<\/p>\n
Football season is just now getting underway, but Southern Miss head coach Blake Anderson drew a lot of attention before his players ever hit the gridiron Saturday.<\/p>\n
Ahead of kickoff, Anderson wore a black long-sleeve shirt with the words \u201cChrist Is King\u201d emblazoned in yellow letters across the chest as he and the University of Southern Mississippi team took part in the \u201cEagle Walk\u201d to the stadium.<\/p>\n
The team went on to win an impressive 49-3 victory against Alcorn State University.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a bunch of people comment, and I\u2019m pleased that it was noticed,\u201d Anderson said during his weekly press conference. \u201cI mean, the whole point of wearing it was for Christ to be glorified and it to be noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super grateful for my bosses that allowed me to be religious [and] use my platform to share my faith,\u201d he continued. \u201c[That is] not probably an easy decision for an AD and a president. But, you know, those are my views. That\u2019s just me trying to use my platform.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson went on to say he is \u201csaved by grace\u201d and credited God with his success as a coach.<\/p>\n
While bold public stances like his often garner criticism, the head football coach said he is thankful the responses online have been overwhelmingly positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never know what kind of response you\u2019re going to get,\u201d he admitted. \u201cIt\u2019s been 99% positive and a few negative, which is what I expected. I wasn\u2019t completely aware of just where it would go.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cIn my opinion, if it makes one person think, then it was worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson has been vocal about his faith for several years, even through\u00a0incredible tragedies.<\/p>\n
His wife, Wendy, died of breast cancer in 2019, followed soon after by the passing of his father. Anderson\u2019s son, Cason, took his life in 2022, and the coach\u2019s brother, Bryan, died in 2024, following a lengthy battle with aggressive colon cancer.<\/p>\n
One of Anderson\u2019s close friends, Larry Fedora,\u00a0said\u00a0he \u201cwouldn\u2019t have been able to survive if he didn\u2019t have such a strong faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2020, when he was the head coach of Utah State, Anderson\u00a0told local reporters, \u201cI\u2019m a Christian before I\u2019m anything else. I love the Lord and I feel like God put me in coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in\u00a0an interview five years later with Football Scoop, he said, \u201cMy faith comes from Christ, not from me. I\u2019m not tough enough, I\u2019m not big enough to do this on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Football season is just now getting underway, but Southern Miss head coach Blake Anderson drew a lot of attention before his players ever hit the gridiron Saturday. Ahead of kickoff, Anderson wore a black long-sleeve shirt with the words \u201cChrist Is King\u201d emblazoned in yellow letters across the chest as he and the University of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[274,195,2212,5909,432,348,1604,5628,196],"class_list":["post-32116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-ahead","tag-big","tag-bold","tag-coach","tag-declaration","tag-faith","tag-football","tag-southern","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}