Brave Men S2E25: Ben Watson - NFL Player, Christ Follower

So we're in Miami today, Paul, and you know, Ben's going to be interviewed here in a moment, but you know, you're in Miami where the Super Bowl was just held. Well, you're right. Do you feel Super Bowl eager? Wow. Did you feel the fever? No, I did not. I did not feel the aura when I landed in Miami from Dallas a few moments ago. It was interesting talking to Ben about his football experiences, even off-mic or off-interview because he's played with some of the greatest players in the NFL history. He's played 15 years. He's caught, this guy's caught almost 600 passes. And so I said to him, off-mic, I said, Ben, man, almost 600 passes, and every single one of those, you got hit by somebody really hard because he goes, yeah, I said, my understanding is it's like jumping off an eight-foot ladder onto concrete without stopping any of that holding your arms out. He goes, that's about it. So you're in Miami as we take this, the coronavirus and travel, man, reduced. You know, let's digress for a second. What is your, as a guy who travels a lot, give us your secret top three trip tips for traveling and staying healthy? Well, let's dig into the pilot of Paul Cole for a second. Well, you know, I've traveled since 1977 and the first time I got really sick was in Haiti. And I begin to learn tips, you learn things by what other people do or mistakes you've made. And I had some, I was in Haiti and I had some salad, but you don't eat lettuce in Haiti. So that's one of the first things I discovered, Brian. Then, you know, you just learn things over time. There's certain things you don't eat that are local foods just because of the way it's been prepped. I don't eat lettuce on the road at all anywhere. I don't care. I don't care if it's in the best restaurant in France. Just don't do it. Plus, I buy these little, they're a little two outs, one outs, a lice-all spray. I've got boxes of them at home that I've bought over the years. So, that worked out. I've got the lice-all wipes to go all this stuff and you just protect yourself as best you can. So, lice-all, if you'd like lice-all, if you'd like to sponsor it on it. You can send your samples, attention, Paul, Paul. And I'll tell you right now, Brian, I don't, yeah, I don't think they need our help. Yeah, that's true. Everybody's fine. So, you know, but a part of it is just being smart. And I'm careful about where I sit, who I sit next to. I'm careful in crowds. Again, you know, water, you know, there's a lot of places. I don't even try. If the water has a, for instance, if the water has a metal cap on it, remember the bottle tops you have to kind of pull off and they're metal. If it's metal cap, I don't drink it because metal caps can be put back on after the water that was originally in there is replaced by a water out of a hose. Because I actually saw some kids doing it one day behind a hotel and they were recapping the bottles of water for the hotel. And that was in New Jersey? No, yeah. That was in Guatemala, be nice to New Jersey. Sorry, New Jersey. Sorry, New Jersey, I love you. I mean, we do. We have kind of cut down a few places, you know, but the, but the fact is is that when you travel, there are certain things that are going to happen, whether I'm sitting in my house or traveling, you know, you could get a letter from a postman who's got a virus and you pick it up and you pick that thing up right then. You know, so these things can happen anywhere. I think what you have to do is you have to kind of lean the odds towards you. And so that's what I do, you know, and like today, when I got on the airplane, I sprayed the seat with a lice haul. I wiped the, wiped the little arm rest. The guy sitting next to me goes, oh, well, that's a smart thing to do. That's great. That's great. That's great. So it's all those things. So it's safe and dynamic and let's go ahead and listen to Paul's interview with Benjamin Watson. Yeah. This is, this is absolutely amazing. You're going to love this Brian. It's Brave Man with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. Talking with Benjamin Watson, who's the tight end par excellence in the NFL, you've had an amazing career Benjamin and it has been remarkable to watch. And now here's the play that I remember and you're going to have to refresh me of when this happened. There was a, there was a, it seems to me, it was a playoffs and there was a, try and remember the guy and he caught an interception in, in the end zone and was running down a field for a touchdown and you caught the guy. Yeah. Champ Bailey, another Georgia Bulldog. Champ Bailey, all time great, all time great, Georgia Bulldog. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. And you chased him down. That was 2000, that was January of 2006, the middle playoffs in, in Denver at mile high. And we ended up losing the game, but it was a horrible call. It should have been touched back. That's very good. They didn't have pile on cameras back then. We didn't have that type of technology. Yeah. Yeah. So the referees just gave the home field advantage, you know, gave them the ball in the one. Yeah. That's, you know, and so those are tough things when you lose a game. I mean, it's, you know, obviously we know you're, you're a father, you've got seven children. But real world, there's a lot of stuff that goes on, but man, losing a game, it's your profession, it's your job, it's what you stand for, you know, that kind of thing. What's the toughest moments you've had in athletics and how do you overcome those? Yeah. You know, the losses are tough. And it's not just a losing is, you know, you think about all that you've done to get to that point. You know, every time there's, there's 32 teams and 31 of them are going to go home losers basically at the end of the year, you know, only one team is going to win the championship. And so for everybody, there's going to be this moment of deflation and disappointment, because you've been at this thing since, you know, the all season all the way through to January or whenever you end up getting put out of the playoff sort of, you don't make the playoff. And this is, this is kind of reset that you have to hit in order to get yourself going for the next year. So those are, those are tough and I think the latter parts of my career, it gets hard and harder to lose in the end and not finish on top because you know, you don't have much time left. So those are difficult, but also, you know, obviously you've got the injuries, those sorts of things that kind of come up out of nowhere and, you know, those types of things has been, has been a battle for me for sure. So let me ask you this for a man listening right now who might be going through a difficult moment. And I want to speak also because you have faith in Christ, you have a strong depth of faith. How do you, but man, this is, this is devastating. You're laying on the field and it's, it's done. How do you, you didn't even say you got to restart. How do you actually do that? Yeah. You know, for me, it's, it's a lot of it is about perspective and, you know, there've been times when I've been injured and you know, I've had several major injuries. I've ruptured my Achilles, I've torn another one, I've had an ACL, I've had several head injuries, you know, I've had quite a few things over my 16 year career that have kept me out off the field for a little while. It's not an entire season. And I can remember actually sitting in meetings sometimes when I know I'm not playing and not able to practice because I'm rehabbing an injury and feeling like, all right, the next guy is going to take, take my job and maybe I won't be here next year. All the things is going through man's head when we, we're talking about our professions. And I can remember actually in my notebook writing down the time after time that God has been faithful and brought me back from different, maybe not to the same place, but maybe to another place. But there's always been some sort of provision that has happened after a time of disappointment. And you know, many times I've been guilty of thinking that this new challenge is something brand new to him and something that he is surprised with and cannot handle. And then kind of like the children of Israel going over the Jordan River and building the monument on the other side of the altar, I'm reminded of the many times that, you know, stuff looked like it was, I was dead and it was over. And because he wanted me to continue, he provided healing and provided an opportunity to keep going. So that, you know, part of it is having going through the exercise of remembering your past and the faithfulness of the past. That's huge. And David said that in Psalms, he said, it says he encouraged himself in the Lord, speaks about him in Samuel and it says that when he was down, he encouraged himself in the Lord. And how you encourage yourself in the Lord is remember those things he has done for you. Right? That's a huge deal right there, man. That's strong because, you know, you've been part of a Super Bowl winning team. But you've also been, you've also lost the Eli. Twice. Yeah. I lost, I lost once, but it's club, they lost the game when I was gone, but the club was like Eli, Eli, you know, he, we trained together for the comp. I mean, we're the same class, we're class 2004 and we're friends. I love the death and, you know, great guy, but man, I remember sitting there in 2007 and we were undefeated and, you know, we're getting down to three minutes left in the game and I started having visions of confetti. And this guy, you know, throws a pass down the field, David Tyree catches it, then he throws a fade to place of a burst and all of a sudden, that's it. So now you have to deal with disappointment. You have to deal with things that hit you as a man and you got to pick yourself back up and encourage yourself in the Lord. Now is part of that, does part of that work out in that what encourages you when you help others or encourage others? Well, I think that along our Christian journey, we are, we are supposed to be someone's to encourage or somebody's Barnabas, we're supposed to, you know, find ways to speak life into people, even in tough situations. And I think that some of the largest ministries that we have comes in times that are tough. You know, the good times are, you know, you're supposed to minister in those times too, but it seems that as humans, we resonate and we gravitate more towards encouraging words when we are in the time of discouragement. And so how we handle disappointment is very, very important. Not only for us as individuals, but as ambassadors of the cross, how people see us go through disappointment is very important because, and it's not that we're supposed to smile through everything. You know, our authenticity is important, we need to, that's huge, yeah, that we are disappointment and disappointed and sad about things, but that we have, you know, a hope that is beyond anything that this world can offer, that's the whole point. So I think, you know, I think you hit something right there when we talk about hope, we live in a world that really beats hope down. And you know, I just did a series of messages on keep hope alive. Of course, of course, goes back to a man running for president years ago, but the whole thing is is that hope gets beaten up a lot. And you wrote about that, you wrote towards that in a book under our skin. And really, it seems to me, and you can tell me the process, it seems to me, you wrote something that went viral on Facebook about the decision in Ferguson. Brown and all that stuff, those 2014, if I'm not mistaken, and, and injustices and then the misunderstandings and then, and then of course, if you will, a cacophony of voices and sounds and, and you wrote something on your Facebook and it went viral and then that ended up becoming a book. Tell me about that journey. And because one of the last things you said on that Facebook post was, I'm hopeful. Yeah. Tell me about that journey and what happened on that, Benjamin. Yeah, I mean, as you summarized, you know, we, if we can all take ourselves back to 2014, you know, the killing of Michael Brown, by, by the officer and all of the upward that happened after that. And, you know, when the decision was made by the grand jury, not to indict the officer, there was a reaction, and in most of the reaction, because so many of us have followed this, this case and this was, this was, you know, incident, you count the number after a long summer of these sorts of, right, some altercations under questionable circumstances, you know, things that we didn't know were black men were being killed by officers in questionable circumstances. And so there was kind of a fever pitch when it came to that. And you know, I was no different, I was following this as well. And so, you know, after the, the grand jury didn't, didn't indict, I wrote the Facebook post as you said, just really just laying out my emotions as an American, as a father, as a black man, I believe, or all those things that, that I characterized myself as. And it was just being raw about being sad, about being introspective, about being angry, that we're seeing these things happening over and over again about, you know, being hopeless because it seems like nothing changes, but also about being hopeful because I've seen, we've seen collectively as a nation, so much progress in this area, not too long ago. I mean, we're not talking about hundreds of years, I mean, we're talking about a generation. I mean, I'm literally the first generation really in my family that was born a citizen of this country because my parents born in 1956, technically weren't really full citizens because they couldn't, you know, black people couldn't vote. And the fair housing acts, when you look at it and think about it, it's not that long or go, where it's to get to a place where we are now in real time. And so I wrote about those things, I also wrote about, you know, that the gospel is really the answer. And it's not to glaze over systemic injustice that exists, it's not to glaze over racism that still exists in many ways, not to glaze over the lasting effects of redlining and incarceration, all those things that we need to deal with. But at the root of every issue, every vice known to man is said. And the blood of the cross is really what transforms the heart of man. And that will never change. And so, you know, that's why I'm encouraged and that's why I'm hopeful. And it's kind of too fold, you know, we need to collectively address the injustice that continues. But we also need to understand that, hey, if I correct these things and I don't present the gospel to people, then, you know, we can see in Kumbaya and go to hell, all of us. And so there is life after this and there is eternal life, you know, which begins by knowing, you know, God and Christ who He sent. And so those two things together are important. And so under our skin, you know, it was a book kind of, and as a wrong way as I could kind of addressing the issue of race in America because that has been our, you know, our common thread since, since then, such an of the Republic. Yeah. You know, it's a, it's a great book and I want to mention it under our skin and Benjamin Watson. And it's available on, you know, on a Kimball Amazon everywhere. And I'm going to encourage everyone listening to us to get that and get that book because I, for some of us, and particularly if you're Anglo or from a different background or a different place, some of these, it'll open up your eyes to some things. And then for a lot of us, it will help us frame. You've done such a good job of framing the conversation. And I think that's so important. And then there's little, you know, there's things that we don't think about. We're very active as a, as a ministry in the band, the box movement, one of my good friends named Harry Jackson, who's in Washington, so he's a good friend, HRJ. And Harry, you know, is the one that really brought this to light to me and then Dr. Dwayne and pick it down at New Jerusalem and Jackson, who's a very close friend. And they both brought this to me and went, wow, I had no idea that, you know, the front page of an employment thing has a little box that said, have you ever been convicted of a felony? And so the thing is, is that by and large, what that's done is it immediately pushes aside so many young men, men of color, men of, let's say, poorer backgrounds. And so these are things that sometimes we don't think about Benjamin. And I so appreciate, but not only did you write under our skin on this really important issue, but you also wrote a book about first time dads and you've got seven kids. So I think that makes you an expert, bro. Yeah. Well, part of the reason for the book was trying to tell the people about all the mistakes that I made, you know, that was, it was my wife's idea, actually, to write about it. Oh, no, it wasn't. It was. And she said, you know, you should make, maybe after our second or third kids, you should make a handbook for dads, practical stuff for dads because fathers, you know, we, they have every book in the world for women, but I wanted this book to be what to expect when she's expecting for guys. So in the book, it's called The New Dad's Playbook, gearing up for the biggest game of your life. And in it, it's part exhortation and encouraging fathers that, you know, no matter what you seen out of fatherhood before, you have what it takes to be a dad, you were equipped to be also, you know, we need you to be that dad and also challenging men when it comes to fostering the relationship with their, their baby's mother because that's where fatherhood and parents are really starts. That's what creates the thermostat that of care inside of the house, how you treat the mother. Hopefully you are married to her. But even if you aren't, that relationship really is paramount when it comes to raising healthy children. And so then the second part of the book is really just how to, how to swaddle, how to change the diaper. What to expect when you go to the first OB appointment and you're looking at this ultrasound and you don't know what the heck's going on. What questions to ask? What's, you know, I have a, I have like a list of terms in the back. I mean, from trimester to you name it so that men are armed with real information and they can understand what's happening because there's so many changes to happen in pregnancy with the mother and sometimes as a father, you're looking on the, you're on the outside looking in just wondering what's the best way to serve. Yeah. Man, that's fantastic. I'm going to really, I want to really promote that. I want to promote it on our website too because that's important. You know, I mean, for me, the biggest change with our first child is I had to get rid of my two seat sports cars, our family car. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a little MGB is back in the day, but for me, that was a big deal. I go, and for my wife, it meant nothing. Yeah. Exactly. Like, we're just changing cars to go, no, no, no, you don't understand. Well, you ought to see our car now, you know, we have a big yellow car with a black stripe down the side. It's called a school bus. Yeah. We have a big Nissan, Nissan 12 passenger van at this point. So all of our cool points, I mean, we tried to dive, tint the windows and put some rims on it, but it's still a big box. That's funny, man, I put some 22s on it. Yeah. It's still a big old box. Yeah, but at least you could have some good sound in it. True. I mean, for all the, you know, videos and the kids, the kids music that we play, going to the street. Well, you know, I want to pray God's blessing on you, Benjamin, in his coming season and whatever, you know, the Lord's leading you into next. And I pray that whatever your hands are put to that God prospers that and wherever you put your feet, it's holy ground. Now, I pray protection over the accusations, you know, the Bible says in Corinthians, Paul said, we're ministers of reconciliation, reconciliation in the original language is the opposite of accusation. And so, so what comes with being a minister of reconciliation is accusation. And reconciliation, we talk about, there's a lot of that reconciliation of the races, but I think you hit it. It's sort of like peace in the Middle East. You're not going to have it when there's war and people's hearts. So reconciliation doesn't start with, we're not ministers of reconciliation between us. It's between God and us. And man, I appreciate not only what you've said, but the fact you're putting it in print, I've got it on my iPad here, I've got it on my download under our skin. Great book, man. And in the first time that, I want to get that out to guys. So thank you for taking the time. I look forward to spending time with you again in the future. And I love to have you come share your story with some of our men and events and things we do across the country. I appreciate everything you're doing for, for, for, for fatherhood, for, you know, all the other initiatives I read about the human trafficking and the, you know, race and equity of all those things. I think that's, that's really powerful and that's definitely needed. So I appreciate your leadership in that role as well. Yeah. But you know what? We just keep our head down and go after it, right? That's it. That's kind of what you do. I'm, you know, people see you've caught almost 600 passes in the NFL, which means you've gotten hit by some really big people. Tell me about it. Kind of like, it's kind of like jumping off a eight foot ladder and just landing on the cement. It actually is. No, I'm describing what an orthopedic surgeon said. Yeah. And, and, and yet, yet the greatness, if you will, of what you've done is in what people don't see, it's the block that was made. It's the Tuesday afternoon being willing to show up. You know, it's, Muhammad Ali once said, he said, I never want to fight in the ring. He said, I want it out there on the road at four in the morning when nobody was looking. Yeah. And so I appreciate that about you and your, your push for excellence and the fact that you're taking that to other parts of your life. So God bless you and that, man, and thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Thank you. Look forward to speaking with you again. All right, buddy. God bless you, man. Okay. Well, that was a great interview with, with Benjamin Watson, Paul. I tell you, knowing that, that we've got a, a, a, a football player in here in the States, of course, a major sport, the major sport, but with such strong beliefs, strength, both the field and off the field. And I know that, that you and your father, Dr. Evan Louis, Evan Louis Cole have been teaching this for years and, and hey, those of you who are listening today to the podcast, C-M-N-Dot-Man is your resource, C-M-N-Dot-Man. That's where you have to go. And there's tons of resources available that support what you just heard in the interview, right, Paul? Yeah. You know, Ben said, one of the things he wrote in that Facebook post we talked about, and it's all in his book under our skin, but he said, I'm encouraged because ultimately the problem is not a skin problem, it's a sin problem. And so, to me, when we start dealing with the core issues, you know, Paul talked about in the book, when he wrote to the Church of Corinth, when he said, you know, where you are ambassadors or ministers of reconciliation, and Ben and I just talked about. And the fact is, is that if we're going to do that, if we're going to build strong men, we've got to be discipled, man. This guy, this guy's been disciplete. He has got such a strong command of his, of his thoughts of who he is, as a man, his identity. He's in his late 30s now. So, you know, his prayer is to play one more year. And so, anyway, it was, it was pretty amazing being able to talk to him. He was in his home, and we had a great chat off mic as well as what you just heard. Well, listen, CMN.man is a great destination for many materials and books. You know, you can pick up Paul's book, I have, I'm looking at a copy of just a bartender right now sitting on my desk and full of stories and anecdotes. And also, we encourage you to share this podcast with your friends. This podcast is available wherever popular podcasts are given away for free, including Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Google, IHAR radio, and more. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So, we give this away for free. What? We're giving this away for free. Well, yeah, that's true, Paul. That's amazing. That's a good idea. Anyway, listen, it's great to have you here today listening to us on the Brave Men Podcast. So, for Paul Cole, this is Brian Boyd, and we'll see you next time. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian Men's Network. Connect with Paul at cmm.man, or write to him at Paul at cmm.man.