When Rick Burgess was growing up, his father, Bill Burgess, was also his football coach. But Bill was a mentor on and off the field not only for his own son but for the many young men he coached at both the high school and collegiate level. Though Bill has passed on, his lessons remain timeless and valuable for all men. Today on the show, Rick shares some of his old-school wisdom with us.
Rick is a radio host, a men’s ministry leader, and the author of Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father. In our conversation, he discusses what his dad taught him through football and beyond, including why men don’t run in the rain and why you need to get out of the stands, avoid being stupid, refuse to rest on your laurels, understand the difference between confidence and arrogance, and take full responsibility for your life without making excuses. We also talk about how Rick drew upon his father’s wisdom when tragedy struck his life.
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Brett McKay: Hey, before we get to today’s show, I want to let you know that enrollment for The Strenuous Life is now open. Summer is the season for movement, challenge, and growth, and there’s no better time to embrace it than right now. The Strenuous Life is our membership program that helps you put into action all the things we’ve been talking about on the AOM Podcast, and writing about on the AOM website. You’ll take on weekly challenges, earn skill-based badges, and work towards becoming a more capable, well-rounded man. Whether it’s fitness, craftsmanship, service, or personal development, there’s something here to push you forward. Join over 11,000 members who are done just thinking about change and are actually doing the work. Enrollment closes Thursday, June 12th at 10:00 PM Central, so don’t wait. Sign up at strenuouslife.co. That’s strenuouslife.co. I hope to see you on The Strenuous Life.
Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. When Rick Burgess was growing up, his father, Bill Burgess, was also his football coach. But Bill was a mentor on and off the field, not only for his own son, but for the many young men he coached at both the high school and collegiate level. Though Bill has passed on, his lessons remain timeless and valuable for all men.
Today on the show, Rick shares some of his old-school wisdom with us. Rick is a radio host, a men’s ministry leader, and the author of “Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father.” In our conversation, he discusses what his dad taught him through football and beyond, including why men don’t run in the rain, and why you need to get out of the stands, avoid being stupid, refuse to rest on your laurels, understand the difference between confidence and arrogance, and take full responsibility for your life without making excuses. We also talk about how Rick drew upon his father’s wisdom when tragedy struck his life. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is/rain.
All right, Rick Burgess, welcome to the show.
Rick Burgess: Thanks for having me, Brett. Excited to talk about this topic today, ’cause this is one that you and I both have a lot of passion about.
Brett McKay: Oh, for sure. So, you got a new book out. It’s called “Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father.” And this book is all about your father and college football coach Bill Burgess. So your dad, he was a football coach in Alabama. He played football for Auburn from 1958 to 1962. After that, he became a high school football coach and athletic director. He coached at Woodlawn High School and Oxford High School there in Alabama. Then he became the coach of Jacksonville State University. Had a lot of success there. He took his team to three National Division II championships, won one of those, won multiple Gulf South conference titles. He was named, National Coach of the Year, was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. So he had a very successful coaching career. And it seems like your dad, he was born to coach. Like, this was his calling and he filled it.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, there’s people that maybe wanna be a coach, and you just put it best Brett, then there’s people that were born to coach. And he just, because it came so natural to him, it was kind of like breathing. I don’t think he even put a lot of effort into saying, I must do this and I have to do that. And I think it’s just what he was born to do. And he was one of those people that if he came into a room, he would influence people whether you wanted him to or not.
Brett McKay: What I love about this book is, we were talking before we got on the show, I played high school football here in Oklahoma, and your dad, he reminded me of some of the football coaches that I had. And his sayings that he had, he’s like, witty one-liners that he had without even trying to be witty, the way he carried himself. And I love how you start off the book, this physical description you give your dad. Because I think it really captures the way he dressed and carried himself. It captures his philosophy towards coaching and life. So what was the Bill Burgess uniform that you knew like, that’s dad. When you think about your dad, that’s what you remember.
Rick Burgess: He wasn’t really, when I look back, he wasn’t, I don’t think over six foot tall, but he seemed like he was seven feet tall. But he was very muscular and he was old school. So he always had the trucker cap on with the team logo right on the front. He wore a coach’s shirt, the standard with the team logo then Cigna on the left chest. And then he would wear these black coaching shoes. You probably remember these, Brett. They were, I think Rodale made them?
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Rick Burgess: They were black, and then of course he would do tube socks of course, and he would pull those up to his massive calves, which were legendary. And those calves would kind of break the elastic of the tube socks and then the socks would fall down around his ankles, never staying up. And then of course he had his whistle on, had kind of a piece of leather around it and it had a whistle. And then on the end of the whistle, was athletic tape.
My dad believed that athletic tape could cure any problem. And of course it would have that on the end, tobacco juice, and sometimes blood would be stained on the athletic tape. And then of course the final part of the uniform was always the bike coaching shorts. They were super, super tight. And that’s the way he was standing in that Alabama sun. He was just the iconic portrait of those classic football coaches from that era that had influence on everybody they coached.
Brett McKay: How do you think that exemplifies his philosophy or sort of his stance towards life?
Rick Burgess: Dad was always about keeping it simple. He probably was one of the most humble people that I’ve ever known for the… Considering the leadership role that he was constantly being put in and the accolades. And he was never an I person. He was always a we person. He always complimented the staff, complimented the players, everybody who worked, the equipment person, the trainers, the janitor, whatever the case may be. And so, I think if you looked at the way he dressed, he dressed in a way that shouldn’t really it did, but it shouldn’t have really. The intent was not to bring attention to himself. He felt like if I was gonna be coaching, this is the things I need to coach. And I’m certainly not trying to make a fashion statement or bring any attention to myself. I’m here to work.
Brett McKay: It made me wanna go get some bike shorts for myself.
Rick Burgess: Oh, goodness. Could we bring them back?
Brett McKay: Let’s bring them back.
Rick Burgess: Could we bring them back?
Brett McKay: I think that’s the next trend that’s gonna happen here. Coach bike shorts. All right, so let’s talk about some of these lessons that you highlight in the book. And the first lesson that you highlight that you got from your dad was, it’s the title of the book, “Men Don’t Run in the Rain.” It’s a very evocative phrase. What does that mean?
Rick Burgess: It meant more than what it literally means. In the intro, I tell you the story about me being with my dad, and it was actually one of my friends. Dad was, “This doesn’t surprise you.” He was our biological father, but he was a father figure for so many of our friends and, of course, the multiple players that he coached. Because they either didn’t have a father at all, or they may had fathers that were not great people. And so, dad became kind of a pseudo father for many, and one of my best friends in school. And in growing up, his father, was not involved in his life and unfortunately was actually eventually murdered. And so, he looked to dad as his dad. He was at our house all the time. And he was the first one that said to me, when we were little boys, we weren’t very old, and he saw dad in a downpour and dad wasn’t running. He was just walking methodically. He wasn’t picking up his pace, he wasn’t slowing down. As if the rain wasn’t really hitting him. And he looked at me and he said, “Your dad doesn’t run in the rain.”
And I thought, okay, and I didn’t think anything much about it. And maybe dad’s just odd. I didn’t know. So when I got a little older, somewhere around 12, 13, something like that, I was leaving his office and one of those classic Alabama afternoon downpours came with the daily thunderstorm, with all the humidity. And so, I went to run to his truck and he put his arm out and he stopped me and he says, “No, men don’t run in the rain.” And I remember thinking to myself, I don’t think I fully grasp it, but almost what he was saying is, men should never be frantic. Men should not make a big deal out of things that aren’t a big deal. It’s just rain. And I don’t wanna see you nor any man scurrying like the rain falling on them is going to hurt them. And he said, we walk to the truck. And he’s teaching something there about steadiness. He’s teaching something there about not being fearful of things that we shouldn’t be afraid of. He’s speaking about a confidence, a calm that a man should bring to a chaotic situation. So he was saying something much bigger and it took me a while to realize that, but I see now, he was starting to teach that as soon as he could.
Brett McKay: That phrase, that advice, men don’t run in the rain, it reminds me of this Nassim Taleb quote. Are you familiar with Nassim Taleb, Antifragile, Black Swans, he’s this economist guy?
Rick Burgess: Sure.
Brett McKay: But he has this line, “I don’t run for trains.” And I think it’s very similar. And he says this about why he doesn’t run for trains. He says, “I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics and behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life.” And also, just yeah, so it’s just like your dad didn’t run in the rain because he was in control. The rain’s happening, no big deal, I’m still in charge. Nassim Taleb doesn’t run for trains because, first off, you look kind of silly when you’re running in the rain or running for a train. But it also just asserts your agency, hey, you know what, this doesn’t bother me.
Rick Burgess: That’s exactly right. And I think sometimes that’s what’s missing in our homes. See, I always had this sense that as long as this man was here, then we’re good. And if I had looked up and never saw him panic in situations that might have been fearful or scary, it would have caused the entire family to lose all hope almost. He was a calming factor, a steadiness, a foundation in his family’s life, and you’re right. They’re both saying the same thing. If we cast a different vision, it doesn’t just affect us. It’s not about them, it’s the impact it has on all those you influence.
Brett McKay: All right, so you actually played for your dad when he was a high school coach at Oxford. What was that like?
Rick Burgess: My dad was probably the best that I ever have seen or heard of. When you see all these movies, anytime there’s the, here’s the authoritative dad, and he’s coaching his kids, and then he makes them run sprints, like the great Santini that Pat talked about in his famous book that went on to be a movie. It wasn’t that at all. Dad really separated the fact that he was the coach and that he was our father. He never mixed the two. It wasn’t any harder on us than it was anybody else who played for him. It wasn’t any easier on us. Our playing time was earned. That was understood. Now, probably the only thing that was a little bit different, and I understand his caution on this, is he had to be careful about patting us on the back publicly, in interviews and things like that. I think that was difficult for him, and I think at times he might have said maybe you and your brother deserved.
He was more apt to do it for my brother than me because of our personalities, but is that maybe there were times that I could have gotten a pat on the back publicly about a game, and if he wasn’t my dad, the coach probably would have done more of, but that was no big deal, because we didn’t have any of the bad stuff. Hey, I didn’t like the way you played today. What were you doing in practice? Get out in the yard, and let me show you again how to do that. There was none of that. Even if there was something wrong with the team, and he was at home and we were eating dinner, he would never bring it up. And then we got back to the field the next day, he’d bring it up. So he never mixed the two and never made it weird, and playing for my dad was actually a very positive experience, and I’m glad I got to do it.
Brett McKay: I think there’s a lesson right there for men learning how to separate work from home. A lot of guys, they bring work home, all the stress and whatnot.
Rick Burgess: Oh, yeah.
Brett McKay: It just makes their family miserable, and that’s a skill. I think it’s a skill you have to practice and develop. It doesn’t just happen, I don’t think.
Rick Burgess: No, I think he was intentional about it. I think it would have embarrassed him if he’d have done it any other way, and I think he found, and there were some of these men around, like through youth league and things like that, and I remember dad was always repulsed by the Little League Dad. My dad was not a huge fan of Little League. He didn’t keep us from playing it, and he didn’t try to encourage us to play it, but he knew that there were a lot of men that were putting themselves in positions with influence over boys that probably were not gonna be a great influence. Luckily, I had a dad that could kind of offset that, but I remember him being very repulsed by the coach dad that was screaming at his son on the mound, and the son’s obviously upset, and here’s this dad who’s coaching the whole team, and he’s focused on traumatizing his son in front of everybody, and my dad really, really disliked that.
Brett McKay: So one of the lessons you learned from your dad when you played for him, was nobody cares about last year. What’s the story behind that lesson?
Rick Burgess: Yeah, my dad ran a program, and you being from Oklahoma, you saw big programs, and it was very rare that there would be someone younger than a junior to actually play and be in the starting lineup, and in those days, and I’ve even seen in my home state of Alabama, this has changed a lot. Even the biggest schools will still take what we used to call the B-Team. Some people call it junior varsity, and they combine them, and I’ve always wondered why that is, because dad didn’t have near the coaching staff as these big schools have now in high school, but he still made sure the B-Team had it’s own coach, had it’s own practices, it’s own games. You didn’t practice with the varsity and then go play like I saw my sons doing, even at big schools. So he didn’t do it that way, and so for you to be on the team as a sophomore, be on the varsity was almost unheard of. So the year that I was coming up, I had four other friends that we were sophomores that had had good.
We were always playing a year ahead, and his senior class that year was weak, and the numbers were weak, their win-loss record wasn’t very good, and so he pulled five sophomores up to the varsity, which was unheard of, and I got to start. He was not my position coach, but the position coach made me the starter. So I had a good year for a sophomore, and so I was coming back my junior year going, well, I know who’s the starting, defensive or tackle. I know what that is. And so, the first play of the two-a-day practices for the new season my junior year, he erupted, and he pulled me out of the lineup. He told me to go sit on the bench, and they were gonna get somebody in there that was ready to play, that was hungry, and then as that player is running on the field, he walks over to me as I’m confused and standing on the sideline, and he said, “Nobody cares what you did last year, and if you think you’re gonna come out here and start on what you did last year.” He said, “Nobody cares what you did last year, that’s in that year, and today is a whole new day. And you’re gonna have to earn the starting position on this team, just as if you’ve never played a down for me.”
And I even remember thinking, Brett, I don’t think I was given a bad effort. But he knew that was his opportunity, and he was not gonna let a sophomore’s head blow up and was never going to make me think or anyone on that field, that you played for any other reason than you earned it. And he was letting me know, that if I phoned it in and leaned on last year, that I would probably find myself on the bench.
Brett McKay: How have you carried that lesson over to other areas of your life beyond football?
Rick Burgess: Yeah, I don’t want to get overly spiritual, even though the book does have a spiritual component to it, as you saw. But I think a lot of times people and men in their spiritual life, in their careers or whatever, it’s sad for me to think that a man ever has already lived his best year. I’m 60 years old as I’m talking to you, and I remember doing the research, and somebody making me aware of it asked me had I seen it, and I said I had not. And I found out that research shows that if a man has his mental and physical health, that 60 to 70 is the most influential decade of his entire life. Well, if I’ve maxed out in high school, and wanna tell you about me making All State in high school for the rest of my life, and I’m doing that to the point that I’m not even remotely attempting to accomplish something right now, I use the example in the book of Philip. When he had the Ethiopian and he had this big moment where he baptizes this Ethiopian and interprets the book of Isaiah, and I said, a lot of people would have just the rest of their life they would have been Philip, and that would have been the last thing you ever heard.
But it says in Scripture, that Philip immediately left that area and began talking to other people about Christ and interpreting Scripture for them. He didn’t rest on the Ethiopian story. And I think a lot of times men, tell these same stories when there’s a lot of life left as if they’ve maxed out. That was my greatest moment, and I think it also makes us lazy that we think, well, I’ve done enough. And that’s not true. Until we take our last breath, there’s still value to our lives, and we should be having impact and influence and making a difference. And dad was teaching me a life lesson that you don’t rest on your laurels. Nobody cares what you did in 1982. What are you doing in 2025, 2026?
Brett McKay: Yeah, that idea that when you’re 60, you still might have 20 years left, that’s a long time to get a lot done. And just that idea that you can still keep doing things and trying to be better. Reminded me of a conversation I had a while back ago with Cynthia Covey. She’s the daughter of Stephen Covey of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People fame.
Rick Burgess: Oh, yeah.
Brett McKay: And she finished a book that her father had started. He passed away, and then she finished it. It’s called “Live Life in Crescendo.” And it’s all about your most important work is always ahead of you. And she talked about her father. Like, this is a guy who has written one of the most influential self-help books in history, but he always thought, I can do something better than that, and he was always striving more. And he says, “I might not be as well-known for my later work as I was with Seven Habits, but I still got something important to do, and I got to keep working at it.” And he was doing that until his dying day.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, no doubt. Even at 60, I did the same radio show for 31 years, and when that show ended in December, and I sensed that it was time for it to end. I thought it’s best days were behind it, and I started getting a feeling that we were an oldies act. We were starting to rest on the things we’d done in the past, and we had a very successful career, and I decided that it was time for me to do something different. So literally, I’ve been as you and I are doing this interview, I’m four or five months into a brand-new show, and I host a radio show for my day job, and I’m loving it. And I’m talking about, in January, I was sitting down listening to research. They put research in the field. I wanted to know what I was doing poorly, what I could do better, and it would have been real easy to be at 60, say, hey, I’ve been in radio for over 40 years. Y’all have nothing to tell me. But that’s not true.
I still need to bang on my craft and continue to get better at what I do, and as you just stated, I don’t know that I’ll be remembered in my industry, as much for what I’m doing now, as what I did in the past, but if I’m looking in the mirror and I think I’m better at what I was doing and I’m actually doing this job better, then that’s good enough for me. Because I think that I can still improve, there’s no doubt about that. But am I willing to improve? You could come to the reality, you could still improve and still be too lazy that you won’t do it. Not only do I know I can improve, I am trying to improve, which is the second half of it.
Brett McKay: I love this lesson, another lesson you got from your dad, because my dad told this to me. I had football coaches say the same to me, and I’ve told this exact same thing. I coach flag football for my son and his team. I said the same thing to my flag football players that I coach. Don’t be stupid. What did your dad mean by being stupid?
Rick Burgess: My dad was obsessed with removing all stupidity from the planet. He hated for you to do stupid things, and then he had all these analogies. If I’d have ordered a truckload of stupid people and all I got was you, I would have got my money’s worth, which is one of my favorites. But dad thought that a lot of things in life could be avoided if you just wouldn’t be stupid. What you just decided to do was stupid, and if you would minimize the stupid things in your life. For instance, it’s third down. It is third and long. And they throw a pass for eight yards when they needed 12, but I tee off on the quarterback late, and now they get an automatic first down. That’s stupid. We had this handled if you had just not been stupid. And he would say things like, be smart. “Hey, be smart.” Like if he saw us starting to elevate a little bit on the field, you’ve got to think this through. Be smart right here. Hey, they’re probably gonna go on two, or they’re gonna change the cadence.
If it’s fourth down and a half a yard, you can bet they’re gonna try to draw you off sides. Don’t be stupid and jump. You can actually watch the ball. You shouldn’t even be listening to what the quarterback is saying because we move on the ball. It’s stupid to listen to him. And a lot of these things were very simplistic, and that’s why he marveled that we would still do them when it seemed so obvious that these were bad decisions.
Brett McKay: No, I think you’re right. A lot of the problems that people have in life are just the result of being stupid.
Rick Burgess: No doubt. I look back at my life and the problems that I have brought on myself, really, it’s because I just made a stupid decision. That far outweighs anything that happened to me that I said, I don’t think I had anything to do with that. A lot of it is just if I had just stopped and said, let me use logic, which is now common sense is a superpower. Let me just think this through and just don’t be stupid.
Brett McKay: That reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote. He says, “It is remarkable how much long term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
Rick Burgess: That’s good.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, that’s good. And I’ll tell the story about us setting, the woods behind our house on fire by just being stupid. We thought that we would take dried out pine limbs and suddenly we could turn those into torches like we saw in all the adventure movies. They’ve always got a torch. And so, we thought, let’s make torches out of dried out Alabama sun dried out pine. There’s nothing more flammable than pine straw. So let’s pick up limbs that are brown and let’s light them, and pretend like we have torches in the woods in a drought. That’s just stupid. And then of course it didn’t take long for somebody to go, oh, mine nearly burned me and threw it over to not be burned. And then it set that on fire and off we go.
Brett McKay: How do you not be stupid? Let’s say you’re a 40 year old guy, you feel like, man, am I being stupid? How do you know? How do you stop being stupid?
Rick Burgess: Well, I think the first thing we need to do is to not make decisions without, there’s, have you ever heard the term, and I know it’s been used quite a bit, if you take a rifle, let’s ready ourselves, let’s aim, and then let’s pull the trigger. Well, a lot of times, somebody will shoot ready aim. I’m just squeezing the trigger, and I didn’t take any time to think about what I’m doing. So a lot of times, if you’ll just stop for a minute and go, okay, I’m thinking about taking action on this. Let me go ahead and look ahead of that potential regret. Okay, if I had not done this, then I wouldn’t be sitting in the situation I’m in right now. A lot of things are avoidable in life if you’ll just stop for a minute, reason it out, and then take action. We tend to take action, then think about it later, and that’s a huge mistake. The five Ps, prior planning prevents poor performance. Maybe do a little more thinking and a little less reacting.
Brett McKay: Yeah, something that I told my players when I coached them, and I tell it to my kids too, it’s like one of those things I’m trying to get into their head. I want them to develop this stance towards life. It’s just situational awareness. Pay attention to what’s going on around you. I feel like a lot of the mistakes that happen on the field or even when your kids do something stupid, they just weren’t paying attention. They were just kind of off in la-la land. And I’m like, hey, just keep your head on a swivel, pay attention to what’s going on, know your business so that you can make good decisions. It’s a tough lesson to teach young people.
Rick Burgess: It is. And do you think too, Brett, when you think about this, another thing I would say is look at the history of people who made this same decision. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been counseling men, and I’m like, okay, so you started a relationship with a woman at work when you’re married with three kids. Did you not… There’s quite a bit, if we can look, we can see a lot of examples, that this never ends well. There’s a lot of times you can just look at the history, how many people who’ve made this decision that it turned out well for. And I don’t know why people always think, well, maybe this time I’ll find a way to maneuver through it. And in the very serious scenario I just mentioned, that man is only thinking about one thing. He’s thinking about satisfying some sort of desire, and he’s not even thinking about the mess he’s about to make.
Brett McKay: All right, so another lesson there, to not be stupid, or an antidote to not being stupid. Read, read literature. That includes the Bible. There’s a lot of examples of people being stupid there. But even like The Odyssey, The Iliad, there’s just so many examples, and just history books, so many examples of people being stupid. And you’ll learn, you know what? I’m not gonna do that.
Rick Burgess: That really is helpful.
Brett McKay: Yeah. We’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So, at the beginning of every season, your dad would give these epic speeches to kind of set the tone, particularly for the new players. And during those speeches, he would throw the gauntlet down by telling the players to get out of the stands. What does that mean? How have you taken this advice and applied it to your life?
Rick Burgess: Don’t we all want to be on the field? It’s amazing to me that men, especially when they’re watching sports, they’re disgusted by the thought that they would not want to be in the starting lineup. But then we get into life, and men in life seem to be perfectly comfortable with being third string, not participating, not accomplishing anything. And a lot of men are like, nah, I’m just gonna farm that out to somebody else, and I’m not gonna do that. I don’t wanna get involved. I don’t wanna have to get my hands dirty. But if you were to say to them, would you like to be on a sports team and sit the bench, they’d go, “Absolutely not.” But yet we’re sitting the bench on the important things in life. And so, dad’s deal was, and he would add a little caveat to that, he would say, “Now, if you can’t handle the way things are gonna go here, then leave right now and go sit in the stands and then tell everybody how great you could have been if Coach Burgess hadn’t been so difficult.”
And men do that, and that kind of gets into another thing we’ll talk about, but they’ll sit in the stands and then talk about all the coulda, shoulda, woulda if life just hadn’t been so unfair. And that is just so counter to how men were made. That’s how we act in our fallen state. And the one thing that always gets me, I’ll have people sometimes that’ll be critical of how I’m doing things, and I always ask a man, say look, before I want to listen to what you have to say, what do you do? Because I found being a Christian doing secular entertainment, I don’t do Christian radio, I’m a Christian who does radio, but most of the complaints that I get in the way that I’m in the world but not of the world and try to use entertainment to earn the right to share my faith, the most critical people I deal with are not people who disagree with my belief system. It’s usually people within all the denominational garbage of the Western Church. They complain the most. It’s more of the, “You’re not doing it right.”
Now before somebody, because sometimes I do need to be held accountable, so I’m not saying I’m perfect, but one thing I always wanna know, Brett, what do you do? Tell me, what impact have you had for the faith? How do you use the gifts that God’s given you to advance the kingdom of God? I’d like to hear that first, or are you just some guy who sits in the stands, and tells the rest of us on the field what we’re doing wrong? How about get out of the stands and get on the field and let’s see you make a play?
Brett McKay: Yeah. And he also talked about in that same chapter, a lot of men, or even you see this in high school sports, a lot of boys, they want the perks of playing football or a sport. They want to wear the cool uniform. They want to come out of the tunnel on game night. They want to be cheered, but a lot of people, they don’t wanna do the work that is required in order for you to do that, the two-a-day practices and the practice every day after school for two or three hours. And your dad had this saying, sometimes he’d stop practice, and it’s like 3 O’clock, and you see the buses leaving, taking kids home, and he’d tell the players like, “Hey, there goes those 3 O’clockers.”
Rick Burgess: Yeah. He would tell us, ’cause you remember this, Brett, there’s a lot of days you’re out on that field, you wish you was on that bus. You kind of want to go home and watch Andy Griffith reruns and eat a snack too. And he was basically letting us know that the sacrifice we’re making now, will pay off in the end because he would say, now, we come Friday night, and this isn’t high school, you can change it to Sunday or Saturday if you played at even a higher level, but he said, “Come Friday night, all those on the bus that don’t wanna be you right now.” When the band’s playing, the stadium’s full, the cheerleaders are cheering, and you’re walking out of that tunnel onto the field, every one of them would switch places with you. So what you have to understand is they’re not willing to make the sacrifice you’re making, but when it gets to the reward, they’re gonna wish they would have been you if they could have somehow avoided sacrifice, and he said that doesn’t exist. And so, we think about that all the time.
I remember a very, very jolting statement that was made by Vance Havner. Vance Havner was an old school pastor, and he said this. He said, “The Western church would stop praying for revival, if they had any idea what it was really going to cost.”
Brett McKay: It reminds me of that whole line about, you aren’t willing to pay the price. This is a line from Ronnie Coleman, he’s a bodybuilder. And he says, “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights.” [laughter] And it’s true. Like everyone wants the big muscles or whatever, but no one wants to do the stuff you have to do to get there.
Rick Burgess: Oh, I’ve said this recently ’cause I’ve always struggled with my weight after football when I stopped playing, ’cause when I walked out of that last workout, I said, well, I’ll never do that again. And eventually, I just came into conviction that this was not fair to my wife. This wasn’t fair to my children. And it certainly made me less effective in men’s ministry because it looked like I had no discipline. So I started committing myself and lost weight, got myself in better shape. I wanted to hit my 60s wide open. And I’ve done that. And then people will ask me, and you can tell they don’t wanna hear it. They’ll say, “So tell me how you’ve lost the weight and got yourself in a little better shape. What have you done?” And I know what the reaction is gonna be. And I looked at them, I say, well, I practiced good nutrition, I don’t overeat, and I exercise. Who knew? And I’m admitting that I spent most of my life knowing that, and I wasn’t willing to do it either. So I’m not being hypocritical, but you can tell that is not the answer they wanna hear to your statement that you just made about the bodybuilder, is how can I somehow not be overweight and be in better shape and not be so sick, but I don’t wanna have to put any effort into it?
And that’s why these shots and these pills and all this stuff is so popular right now, because people are trying to find a way to be healthier without ever doing anything. And you may lose the weight with these things, but there’s a bigger question. Are you really healthy? But when somebody says, “What would you suggest?” And you go, I would suggest good nutrition, less eating and more exercise. That does not draw a crowd.
Brett McKay: No, it doesn’t. So get out of the stands, get more involved in life, in your marriage, in your family, in any organizations you belong to, even at work. A lot of guys just kind of stay on the sidelines at work and just carp about things that have been like, “Hey, what can I do to make things better here?” But recognize, there’s a price. There’s gonna be some sacrifice involved in not being in the stands. Another mantra your dad had throughout his career was no excuses.
Rick Burgess: No.
Brett McKay: And I’m sure everyone listening at a football coach probably heard that. No excuses. What did that look like for him as a coach, that mantra?
Rick Burgess: This drove him as crazy as stupid things. People making excuses. And one of the things my dad never did, never, if we lost a game, he never made an excuse. You could have the worst call in the game ever that went against you by the officials. And I can remember some dillies, some good ones. And he would never bring that up. He said, “If we played the way we were supposed to play, then the calls would have made no difference.” There were moments throughout the game we could have won the game and we just didn’t get the job done. And then, he would take most of the responsibility on himself. He would never. I thought one time he was gonna just completely lose control when he started watching these college head football coaches that if it didn’t go well, they would send one of the coordinators to the postgame press conference. They wouldn’t go themselves as if they were blaming the coordinator. That infuriated him. And I remember the first time that I was playing for him and we had a defensive end that let containment be broke.
They bounced outside of him. And he said, “Where were you? You’re supposed to, this funnel that play back inside.” And the defensive end said, “Well, I slipped coach.” And he looked at him. He said, “But you can’t slip. Don’t make an excuse, just tell me you didn’t get the job done. If you’re the person in charge of containment, slipping is not an option. Just say you didn’t contain. And then we work with that. But please don’t make an excuse about it.” And so, he felt like that you should ultimately just admit there was nothing more freeing than if you didn’t have success, is to actually say you didn’t get the job done, not blame it on something else. You didn’t have any responsibility. Well, now he’s teaching more than football there. ‘Cause people are always willing to blame other people for really things they need to take responsibility for. And he taught that lesson. He taught it hard. I never heard him make an excuse. I do remember one time, and this is in the book, and you probably read that when he had the game where they beat a team really bad in college and it was in a torrential downpour.
So he was leaving the house on Sunday after we’d gone to church and was headed back to the office for the next week game. And the other coaches coaches show was on TV. And that guy was talking about how hard it rained and how they couldn’t move the ball because how bad the weather was. Now, dad’s team had beaten the other man’s team 35 to nothing. And so, my dad looked at me as he went out and he said, “Boy, I’ll tell you, listen to this guy, you would think it only rained on one side of the field.” And that’s all he said, but he was making the point, there he is making excuses. He didn’t make them and he didn’t have much respect for other people who did.
Brett McKay: So how can taking, it sounds like your dad was advocating for something like just radical ownership of your life. How can that change a man’s life?
Rick Burgess: Well, if I’m always justifying everything in my life and I’m always making an excuse for the things that are in my life, then ultimately, I’m never gonna go anywhere. I’m sorry if you’re listening to this and you had a bad family life. That’s terrible. I’m sorry if you had a rough go of things. I’m sorry if you’ve had a kind of a rough time. But at the end of the day, that can’t be used as an excuse for you not to succeed. If you saw bad examples in your life, then why don’t you be a good example? We are in control of the things that we do. We may not be able to control what other people do, but my dad always taught, control what you can control. So ultimately, you got to take ownership of how this turned out. And if it didn’t go well, at the end of it all, it’s probably because you didn’t do the job as well as you should have.
Brett McKay: Yet in existential philosophy, there’s this idea of living in bad faith. When you’re living in bad faith, you’re denying the responsibility. You can make decisions that change whatever situation you’re in. You still have the ability to make decisions. Like that can’t be taken away from you.
Rick Burgess: Exactly.
Brett McKay: And so, whenever you try to make excuses, you say, yeah, you’re living in bad faith. You are denying your agency.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, whatever happened to, that’s on me. And I will tell you this, one of the biggest obstacles that I face every single day is myself. I’m my biggest enemy. And so, I try to get myself under control. And if I can do that, what’s coming after that usually is not near as difficult. [laughter]
Brett McKay: So something else, a sort of thread throughout this book, is your dad teaching about the difference between confidence and arrogance. Your dad sounds like he was a confident man, but not an arrogant man. What’s the difference between confidence and arrogance, according to your dad?
Rick Burgess: Well, there’s no doubt he was confident. I think my dad truly believed that there was nobody alive that could take him and that he would overcome anything. And there’s a thing out right now. I don’t know if you’ve been seeing it where, could a hundred men defeat a silverback gorilla? Have you been watching that?
Brett McKay: I’ve been watching that. Yeah.
Rick Burgess: I think my dad thinks he could. And I don’t think my dad… My dad would be like, me, I’ll handle that. That’s not a problem. You think a gorilla could take me? But his confidence was not arrogance. Because also, the same man that was confident that he could stand against anything that life could throw at him, was also the same man that an equipment salesman found cleaning the bathrooms when he was athletic director and head coach. And so, when he went in to find my dad in a stall cleaning a toilet. And he asked my dad, “What in the world are you doing, coach, cleaning the toilets?” You’re the athletic director, you’re the head football coach. And dad said, “I’m cleaning the toilets because it’s my turn.” He never thought he was above cleaning toilets. So yes, he was confident, but he wasn’t arrogant. He always kept that servant’s attitude. My ultimate leadership is actually to serve the assistant coaches, to serve the players, to let them know that though I am confident in my abilities, I would give myself for your benefit. And I remember he had the attitude of he could get onto us, but nobody else could.
He became our advocate if others tried to get on us. And talking about teams and even talking about us as his children and his family. So my dad was confident, but then arrogance is something that I struggled with. And you see in the book, he tried to teach me ’cause I was a bit of a hot dog, which drove him crazy. And of course, he would always try to take me down that road and tell me about that fine line between being confident in your job and being arrogant about what you can do. And the point that he always tried to make, is that if you are not willing to put the work in, if you’re not willing to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the team, that’s not confidence, that’s arrogance. And when you’re arrogant, you’ll get us beat.
Brett McKay: Let’s shift themes here. It’s not football related, but your dad, he was a hunter?
Rick Burgess: Yes.
Brett McKay: He’s a big time hunter. And one year when he was older, and you were older, you’re an adult, you gave him a GPS device ’cause you thought, hey, this would be handy for my dad to have when he’s out hunting turkey or whatever. But the thing is, he never used it.
Rick Burgess: Never. I have it in my office. I still have it.
Brett McKay: Why is that? Like, what lesson did you take from him?
Rick Burgess: Well I thought I was gonna give him the greatest Father’s Day gift ever. I would shame my siblings, because I got this new technology and knowing that he loved the outdoors, I thought, well, he can go anywhere he wants to go now, by just entering in. These were the old garments, still they were a little bulky and you had to put them in your car and all that. These were the early days of the GPS. But what dad said back to me, I’ve never forgotten. He asked me what this thing was. And I said, dad, that’s a GPS. You just enter in wherever you wanna go. It’ll take you right to it. So he doesn’t even take it out of the box and he kind of pushes it to the side. And I see him doing that. And he even asked me for the receipt. And I said, dad, what’s the deal? Do you not want that? And he goes, “I’m not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings or anything.” He goes, “But I don’t need it.” I said, you don’t need a GPS? And then he said, “No, I don’t go anywhere that I don’t know where I’m going.”
And I thought, my goodness, I don’t even have a response to that. His point was, I always know where I’m going. I don’t wonder where I’m going or need someone else to figure out where I’m going. I always know where I’m going. And boy, what a lesson, right, Brett? How many men right now are just kind of making it up as they go? They think that somebody else needs to tell them where they’re going when they need, if you don’t know where you’re going, I don’t know how we expect anybody else to tell us where we’re going.
Brett McKay: Your dad’s story reminded me, I just recently finished Moby-Dick. I finished a couple months ago. Have you read Moby-Dick?
Rick Burgess: I have.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Well, there’s this famous scene with Ahab, and he’s got this quadrant. That’s what the sailors use to navigate.
Rick Burgess: Sure, yeah.
Brett McKay: And there’s this moment where he just destroys it, ’cause he realizes the quadrant can’t tell him where he wants to go. It’s like, that’s on me. And so, he smashed it. He’s like, I’m in charge here. So yeah, your dad’s story, the GPS reminded me of Ahab a little bit.
Rick Burgess: Oh yeah. What’s exactly the same thing? Ahab is realizing this can’t help me decide where I wanna go. I got to figure that out. And of course, then dad was adding the other part, figure out where you wanna go, but you also need to know how to get there.
Brett McKay: So how can a man figure out where he’s going in life? I’m sure you deal with a lot of men who have no clue where they’re going.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, I think first of all, what is your passion? Is there anything you feel called to at all? Is there something that kind of keeps you awake at night? Is there something that’s down in like their guts where you’re like, man, I really feel like this is where I should go. I think this is what I need to do. I’d love to have more impact with my life. But until you figure out where you wanna go, then there’s no way to put together a plan on how to get there. But then you have guys that do the other. They know where they wanna go, but kind of we’ve already touched on this, but they’re not willing to figure out what it takes to get there. And then sometimes they figure out what it takes to get there, and they’re just not willing to give that to go, but somehow they still expect it to happen. So I think that the thing that I find with men a lot, Brett, and I remember this period of my life, if you’re listening to this right now and you’re just kind of making it up as you go, news today for a time to change.
Rick Burgess: I’m gonna stop just making it up as I go. I’m gonna figure out what is important to me, what I think I’m supposed to be doing with my life, and then I’m going to put together a plan to do it.
Brett McKay: In 2008, your two-year-old son tragically drowned. Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent. How did the lessons you got from your father help you prepare for that moment?
Rick Burgess: Well, the thing that you’ve already heard is, men don’t run in the rain. And boy, it was pouring and storming and raining when that happened. And I immediately began to draw on the things that he taught me about, right now your whole family is looking to you. Everybody needs to feel steady. Everybody needs to feel calm. They don’t need to see you panic. You don’t need to become an apart. Now, I didn’t take that to the point that is unhealthy where I didn’t mourn. But there was a moment in the beginning, where your wife is falling apart, your children who are the siblings are falling apart. And frankly, whether you like it or not, we don’t have that luxury. Because if we don’t hold this thing together until everybody can get back on their feet, then it’s all gonna fall apart. And I had been taught, that I don’t run in the rain, that I stand sturdy and I go, and I minister to my wife, and I pull the children together and I start talking to them about life and who God is in these situations. But I would challenge every man, and it’s kind of what we just talked about, about a game plan.
It’s impossible for me to tell my wife and tell my children, who God is when a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy dies, or what’s going on in the world when a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy dies if I don’t already know those answers. See, I didn’t know that this was ever gonna happen, but I had spent a large portion of my life preparing for whatever was coming. For me, it was the word of God. I went there, I wanted to know everything about God I could possibly know. And you say, well Rick, how do you do that? I don’t like studying. I was the same guy. The early days of our family after I was redeemed, my wife was the spiritual leader. I’m not gonna act like that wasn’t true. But that radically changed in my life when I realized that I was actually quite knowledgeable about everything that I deemed of value, and everything that I loved. I knew about hunting. I knew about fishing. I knew about football. I knew about how to run a business. I knew how to do a radio show. I knew how to run that equipment.
Well, if I don’t have good study habits, how in the world did I learn all this? I learned it because I was passionate about it and I cared about it. And I had to come to a terrible conclusion, that I didn’t know who God was and I didn’t know the word of God, because I didn’t deem it of value and I didn’t love it. So I changed that, and began to seek God in a way that I never had and began to study His Word. Well, when this moment arrived, I had the answers. Now, I didn’t come up with them. They had been provided to me by the very God that created me. But in that moment, what the family and my wife can’t see, is me falling apart and running in the rain. And I’ll never forget the words of my wife when it was all kind of clearing and we were reflecting, and it’s always with us. But she said, “That night, at Children’s Hospital, our pastor couldn’t comfort me, our friends couldn’t comfort me, our family couldn’t comfort me, ’cause we all knew one thing. They couldn’t be my husband. They couldn’t be the children’s father, so we waited on you, because no one could replace you.”
Brett McKay: How did your father help you during this time?
Rick Burgess: My father helped me by confidently encouraging me, and telling me that I was doing a good job. And the thing I think that I’ll never forget is, my father and I and our interaction at my son’s memorial service, when I got up to speak and didn’t expect to speak the way it went. It was a supernatural moment. But when it was over, he and I had an interaction. And that was that we were both kind of redefining what it looks like to be a man. And I won’t give it all away. You can read the book. But he basically is telling me that, he knew it was raining. He knew it was storming, and he watched me. And he let me know that I didn’t run.
Brett McKay: Yeah, when I read that scene, basically your dad was telling you, you’re a man. Like, you’re a man. And I think every man, they crave that from their dads. They want that recognition from their dads.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, my dad didn’t patronize me, but my dad never robbed me of hearing, I’m proud of you. And then in that moment, it was the thing that even goes beyond I’m proud of you, is does he see me as a man? Does he see me as his equal? And I remember that moment vividly because he looked at me after it was over, and like you said, and he just looked at me and said, “Now that right there is a man.” And to hear that in that moment, he gave me the confidence I needed to continue on.
Brett McKay: Yeah. I think there’s a great lesson there of a father’s blessing or a father’s recognition. I think that’s something you got to think about as a father. You might not be thinking about that when your kid is five, even 10, maybe even 15, but once they start getting into adulthood, you got to start thinking about that.
Rick Burgess: Yeah, and I think before that, ’cause they’re not men yet, but you definitely need to find these moments to tell them you’re proud of them. Don’t ever assume that your son or daughter knows you’re proud of them. Don’t ever assume that. Don’t ever assume that your wife knows that you love her, if you have a wife. These things need to be vocalized by us clearly, and it really, really has an impact when we do so.
Brett McKay: If there’s one lesson you got from your dad that sort of encapsulates all the wisdom you got from him over the years, what would that be?
Rick Burgess: I think the thing that I take away the most, is that though you are in the leadership role, be someone that is still fun to be around. My dad was intimidating. My dad was clearly in charge and had influence, but he also was fun. It wasn’t just the, I’m whipping everybody into military shape and you never see him. I’m always stoic. He wasn’t like that at all. My dad was a huge cut up, and he picked and chose his moments correctly on when he needed to kind of let the pressure off a little bit and let’s lighten things up a little bit. And so, I looked at him, and I realized that I learned from him, how to love a wife, which he did with my mother incredible, how to be authoritative but still be close to your children, to still be able to cut up and have a laugh with them. And I think that probably of all the lessons we talked about today and talked about in the book, I believe the lesson of being steady, the lesson of not panicking, the lesson of let your family and let society see that you’re there, you’re at your position, you’re watching, you’re over them, and ultimately take responsibility for the mistakes you make in life, and own them, and then change and don’t make those same mistakes again.
So taking full responsibility for who you are, and leading while at the same time encouraging with the same amount of power. Don’t just be strong to correct, also be strong to encourage and take responsibility for when you mess up.
Brett McKay: Well, Rick, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Rick Burgess: You can go to themanchurch.com. We’re a men’s discipleship strategy. All of our resources are there, but this new book will be there too, themanchurch.com. And you can also contact us if we can help you in any way with your men’s ministry, if that’s something you’re interested in. But if not, at least get this book, and it’ll be right there on the homepage.
Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Rick Burgess, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Rick Burgess: Thanks for having me, Brett. It means a lot.
Brett McKay: My guest today was Rick Burgess. He’s the author of the book “Men Don’t Run in the Rain.” It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website, themanchurch.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/rain where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you’d take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to the AOM Podcast but put what you’ve heard into action.
