‘I hope the good Lord will take care of me,’ former New York Jets defensive tackle says.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
FARRIS, Okla. — Winning the Super Bowl couldn’t be any better than what Carl McAdams experienced this weekend.
McAdams can attest to that.
He played defensive tackle for the New York Jets when they upset the Baltimore Colts, 16-7, in Super Bowl III on Jan. 12, 1969. Before that game, Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously guaranteed the victory by the 18-point underdogs.
“I’ll take this. It means more to me,” McAdams, now an 80-year-old grandfather, said of his baptism Sunday at the Farris Church of Christ, a rural congregation 150 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.
With his walking stick in hand, McAdams stepped forward during the invitation song —“When We All Get to Heaven” — to declare his intention to be immersed for the remission of sins.
It’s a decision he first made as a 14-year-old boy — just a few years before a legendary football coach named Bud Wilkinson came to his hometown of White Deer, Texas, to recruit him to play for the University of Oklahoma.
“I knew the good Lord sent him because I wasn’t that good,” McAdams said of Wilkinson.
Actually, he was pretty good.
This story appears in the online print edition of The Christian Chronicle.
Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.
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