Tom Landry: A Story From “America’s Coach”

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. He was one of the greatest coaches of the twentieth century. Behind a stone face and beneath his trademark Badora was a brilliant football mind. As head coach of the Dallas Cowboys for twenty-nine years, Tom Landry compiled an impressive record of thirteen Division titles, five Super Bowl appearances, and two championships. The Cowboys would eventually be dubbed America’s Team. Here he is with his own story.

I was raised at Mission, Texas, which is right up from Brownsville there about sixty miles, and I was raised during the Depression years in the thirties. My dad was an automobill mechanic on his own drive. She was fire chief of Mission Volunteer Fire Department for about forty years, a great civic leader, and we had six in our family. And my family really, they taught me values. We were just about a half a block from the Methodist Church. My dad was superintendent Sunday School, so I had to go to Sunday School every Sunday. I didn’t care to go, but we didn’t really. We didn’t pray you in our home except maybe when we had company or Thanksgiving or something. We didn’t ever read the Bible. I never read the Bible, but my parents taught me to go to church, that that was important, and I always went to church. But, you know, when you’re in the thirties, I’d never been out of the Rigrand Valley but one time, by the time I was a senior in high school. Because when you’re in Depression years, anybody’s been through the Depression, you know, you don’t travel for it because you don’t have much money. But I knew to get out of the valley that I had to use if I ever wanted to climb that ladder success that I think America offers everybody. I was going to have to do it in football. And so I started planning and thinking about football and doing everything I could to be a football player. And I got a chance to go to the University of Texas, and I made the team, and I was really excited. First time I’d ever been on campus at the University of Texas. And then I went into service. I flew B-17s over Europe for thirty missions during World War II before I came back to the University of Texas, and we had some great teams there at the University of Texas with Bobby Lane was our cornerback.

You know.

We beat Alabama and the Sugar Bowl, beat Georgia and the Orange Bowl. But the thing I discovered at that time was that I wasn’t reaching the fulfillment and the peace of mind that I thought you ought to have after you have that kind of success, because we had some good football teams, and I was kind of felt like I was climbing to the top of the world. And my only rationalization was, I hadn’t been to the top yet. And so when I went in professional football with the New York Giants, I became a player, and I made All-Pro even one year, and we won the World’s Championship in nineteen forty at fifty-seven against the Cargo Bears, beat in forty-seven to seven in Yankee Stadium, and there we are on the top of the world, you know, and I still, after all the excitement, I still had that emptiness, and that restlessness, and I couldn’t understand why that was. So I wanted to get out of football. I had gotten another degree at the University of Houston. While I was playing with the Giants, I went to school during the offseason. I got an industrial engineering degree, and so I wanted to go into management. And a Christian met me, a friend of mine, on the street, and I told him what I was going to do. I’m going to get out of football, and, you know, it wasn’t fulfilling. I want to get into business. Well, he knew immediately what was wrong with me when I told him the story, and he said, “How about attend the Bible study that meets at the hotel?” And my first reaction was, “Where?” I knew the Christmas story and the Eastern story. You know, I didn’t go. I didn’t have to go study the Bible, and I’d been to church every Sunday. But he was very persistent, and he and I went, and I never forget it, because we were studying in Matthew, the someone on the amount, and Jesus was saying, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you should eat or drink, about your body, what you should put on. Is not life more than food, and body more than clothing.” “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.” Well, boy, I got excited. That’s the first time that I ever had any inkling of even what the Gospel was all about, you know. And even in my young years, in the Bible, just that time, I realized I didn’t know that you were say by faith, you know. I went through the Romans there, of the, and boy, talked about everyone’s sin and fall ashore of the glory of God, and we’re dead in sin, and Christ died on the cross. Well, finally, I came to what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. In First Christians fifteen, three and four would say that Christ died on the cross, he was buried, and he rose again. And I accepted Christ right there. I realized right then that that life was really a matter of priorities. Unless God is first in your life, and your family, of course, is going to come very close when that happens, and your business is in third place, you’re not a Christian. So I had football all those years that I was trying to climb that ladder success to get the peace of mind and all, and only when I accepted Christ did that come to me. The peace was there, and Saint Augustine said it this way: “Hearts are restless, O God, until they find their rest in Thee.” Well, that was my story, and I tell you, I’ve heard many athletes have conversion stories, and they all follow the same pattern. Football becomes everything. They think that’s what life’s all about. If you reach the top, you have everything. But when you reach your top, you don’t have everything. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t achieve. There’s nothing wrong with achieving and being the best that you can be. But, boy, it’s a lot different when Christ is number one and you succeed, because that’s what the whole life’s about. And so that was tremendous for me. And I was thirty-four years old then. The year before I took over the Dallas Cowboys as a head coach was when that took place. And it had really nothing to do with success. I had great success before I played, and great success act. But it’s a peace of mind that you have. And even when I took over the Cowboys, when I didn’t think I was going to make it, you know, I still, it was still God’s way. When Clinton Meerkson gave me that ten-year contract, I knew that that’s where God wanted me to be a coach, and from then on it was set. I was a coach from then on. I never even give it a second thought after that and there, and He’s blessed me in so many ways.

Had a great job on the editing and production by Iron Greg Hengler, and a special Thanks Division video where you can find stories like that. Go Divisionvideo.com. Hundreds and hundreds of beautiful stories, many of them about faith, and we don’t shy away from telling people’s faith stories when it’s a part of their life story. And my goodness, it was a fundamental part of Tom Landry’s personal transformation. He had chased success. He had thought, the next mountaintop, that’s what will make me happy. Got to go play ball. Flu missions in Europe B-17s. There’s nothing he didn’t do. One’s a championship. Still that feeling of restlessness, and then he bumps into that Christian who says, “Come to a Bible.” Study the story of Tom Landry, the story of his personal spiritual journey. Here on Our American Stories, Lee Habib here, and I’m inviting you to help our American story celebrate this country’s 250th birthday coming soon. If you want to help inspire countless others to love America like we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the Donate button. Any amount helps. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give.