Wrong Way Riegles

It was New Year’s Day, 1929. The University of California at Berkeley was playing Georgia Tech in the Rose Bowl. Roy Riegels, a Cal defensive back recovered a Georgia Tech fumble, ran laterally across the field, turned and scampered sixty–five yards in the wrong direction—straight toward Georgia Tech’s goal line.

One of his own players, Benny Lomm, tackled Riegles just before he scored for Georgia Tech. On the next play Georgia Tech blocked the punt and scored. 

During the half–time, Riegles hid in a corner of the UCLA locker room with a towel over his head. His coach, Nibbs Price, said nothing to him and very little to the team. Three minutes before the second half he said quietly, “The team that started the first half will start the second half. Riegles cried out: “I can’t, coach; I can’t go back in. I’ve humiliated the team, the school, myself. I can’t go back in.” “Get back in game, Riegles,” Price replied, “The game is only half over.”

Our failures may not be as conspicuous as Riegles’, but we all have our wrong–way runs and the memories that accompany them, recollections that rise up to taunt us in the night watches. There’s much of our past we would undo if we could, or redo. Louis Fletcher Tarkington wrote for all of us when she mused, 

I wish that there were some wonderful placeCalled the Land of Beginning Again,Where all our mistakes and all our heartachesAnd all of our poor selfish griefCould be dropped like a shabby old coat at the doorAnd never put on again.

There is such a place. It's found at the feet of Jesus, who freely sets our sins aside and puts us once more on the path of obedience. We must accept His full and free forgiveness and then forget ourselves. That we are sinners is undeniably true. That we are forgiven sinners is undeniable as well. We must take what forgiveness we need, put aside our "poor selfish grief” and get back in the game, for the game only half over.

“We remain such creeping Christians,” George MacDonald said, “because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments…. We mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and then forget our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace and lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken us….”

Price put Riegles’ miscue behind his back and got him back in the game… as does our gracious Lord.

What a coach! What a God!

David Roper

3.7.22
Excerpted from A Man to Match the Mountain