Elijah Harns and Kirk Cousins
As I watched my 7 year old son, Elijah, sitting there on a typical Saturday night in a typical college apartment “helping” me interview Kirk Cousins, the starting quarterback of the Michigan State University Spartans football team, I was intrigued.
It was the night before the team flew down to San Antonio to prepare for the Alamo Bowl. I had finished my first half of questions, and Elijah’s questions were typical for a 7 year-old: “Mr. Cousins, was it sort-of hard to face Michigan this year? Were Iowa and Penn State the hardest teams you ever played in your whole life? Does it sort of hurt when you get sacked?” And Kirk Cousins was answering them in typical football fashion. When off the football topics, Cousins has typical favorites, too: he likes Pepsi over Coke, Burger King over McDonalds. He has a regular ol’ Sprint cell phone and his favorite Lake Michigan beach is Grand Haven. Nothing really out of the ordinary.
But what intrigued me was that when it comes to football, Kirk Cousins is not your typical college baller. In 2007, he watched the entire season from the practice squad as a redshirt freshman. In 2008, he was the backup QB and threw a total of 43 passes all season. So it would make sense than that in 2009, he would be elected by his teammates as only the 2nd sophomore captain in the 113-year history of MSU football, right? That was the first clue that Cousins was definitely not typical.
How does Cousins explain his election as captain? He says he can’t; he says it’s unexplainable. When pressed a little further, he offers this as a reason: “When you try to act like Jesus did – when you serve and when you care about people more than yourself – people respond in a positive way. “
Elijah and I spent 30 minutes with Kirk Cousins on Saturday night, sandwiched between his family Christmas time in Holland and his early flight to San Antonio on Sunday. As a fan, I was purposely looking for a bright spot in the MSU football program, given the recent negative headlines that his teammates had made. As a father, I was searching for a role model for my kids. Driving home afterward on snowy 127 South, I had not been disappointed.
Cousins’ personal goals are simple. In the big picture, his goal is to become more like Jesus Christ (“you never arrive,” he says). Professionally, he wants to go to medical school and be a doctor someday. In the football realm, his goal is to play as long as he can, stewarding the gifts God has given him. He is straight forward and up front, putting his Christian faith on full display for the whole world to see.
I ask him, pointing to Elijah, if he embraces being a role model to kids. He replies, without hesitation: “I’m not afraid of that. I think that that comes with the territory. One of the best parts of being a quarterback at Michigan State is that you can have an influence on people. You can choose to have a poor influence, or you can choose to be indifferent, or you can choose to make a big impact on people’s lives in a positive way. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to take advantage of those opportunities. It’s an exciting opportunity to be able to be a role model like that and I want to do the best I can with that responsibility.”
If his focus on his faith is #1 in Cousins’ life, then football is definitely #1-A. You can see this in the decisions he is making regarding his schooling. During his first two years, Cousins’ class load was packed full with many complex classes. With his football career flourishing this season, Cousins came to the realization that it is very difficult to balance a tough school load with the pressures of being a starting quarterback for a Big Ten University. So he has made the decision to scale back on the complexity of his classes and stretch his degree out to five years, in order to be able to focus more on football. He explains: “My window for football is only so big – I’m going to be able to always go back to school but I’m not always going to be able to play football – so [I’m going to] put everything [I] have into playing football and see what happens.”
Asked about his teammates who are charged in the fighting incident at Rather Hall in November, he says: “They are teammates and I care a lot about them. [I] definitely have forgiven those guys and I know that they are very sorry about it and want to make things right.” Regarding Dantonio’s handling of the situation: “He’s done a good job handling it. Our team will be ready to go [for] the bowl game and I don’t think that there will be any long-term ramifications from it as a result of the way he’s handled it.”
I told Cousins the story of how Elijah replays the UM/MSU game time and time again on our DVR, and how he is sad that an integral part of that win – Glenn Winston – has now been kicked off the team. When asked how he would explain the Rather Hall incident to kids like Elijah, he looked Elijah in the eye and spoke of something his dad taught him when he was a kid.
“I think it’s a great teaching tool for someone like Elijah. [Something] my dad always taught me growing up was when you make good decisions, good things happen and when you make bad decisions, bad things happen. And the bottom line is we had some players on our team who made some bad decisions. There’s always forgiveness and there’s a lot of second chances but when you continue to make bad decisions that reflect not only on you but on other people, bad things happen. The bad thing that happened to Glenn [Winston] was that he got removed from the team as a result. The flip side of that, you can focus on the positive and there are a lot of guys doing good things. And as a result, a lot of good things are happening to them and to the program, like going to this Alamo Bowl tomorrow.”
Asked if he considers himself an ambassador for the program, he responded:
“Any time you put on the jersey that says Michigan State across your chest, you’re an ambassador. Whether you are a starter or a backup, no matter where you go people are going to associate you with Michigan State if you have the Spartan logo on you.” Continuing in that mode, Cousins said that he and his teammates want to be a positive light on the school and have a positive impact.
Asked how he can do that specifically, he again goes back to the subject most important to him. “Being like Jesus – he didn’t make it too complicated. He said ‘be like Me and follow Me.’ [I try to] understand who He was as a person and [try] to be like that.” Cousins chooses to be a servant to people. He says he doesn’t want it to be about him and he doesn’t want to “pump my chest up.” His goal is to allow himself to be a servant, take the back seat and lead with humility and strength.
“You have to have that balance where you are able to still have humility,” he says, “but at the same time, football is not a game for weak people, so you need to be strong. And to have that balance is tough. That’s something that drives me into prayer.” And he realizes that he’s not perfect. “There are probably some teammates who have problems with me, too – nobody’s perfect – but I’m trying; I’m trying to really be a servant. I would love to have someone call me out when I’m not.”
So, yes, Spartan fans, there are some tricky times ahead and Coach Dantonio has some difficult decisions to make after the Alamo Bowl is over (read my preview of that game later this week). Based on my conversation with Kirk Cousins and the fact that players like Cousins, Blair White, Greg Jones and Ross Weaver were chosen to represent this team as captains, I am convinced that the MSU football team is filled with first-rate men on its team. By the players choosing Kirk Cousins as their Most Inspirational Player by handing him the Biggie Munn Award at the team banquet, it makes me sure that the players we saw charged in the courts are a small minority in this program. When the dust settles on this unfortunate incident, we Spartan fans can be proud of the guys that remain, and we can trust that this will be a learning lesson for all involved in this program.
