Clyde Christensen IT’S BEEN A TRYING YEAR FOR COLTS OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR CLYDE CHRISTENSEN, BUT HIS PAST PUTS EVERYTHING IN PERSPECTIVE.
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ifty million weren’t as lucky as Clyde Christensen. The Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator—midst the fame of winning a Super Bowl in 2007, working hand in hand with Peyton Manning and spearheading an organization with Tony Dungy—won’t ever forget that simple truth. He was one of the lucky ones. --It was 4 o’clock on a Monday afternoon in 1956 when Richard Christensen finally got the call he had been waiting for. It was the Los Angeles County Adoption Agency. “We have a child for you,” they said. It’d been a long road. Seven years before, there was the initial “shock” of learning about his wife, June’s, physical troubles that prevented her from having children. And then there was the seemingly endless halfdecade long search for a child. But finally, this: Clyde, their son, laying in a crib at the adoption agency. Perhaps the sight was worth the wait. The next morning, on his way to his church office in San Pedro, Calif., Richard was so overcome with joy that he had to pull over on the side of the road. Says Richard in his frail, gravelly voice, “You all of a sudden realize, ‘I’m a father.’” Whoever Clyde’s biological father and mother were, they’ll never know. But judging from Clyde’s stellar high school and college football careers, it’s fair to assume that one or both of them were athletic. Clyde excelled at Royal Oak High School in his hometown of Covina, Calif., then earned All-America status at Fresno City Junior College before lettering two years at the University of North Carolina. Richard says his son was a “shifty and fast” quarterback but was too short to excel at the D1 or NFL level. “He was shorter than Doug Flutie,” he jokes. Following school, Clyde began to climb the collegecoaching ladder. Ole Miss. ETSU. Temple. East Carolina. And the list goes on. But his coaching career changed when he brushed shoulders with someone 20 years ago: Tony Dungy. Bobby Jones, one of the most respected defenders in NBA history who happens to be one of Clyde’s best friends, asked Clyde to volunteer at a coaching clinic in Hilton Head, SC…to ironically help him coach basketball. Dungy was there for football. The three of them met one another, and the rest, of course, is history. “Right after that, Tony joined us at my house along
with Clyde. I remember doing Bible trivia together, and Tony knew all the answers,” Jones jokes. In 1996, Dungy offered Clyde a position with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and he hasn’t left the NFL since. He followed Dungy to Indianapolis and attained the epitome of football success with a Super Bowl victory in 2007 as the Colts’ wide receiver’s coach. “It’s all been the journey,” Clyde says. “There have been Super Bowl wins. There have been Super Bowl losses. We’ve buried parents. And we’ve buried sons. It hasn’t all been just wins and losses. It’s bigger than that.” --Clyde’s football resume is impressive. But as he says, it’s bigger than that. A perfect example is All Pro Dad, an organization that Clyde and Dungy founded in 1997 where they apply Biblical principles to fatherhood. The organization boasts over 1,000 chapters at public schools, a 70,000-person email to fathers and 53 NFL spokesmen that altogether make an immeasurable impact on families across the nation. “(Tony and I) are just two guys that want to do it the way God’s called us to do it,” Clyde says. “That’s what I hope that organization is about. It’s about men. It’s about having a commitment.” JIM MCISAAC / GETTY IMAGES His passion for All Pro Dad, perhaps, spurns from his past—when God, he says, all-knowingly placed him in a family. “I don’t ever remember a day in my life not knowing that Christ was the center of our homes, the center of our lives, our creator and all of those things,” Clyde says. “I don’t remember a day not knowing Jesus Christ as being real, personal and being involved in the day-to-day stuff, and for that I’m extremely grateful.” And to think that, in reality, Clyde, the product of a teenage pregnancy, was lucky just to be born, nonetheless adopted into a God-fearing family. “To whom much is given, much is expected,” Clyde says. “For me to think that God said, ‘Hey, here is the family I want to put Clyde into and take care of all those circumstances with his hand, it touches me. It’s hard to comprehend.” Clyde Christensen was one of the lucky ones. “Since then I always share that 50 million didn’t get the chance I got,” says Clyde with glassy eyes. “It’s not just one life with abortion. This world would be fine without me, it wouldn’t lose anything, but without my three girls (Rachel, Rebecca and Ruth), it would have missed something…It’s not just one life. It’s generations. I’m touched each time I look at my kids...that some teenage gal gave me a chance.” - STEPHEN COPELAND
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