Former NFL head coach and outspoken Christian Tony Dungy recently spoke to “The High Note” podcast where he addressed how he turned his focus from football to something more. Now 66 years old, Dungy played football in the 70s for the University of Minnesota where he was nominated most valuable player in his position as quarterback in ’75 and ’76. He played undrafted for three seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers as a defensive back, intercepting six passes in ’78 and winning a championship with the team in Super Bowl XIII. He would go on to coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Indianapolis Colts. Since his retirement from coaching, Dungy has gone on to be a sports broadcaster and best-selling author.

Yet, despite all that success, Dungy characterized how the most important lesson he learned during his time in football was putting God first. “My mom was a Sunday School teacher,” he recalled. “And she always talked about, ‘Hey, no matter what you do in life, you’ve got to put the Lord first, you’ve got to create that time for the Lord. You’ve got to do things for Him.’ And I heard it when I was a kid, but it didn’t really register. My mom was telling me this the whole time, but it’s going in one ear and out the other.” It wasn’t until after he joined the Steelers that his mother’s words really began to stick. He credited head Buccaneers coach Chuck Noll with helping to change his mindset. “I was 21 years old … and the first thing he said to us, he said, ‘Men, I want to welcome you to the National Football League. You’re now going to get paid to play football. So that makes it your profession. But don’t make football your life. If you make football your whole life, you’re gonna be disappointed. And I was like, ‘Wow, are you kidding me?’ Well, up to this point, it kind of [had] been my whole life.”

This conversation led to Dungy spending time with other Christian teammates. “And they invited me to Bible studies, and they invited me to chapel, and for the first time, I really started reading the Bible, trying to get out of it what those guys got out of it,” he said. Dungy cited his mother’s favorite verse, Matthew 16:26, which says, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

“The High Note” host Tauren Wells contrasted this mindset with the “bravado culture” of the NFL, where players feel the need to constantly build themselves up after a game. He quoted a line he had heard Dungy’s mother say in regards to true accomplishment never needing to announce itself. Dungy agreed with Wells citing the Bible saying that one should “let another man praise you.” “You’ve got to have eternity in mind,” Dungy said. “You can’t just focus on the sport. And I learned that as a 21-year-old, and that’s when I first started really carving out that time, going to chapels, going to players’ Bible studies, and really trying to grow in my faith.” Dungy has previously spoken about how his faith has played out in life, such as his commitment to helping others and by adoption. He and his wife Lauren have adopted 8 children. “We just think that Christianity – people can say ‘it’s weird,’ people can say it’s different, but Jesus said, ‘We go down a narrow road,’ and the path is not the broad path that the whole world is on. So, we choose to look at that as not weird or different…but, uncommon.”