Meet Joe • Recent Press

2007

August 27

Delivering His Message

By John Oehser - Colts.com

Ehrmann Brings Message to MyIndianaFootball.Com

INDIANAPOLIS - Joe Ehrmann has spent much of the last two and a half decades championing causes, change and compassion.

Now, Ehrmann has a new forum:

MyIndianaFootball.com.

Ehrmann, who as a player in the mid-to-late 1970s was part of one of the great defensive lines – and great teams – in Colts history, has spent his recent years trying to bring about change in Baltimore and the rest of America through sports.

Now, Ehrmann will bring his message to MyIndianaFootball.com, an online platform created by the Colts that allows every Indiana high school football team to have its own team website with news, photo galleries, information, scores, schedule, roster and more.

Ehrmann, 58, has joined MyIndianaFootball.com as a blogger.

And he said it's a perfect forum for his message.

“My fundamental belief is you can address about every social problem in America through sports,” Ehrmann said Monday, a day he visited the Colts’ practice facility to speak to Colts players at the invitation of Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy.

“In fact, there’s probably not a better venue, given the popularity of sports. Sports brings together more families, more communities, than any activity, cultural event – any of that kind of stuff.

“Sports is this incredible venue from which to address problems.”

Ehrmann, a defensive tackle for the Baltimore Colts from 1973-1980, has remained close to the team. He befriended Colts Owner and Chief Executive Officer Jim Irsay when the latter worked with the team as a teenager in the 1970s, and the two remain friends.

“I’m a huge fan of Jim’s,” Ehrmann said.

Ehrmann, who finished his NFL career with Detroit in 1982, became an ordained minister in 1985, and since then, he has worked as a volunteer assistant coach at a Baltimore private school and has been dedicated to the betterment of Baltimore’s inner city.

He is the co-founder of Baltimore's Ronald McDonald House and the founder of The Door – an inner-city, community-based ministry. He also is the president of Building Men for Others Ministry, which addresses issues of masculinity and its correlating themes of boyhood, manhood, husbandry and fatherhood.

He has been called, “The Most Important Coach in America,” by Parade magazine (August 2004) and is the subject of the New York Times bestseller, Season of Life, in which Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jeffrey Marx – a former Colts ballboy – told how he reconnected with Ehrmann, and how Ehrmann’s story and message impacted his own life.

The success of Season of Life, Ehrmann said, has provided a national forum for his belief that “there is probably no more significant person than a coach.”

“One of the great myths is that sports builds character,” Ehrmann said. “That’s not true anymore. Sports doesn’t build character unless a coach teaches it.

“What I try to is do that from a mulisystemic. If you can bring a coherent message – if from the time they walk on to the field as five- or six-year olds you start in age-appropriate ways teaching and using sports and the power of the whistle in order to affirm their value and their worth and potential regardless of athletic performance – then it’s incredible what you can change.”

Ehrmann, who also speaks to “a number of NFL teams” each season, said his message is essentially the same no matter the age of the player. The blog on MyIndianaFootball.com essentially will be geared toward coaches – “with parents welcome to peek in as well,” he said – and he said MyIndianaFootball.com, is a perfect forum to help coaches.

“What we want to do is help high school coaches figure out how to coach,” Ehrmann said. “In high school, sports ought to be co-curricular, not an extracurricular activity. Probably out of the whole educational day, no one has a better platform to teach boys about becoming men than a coach.

“If it’s co-curricular, you ought to come with a lesson plan every day about what you’re going to teach players beyond Xs and Os.”

Ehrmann said he teaches coaches how to teach on issues such as poverty, racism, gender violence and education.

“A big part is how you coach the players’ minds,” Ehrmann said. “Quite frankly, it all starts on the inside and works its way out. You can’t just smack on the language of this. You have to think through, 'Why do you coach the way you coach? What does it feel like to be coaching?’ It’s insight and empathy at the same time.”

Ehrmann describes himself as a product of the 1960s. As such, he has spent most of his adulthood working on societal issues. That sports, particularly football, was such a powerful forum for change was a revelation, he said.

“To come to the realization that sports is probably the primary venue and platform, that’s incredible to me,” Ehrmann said. “As a coach, you can teach your kids about justice, injustice, how to develop relationships, give their life to a cause.

“Many coaches bring all the frustration and angst from their home life and dump it on these young children. We’ve got to hold them accountable. There has to be some accountability.

“I define sports as an educational activity to teach moral and ethical behavior and citizenship. You can address every problem in Indianapolis and Indiana by just bringing coaches on board in some kind of consistency of message.”