Sports often serve as an escape. Fans watch sports to escape their work week or the day-to-day stresses. Often, players use sports as a way to escape their environment.

Not everyone comes from a safe neighborhood. Whenever a young man plays sports, it gives him structure and a safe place, far from danger. Sports can literally save lives.

With such a tumultuous social situation in America, with deaths across our country, Ragin' Cajuns Head Coach Mark Hudspeth could have completely avoided making a statement. Instead, he felt obligated to speak about the issues in the only appropriate way, through the lens of college football.

At the end of his Q & A session at Sun Belt Media Day, he made sure to send out this brief message.

Here is Coach Hud's full message, written out:

Let me close by saying one thing too, and I would hate not to mention this.

 

You know, with the way that things have been happening in our country in the last few weeks, as an advocate for the game of football, I can’t stress any more right now the importance of this college football game. We’ve got to encourage more student athletes at a younger age to get involved with the game of football because of the life lessons it teaches these kids.

 

It keeps them off the street. It keeps them in structured programs every day when school is out from three to six, and the life lessons this game teaches are imperative to the future of our young generation, and so that’s why I’m more than ever an advocate of the game of football, and I hope that we as a coaching staff, and as players, can make a big difference across the country, and in our country moving forward, to create a better country.

 

I think we can do that as coaches, as athletes at all levels, but especially in the game of football where there’s so many life lessons taught on a daily basis.

I agree, coach. When kids are at practice, they don't have time to get into trouble. It's a simple solution to a monstrous problem.

Large issues don't get solved with one swipe of the magic wand. It takes everybody pitching in, however they can, to create change.

Mark Hudspeth coaches college football, but he's doing what he can in his own world to keep kids safe and out of trouble. If it saves one life, it's worth applauding.

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