📖 Preacher, educator, coach: 5 life lessons from a legend 🔌

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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — My amazing friend Garth Pleasant texted me a few months ago.

“Bobby, I can get tickets for the Oklahoma game,” he informed me. “Are you in?”

Let’s see: Pleasant’s Michigan Wolverines vs. my Oklahoma Sooners at the Big House on a picture-perfect Saturday in September.

Of course I was in!

So I made the 1,000-mile journey from my home in Oklahoma City and joined the crowd of 111,240 — including Pleasant, his son Klint and our friend Randy Harris from Abilene, Texas — who witnessed last Saturday’s battle of college football blue bloods at Michigan Stadium.

Regular readers may recall my 2024 column on Pleasant, a legendary small-college basketball coach who won 720 games and four national championships in 38 seasons at Rochester Christian University, north of Detroit.

I love spending time with Pleasant — who was featured in the documentary “COACH: Make the Big Time Where You’re At” — and soaking in his simple wisdom.

While hanging out with me last weekend, he indulged my request to share life lessons from his 77 years on planet Earth. 

To make it easier, I asked him to reflect on five roles where he’s excelled:

Read the full column.

This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.

Photo by Randy Harris