Motivational speaker Inky Johnson, left, and former Tennessee head football coach Phillip Fulmer spoke at the Chattanooga MoveMENt Banquet, benefitting the Men's Ministry Network, Thursday night at the Brainerd Baptist BX.
photo by Dennis Norwood
On September 9, 2006 the University of Tennessee was playing Air Force Academy in Neyland Stadium. Late in the game the Falcons were trailing but driving when they unleashed their wishbone triple option with a pass play towards the Vols’ defensive back, Inky Johnson.
While speaking to a group of mostly men gathered for a fund raiser for the Men’s Ministry Network Thursday night at the Brainerd Baptist BX, Johnson related that story.
Johnson went on to tell how he saw the play coming his way and that his way of bringing down usually much larger wide receivers “was simple.
It's either me or you and I'm not blinking.”
After the hit, Johnson said he knew something was wrong.
“It seemed as if every breath in my body left and I fell to the ground and I blacked out,” Johnson said. “It was one of the scariest moments of my life. The shock eventually left and it stayed in my right arm and hand. I was lying on the field and I looked over at the trainers and the doctors running over to me”
When he woke up after life-saving surgery at the UT Medical Center, his doctor told him he had good news and bad news, Johnson recalled how the thought of bad news was a little strange since he had been told as he was being rushed into surgery, due to a burst subclavian artery, that he could die. The good news was he was alive, but the bad news was that his football career was possibly over.
As it turned out it was due to significant nerve damage in his right shoulder and arm.
Coach Phillip Fulmer, also on the program Thursday night, related that Johnson’s first words to him that next morning were, “Coach, I’m blessed.”
Johnson’s dream of an NFL career may have been over, but to this day he lives every day of his life as being blessed.
As the nationally-known motivational speaker tells his audiences, “It all starts with a choice. Every day I wake up and make the decision to be the best version of me I can be.”
He says, “My wife deserves the best version of me. My two children deserve the best version of me and my Savior deserves the best version of me.”
Today, Johnson travels the nation telling his audiences that, “The most dangerous thing in the world is a man with no direction.” He is not ashamed to give credit to Jesus Christ for giving him that direction in his own life. Something Coach Fulmer shares with his former player. As the coach of the 1998 National Champions said during his introduction of Johnson, “We’re here tonight to talk about making better men.”
Fulmer related how he was raised by Christian parents and the love he shared for them.
“Fifty two years ago a coach named Terry Evans at Franklin High School made a difference in my life.” Thanks to Evans and other coaches in my life, that’s probably the biggest reason I became a coach.”
Once Fulmer was hired as the Vols’ head coach he said one of the first things he did was to hire a team chaplain. That chaplain challenged Johnson as he stood in his hospital room looking into a mirror at his damaged body. “I had lowered my head,” he said.
From behind him, the chaplain told me to “Pick your head up.”
Johnson told the audience that he had been raised in a house that had two sides. On one side was his mom and grandmother who set a Christian example. On the other side were uncles who would have people try drugs in front of him as a young boy and would cook meth in the home and bring in guns.
Even as a young man he knew which path he wanted to travel and it wasn’t the one that led his uncles to a life lived in prison. Johnson related how he told a disbelieving guard at his high school that he would make something of his life and how that was met with scorn and a prediction that he would end up in Cell Block D-1 not a D-1 football program.
When he signed his scholarship he went back and found that same guard and showed him he had had the wrong kid years back. Johnson the told how the three cousins he had shared a pallet on the floor with in their overcrowded home had done the same.
Johnson and his wife have adopted three homeless centers where they help feed and clothe those who have fallen on hard times. As he relates, “Was it better for people to relate to my son and daughter about how their dad had once been a possible NFL draft pick or better that that couple I might’ve helped come back and tell my kids how their dad had given them a hand up or a meal or put clothes in their closet?”
We can all learn a life-lesson from Inky Johnson. Which decision will you make when you wake up tomorrow morning?
For more information on the Men’s Ministry Network go to www.mensministry.org or call (423) 893-8885. For more information on Inky Johnson, go to www.inkyjohnson.com.
(Contact Dennis Norwood at sportsshooter614@gmail.com; follow him on Twitter at @DennisENorwood)