. Yet during the time he was kicked off the team, if someone had said that this guy would go on to be what he is today and make a difference in athletes' lives, he or she would have been laughed at.

This article is not written to start a debate on anything related to football, but something just to contemplate. Antonio Goodwin, Shaun Kitchens, Dakota Mosley and Mike McNeil, who were dismissed on the spot, had bright future ahead of them, much like Chette Williams must have had before each one of them wasted their opportunities. 

Wherever these four might end up, here's me betting that Williams will be there to help them move on to a better path. All they have to do is ask.