FARRIS, OKLA. — Profitable the Tremendous Bowl couldn’t be any higher than what Carl McAdams skilled this weekend.
McAdams can attest to that.
He performed defensive deal with for the New York Jets after they upset the Baltimore Colts, 16-7, in Tremendous Bowl III on Jan. 12, 1969. Earlier than that recreation, Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously assured the victory by the 18-point underdogs.
Carl McAdams, middle, smiles as he’s lifted out of the baptistery on the Farris Church of Christ in southeastern Oklahoma.
“I’ll take this. It means extra to me,” McAdams, now an 80-year-old grandfather, mentioned of his baptism Sunday on the Farris Church of Christ, a rural congregation 150 miles southeast of Oklahoma Metropolis.
Along with his strolling stick in hand, McAdams stepped ahead throughout the invitation tune — “When We All Get to Heaven” — to declare his intention to be immersed for the remission of sins.
It’s a choice he first made as a 14-year-old boy — just some years earlier than a legendary soccer coach named Bud Wilkinson got here to his hometown of White Deer, Texas, to recruit him to play for the College of Oklahoma.
“I knew the nice Lord despatched him as a result of I wasn’t that good,” McAdams mentioned of Wilkinson.
Really, he was fairly good.
No. 51 Carl McAdams was a two-time All-America linebacker on the College of Oklahoma.
At Oklahoma, he twice received All-America honors as a linebacker. In 1965, he set the Sooners’ single-game tackling document with 24 towards Navy, a mark that stood for 53 years.
As a boy, McAdams attended church together with his mom “each time that door was open,” he defined to the 55 souls within the pews.
However after he left house for faculty and when he performed for the Jets, he didn’t preserve his common worship follow.
“The Lord gave me all these items, and I didn’t thank him for it,” he lamented.
As he mirrored on his life, McAdams questioned in regards to the certainty of his non secular resolution 66 years in the past. He talked to Floyd Kaiser, the Farris preacher, about his issues.
“I left it as much as him,” Kaiser mentioned. “I informed him, ‘You recognize, in Acts 2 when 3,000 have been baptized, there have been most likely a few of them, too, who had doubts as to whether or not they knew sufficient for that. But when it troubles you, go forward and take away the doubt.’”
Carl McAdams explains his resolution to be baptized once more to Farris Church of Christ members.
Married for 60 years, Carl and Margaret McAdams have known as the Farris church house for many years. After his soccer profession, McAdams labored within the insurance coverage enterprise, and the couple raised their three sons — Mack, Joe and Jay — within the congregation. Farris is an unincorporated neighborhood in Atoka County in southeastern Oklahoma.
All three sons — together with Joe’s spouse, Nancy; and Jay’s spouse, Kobi — got here to witness the baptism. They have been joined by the McAdamses’ 5 grandchildren: Jack, Matt, Alli, Kase and Bowen.
“Dad, you’ve lived an excellent life,” Joe, a member of the Merrick Drive Church of Christ in Ardmore, Okla., mentioned earlier than taking his father’s confession. “You have been and nonetheless are an instance of energy and love.
Carl McAdams, within the Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt, poses for a photograph together with his spouse, kids and grandchildren after his baptism Sunday.
“My different two brothers bought collectively and mentioned, ‘Hey Joe, you most likely must be the one which baptizes Dad,’” he defined to the congregation. “And I assumed, ‘Oh, my God, this would be the biggest honor ever to baptize my hero, my dad.’
“No one’s good,” the center son emphasised to his father. “However I’ll let you know this: On this Earth, the best man I’ve met is you.”
Carl McAdams is proven in his time as a New York Jets soccer participant within the Nineteen Sixties.
Joe simply turned 56.
He was born Jan. 17, 1969, 5 days after his father received the Tremendous Bowl. His impending arrival saved his mom from attending the large recreation on the Orange Bowl in Miami.
However all these many years later, she was ecstatic to witness a fair larger milestone in his life — one with everlasting ramifications.
“I used to be simply so completely satisfied and blessed and grateful — all these emotions,” she mentioned as Carl returned to the auditorium, his hair nonetheless moist however sporting a recent Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt.
He flashed an enormous smile, his contentment unrelated to the Tremendous Bowl ring on his left hand.
“It might’t get any higher than that,” he mentioned of his baptism. “I hope the nice Lord will handle me.”
Jay McAdams, the youngest of Carl’s three sons, prays after his father’s baptism Sunday.
Carl McAdams, left, visits with preacher Floyd Kaiser after his baptism Sunday.
A truck is parked beside the signal on the Farris Church of Christ.
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to southeastern Oklahoma to report this story. Attain him at [email protected].
