Set to a chorus of inspirationally upbeat music, an image flashes of the towering Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
“Dreams are maps to follow,” a voice intones.
The stock football footage melds into familiar scenes of Northwestern linebackers Napoleon Harris and Kevin Bentley wincing against massive barbells.
Up next, their teammates run sped-up shuttle drills in the indoor practice field and then come charging up Mount Trashmore toward the camera.
“Family is the strongest team on earth.”
Cheered on by his entire team, Dan Pohlman fights through his lunges as he rises up the Ryan Field ramp toward the press level atop the stadium. Then, after highlight shots from the Wildcats’ season-opening win at UNLV, the four-minute video winds to its climactic close with a glance at the shiny Big Ten championship trophy.
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The tape, shown the night before the Cats played Michigan State two weeks ago, elicited tears in a room full of 300-pound linemen and steel-faced defensive backs.
“We forget about all the hard work we put in,” strong safety Marvin Brown said. “A lot of guys were crying, just realizing how much we’ve invested in this program.”
Spliced together late at night by strength and conditioning coach Larry Lilja and NU’s athletic department video guru, the tape was played as a part of the team’s Friday night Chapel.
In its current state, the voluntary weekly meeting — part motivational speech, part nondenominational service — has been a staple of the team’s routine since head coach Randy Walker came to NU three years ago. Most college football teams around the country observe the tradition, and even before Walker’s arrival, some form of the service existed in the program.
But Chapel has taken on additional meaning for the Cats this season.
“Obviously this has just been an abnormal year,” said free safety Sean Wieber, referring to the Aug. 3 death of teammate Rashidi Wheeler, the subsequent lawsuit that rehashes the painful memories, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that jolted both the team’s football schedule and its psyche.
“A team shouldn’t have to go through what we’ve had to go through,” Wieber said. He then observed that attendance at Chapel has been on the rise this season. “People are searching for ways to answer the questions (about) life that your mom or dad might not be able to explain to you right away.”
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Wieber led a Chapel at the team hotel in North Carolina the night before the Cats played Duke on Sept. 22. NU’s home opener, scheduled for the previous week against Navy, had been scrapped because of the terrorist attacks.
Wieber used the forum to talk about both the terrorist attacks and Wheeler’s death. He preached the importance of understanding that both events were outside of the players’ control, and that — as on the football field — the challenge was how they would respond to adversity.
“The Lord has plans for our lives and we don’t necessarily know what it is,” Wieber said. “Our response should be to put trust in him and realize that Rashidi is in a great place, a better place.”
For Walker, the message was powerful, largely because it came from one of his players.
“One of the hardest things in life may be to stand in front of your peers and talk about your faith,” he said. “It’s easy to talk about your girl or Soc. 101, but talking about your faith, that’s a very private and personal thing.”
While coaching at Miami (Ohio) and North Carolina, Walker attended team chapels led by chaplains or priests from the community. The speakers often had trouble connecting with a religiously diverse group of football players who were looking for a message they could apply both in life and on the gridiron.
Walker himself led one service at Miami. But the state-run school squirmed at the thought of its head coach talking to his players about anything other than nickel packages and play-action passes. So Walker vowed that one of the first things he would do at NU was encourage his players to lead Chapel.
Currently, anywhere from three-quarters to the full NU traveling squad shows up to hear a teammate talk for 15 to 30 minutes about a Bible verse. Or, in Wieber’s case, that great scene in Gladiator where Russell Crowe rallies the troops to survive Caesar’s bullies.
“When a teammate talks, you listen to it a little more — you take it more to heart,” linebacker Pat Durr said. “When you have someone else come in, you’re kind of like, ‘Who is this guy? What importance is he to the team?'”
Wide receivers coach Howard Feggins usually asks a player to lead the service, but when he doesn’t, Lilja prepares a message. Interactive packages such as the tear-jerking tape talk have earned Lilja the reputation as the best speaker at Chapel.
“He’s got advantages that I don’t have, as far as multimedia presentations and all that,” said tight end David Farman, who led the service before the Sept. 7 UNLV game. “Next time I do it, I’m going to have to bring in some 3-D display or something.”
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Wieber took Lilja’s cue when he advanced from doodling diagrams on an overhead projector to peppering his speech with Gladiator clips. The night before the team faced Ohio State, Wieber used the movie and the parable of David and Goliath, only hours before the Cats headed into a stadium swelling with more than 100,000 fans and some of the oldest traditions in college football.
The message directly related to the next day’s game, as many Chapels do. But Wieber and his teammates understand that the service is meant more to reflect and unite the team than to prepare it for gameday.
“We don’t use Chapels to ask God to take sides, or to petition God for a victory,” Lilja said. “One thing I try not to do is come up here, spiel off a bunch of Bible verses and beat them over the head with religion. I try to make it relevant, so that when they leave this room, it’s something that they can take with them.”
After all, a team in the throes of an 0-5 season probably needs to hear a different message than a group of players contending for the league title. So Lilja tailors his talks accordingly.
In the middle of NU’s 2-9 campaign in 1993, Lilja led a Chapel comparing the early Gary Barnett days to wandering in the desert for 40 years without any hope.
That put things in perspective.
And last week, David didn’t triumph over the Buckeyes after Wieber’s Chapel. But that’s OK too, because the services also aren’t meant to be a pep talk.
“I tried to go that route and we ended up losing,” said Farman, a native Texan who spoke before NU’s 41-14 loss to Texas Christian last season. “I was all pumped up and I tried to be intense, but as a pep rally it didn’t work.”
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Durr doesn’t want his mother to know this, but he considers the team Chapel his weekly dose of religion. After a game and before a full day of practices and meetings, it’s tough to roll out of bed on a Sunday morning.
Bentley was one of several players who felt his eyes well up during Lilja’s tape. The next day the message — and the tears — were still with him when NU pulled off a winning drive in the final 14 seconds of the game to beat Michigan State. For him, this year’s Chapel experience has been overwhelming.
“It’s pretty emotional, pretty touching,” Bentley said. “I would love to (lead) it, but sometimes it’s almost better to sit and listen because it touches you in a way that maybe it didn’t touch you before.”
To Lilja, Chapel is one of the most rewarding parts of his job.
“What I do in the weight room as far as making their bodies bigger and stronger, that’s fine,” said Lilja, who has been at NU since 1981. “But in the long run, the eternal thing is what I do in Chapel. That’s one of the nicest perks about this job.”
Walker doesn’t take attendance during Chapel, but he’s noticed that the crowd has grown this year. And that gives him some comfort, since he has seen his players torn by every imaginable emotional distraction this season.
And as for Wieber, he knows better than to use hi
s Chapels to pump the guys up for a game. But that doesn’t mean what goes on in the team room or a hotel on Friday nights has no relevance on the field the next day.
“When you’re on the field, you don’t have the outside chaplain,” he said. “But you can look into each other’s eyes and realize, he’s trustworthy, he’s going to get the job done. It just brings a lot of unity to the team.”
