by Jeffrey Marx
With so many thoughts about the game and its aftermath going round and round in his head, Brian decided to spend some time with his tape recorder. At 5:15 in the morning, he pushed the record button and started talking about the day he finally earned a title that nobody could ever take away from him: Super Bowl champion.
He spoke about his terrible pre-game warm-up and about his weak start in the first half. He spoke about the unbelievable tension of the fourth quarter and about everything that went into the final snap of his career. And then—in no particular order—he filled his tape with a variety of details from during and after the game. As many topics as Brian covered, there were two primary thoughts that stood out as headlines above everything else:
One, Brian was thrilled beyond description with the way his career had ultimately come to a close. Granted, his overall performance with the Patriots had been far from stellar, and his loss of confidence had taken him to the brink of disaster. But how could he possibly ask for a better ending than having his hands on the ball for the winning play in the Super Bowl? “I couldn’t be happier,” Brian said into the tape recorder.
Two, he finally thought he understood why he had gone through such a horrible couple of weeks leading up to that final snap. By being deprived of his usual confidence—“I was at the end of my rope,” Brian said—he was left in a position in which all he could do was rely on his faith. “I knew that I could not accomplish what I had to do without God,” he said. “It was like he was just stripping me down to where I had to just depend on him, and I did, because I had no clue where that ball was going to go.”
Twenty
Two days after the Super Bowl, Boston threw a victory parade for the Patriots, with an estimated million and a half people lining the streets from Copley Square to City Hall Plaza. Fans cheered and screamed with affection. They waved banners and signs. Confetti rained down from the windows of office buildings. Brian had never seen anything like it—so many people so animated about the outcome of a football game. At the end of the parade route, Bill Belichick and a few players offered brief remarks to the crowd. There was a lot more cheering and screaming. Then the massive gathering started to break up. After posing for a final photo with the Lombardi Trophy and saying good-bye to his teammates, Brian was officially done as a New England Patriot—and as a professional football player. This time, he had perfect closure. He went straight to Logan Airport and flew home to Baton Rouge.
The next day, Wednesday, February 4, 2004, Brian was back at Parkview Baptist Middle School. Three days after snapping the football on the winning play in the Super Bowl, he was again a seventh-grade teacher. But his first day back was far from routine. Local television crews showed up for interviews. Brian spoke in a school assembly about his time with the Patriots. He received hugs and handshakes all morning—from students and teachers alike—and several students asked for his autograph. A few of his fellow teachers teased him good-naturedly about being such a “big celebrity” now that he was a Super Bowl champion.
“Yeah, right,” Brian responded with a smile. “Give it about two days, and everything will be right back to normal.”
He was wrong about that. Although everything at school would indeed settle down by the end of the week—with Brian getting to know his new students and enjoying the transition back into teaching—the afterglow of victory would continue to shine brightly beyond the walls of Parkview. There is no such thing as a victory lap in football. For Brian, however, life after the Super Bowl sure started to feel like one—or maybe it would be more accurate to call it a victory tour. There was no overall structure or planning involved. It was just a matter of all the excitement leading to one special event after another.
Two of the most significant occasions—visiting the White House in May, and getting his Super Bowl ring in June—came within the context of team tributes. Most of what Brian experienced, though, he was invited to do as an individual. It was nothing unusual for someone who had just played in a Super Bowl to receive a generous amount of attention, especially when he happened to live in a football-loving state such as Louisiana. But the unique nature of Brian’s story—from Bible class to the Super Bowl—greatly elevated the level of interest. So what if he had played the most obscure position on the field? He was a world champion! That was all anyone cared about, and it opened many doors.
The Krewe of Jupiter placed him on a float as master of ceremonies for its Mardi Gras parade through the streets of Baton Rouge. The mayor of Lake Charles honored him with a key to the city. The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola invited him behind bars to encourage prisoners who excelled in its recreation program. The Capital Area United Way gave him the honorary title “community champion” and asked for his help in its annual fund-raising campaign. Brian had never before received so many requests for appearances and speaking engagements. Schools, churches, youth groups, civic organizations, local companies—they all wanted Brian to join them for some sort of event.
The beauty of his story was that it had something for everyone. Although it was the powerful platform of sports that gave him a voice as well as an audience, Brian used that platform to deliver a universal and inspirational message of hope that extended far beyond the sphere of athletics. His was a story about second chances and the empowering notion that virtually anything is possible. It was about the importance of family and relationships. Ultimately, the story of Brian Kinchen was all about faith and the glory of God.
The response to his presentation was invariably positive—and Brian cherished the thought that he might be touching the lives of others. Schedule permitting, he never turned down an invitation to speak about his Super Bowl experience.
Brian finally got the retirement party he had long wanted but never really felt comfortable about having. Not until now—now that he was absolutely certain that his playing days were done. Close to a hundred people attended his party at the LSU football facility. The guests enjoyed the unique decorations: a colorful display of helmets and game jerseys from each of the five NFL teams for which Brian had played. A highlight video offered glimpses of Brian playing tight end and scoring touchdowns in collegiate and NFL games long gone. Family, friends, and former teammates took turns sharing lighthearted jabs and poignant memories. The most intriguing statement of the evening came from the honoree himself. “The success-oriented part of my life is over,” Brian said. “Now it’s time to move on to significance.”
A longtime family friend, Craig Greene, stopped by the Kinchens’ home one day because he happened to be in town and had something he wanted to show Brian and Lori: his videotape from the Super Bowl. Greene was a Baton Rouge native now living in Houston, where he was an orthopedic surgeon in residency. He had gone to the Super Bowl with Brian’s brother Todd and had shot the video from their seats in the upper deck of Reliant Stadium. Brian and Lori had already seen the CBS broadcast of the game on tape. But Greene’s footage was much more personal. He had shots of Brian warming up before the game and standing on the field near Beyoncé Knowles as she sang the national anthem. He had dramatic shots of Brian before, during, and after the game-winning field goal. There was even tape of the four Kinchen boys and Lori being passed down from the stands to Brian for the post-game celebration on the field.
Glancing at Brian as he processed those images for the first time, Greene had no doubt that his friend was totally locked in. Like a bride watching her wedding video, he thought. Brian was indeed consumed by what he was seeing. It felt wonderful to relive all those remarkable moments without having to worry about a bad snap or the overall outcome of the game. Yet he also could not pretend away a jarring thought.
“Can you imagine if I had messed up that snap and we lost?” Brian said.
“Oh, my God,” Lori said. “I can’t even think about that.”
On Sunday, June 13, 2004, Brian and Lori flew from Pittsburgh—where Brian had just played in hockey star Mario Lemieux’s celebrity golf tournament—to Boston. The Kinchens had one
final date with the Patriots: a celebratory dinner and the “Ceremony of Rings” at the Chestnut Hill home of team owner Robert Kraft. For professional athletes, a championship ring was the utmost measure of a job well done—the quintessential symbol of success. Rings had become such a focal point for athletes that many would not even use the words “winning a championship” when discussing their ultimate goal. “Getting a ring”—that was the phrase that said it all in the lexicon of sports.
Brian already had one championship ring from the 2003 season sitting at home—an impressive token of appreciation for his volunteer coaching with Nick Saban and the LSU Tigers. That made him the answer to a trivia question: he would forever be the guy who won both a college championship ring and a Super Bowl ring in the same season. Brian was not thinking about anything like that. He just wanted to see his ring from the Patriots. He wanted to feel it on his hand.
Brian and Lori were late for dinner. Traveling from the golf tournament, they could not do anything about that. At least they arrived before the unveiling of the rings. The Kinchens were seated in time to hear Belichick and Kraft speak about the splendor of the season and the significance of the rings. Then each player was given a cherrywood box. Brian opened the box containing his size 13½ ring, and he could hardly believe what he was seeing. It was not only that a Super Bowl ring had actually been personalized with his name and his number forty-six. He was also stunned by the sheer size and gaudiness of it. Cast in white gold, the ring was adorned with 104 diamonds—5.05 carats in all—and weighed 3.8 ounces. No NFL franchise had ever designed a heavier Super Bowl ring. Brian loved the overall look of it and the way it told a story by incorporating elements such as the Lombardi Trophy, Gillette Stadium, the Patriots logo, and the fifteen-game winning streak that ended the season (represented by fifteen full-cut diamonds on top of the bezel). He especially enjoyed seeing the word “WORLD” screaming out from one side of the crest and “CHAMPIONS” from the other. It’s like a piece of art, Brian thought. He was also impressed by its appraised value of twenty thousand dollars. Still, nobody would have faulted him for wondering this: was he really looking at a ring, or had someone mistakenly placed a hood ornament in his box?
Brian held out the ring for Lori to see. He handed it to her. But she gave it right back to him.
“Put it on,” she said.
He did—and it was a perfect fit.
For a man who had always believed that performance was the only path to affirmation, that mammoth hunk of precious metal and stones was a sight to behold as he stared down at his right hand. Sixteen years after being picked in the last round of the NFL draft—three years after feeling painfully empty because he thought his football career was done and gone—Brian now owned sparkling evidence of the only thing he had ever really wanted from the game he loved, had ever thought he needed from it. Validation.
Brian quickly learned that the ring was a magnet. A boy who wanted his autograph on the flight back to Louisiana certainly would not have known he was a football player without the youngster’s eyes first being drawn to the most conspicuous piece of jewelry on the plane. While Brian and Lori waited for their luggage in the New Orleans airport, a middle-aged man approached Brian, pointed to the ring, and asked if he played for the Saints. Clearly, the man did not know much about the local team. The woeful Saints had played thirty-seven NFL seasons without ever making it to a Super Bowl.
“Uh, no, I don’t play for the Saints,” Brian said. “I played for the New England Patriots.”
“Oh,” the man said. “Well, congratulations.”
Before Brian even got home, he knew he would wear the ring only for special occasions. It was simply too bulky and awkward for everyday wear; he told Lori that maybe each player should also get a “baby” replica that would be easier to carry around on his hand. Plus, the ring made him uncomfortable because of the way it drew attention, as if he were asking for people to gawk at him and connect the dots to his status as a Super Bowl champion. His first thought was to keep the ring packed away, in its wooden display box, on a shelf in his home office. He kept all his other football memorabilia in the office. But Brian also thought of something else: the way so many people had been asking him, even before he got his ring, if they could see it. So he decided to keep the ring somewhere he would always have easy access to it—in his car. Brian slipped his newest piece of jewelry into a small cloth bag intended to protect a pair of sunglasses, and he put the bag in the console of his Toyota Sequoia.
For months, the ring went in and out of that vehicle. It was always a major hit when Brian went somewhere to speak. People wanted to see it up close and maybe even get to try it on. Depending on the size and nature of his audience, Brian sometimes passed the ring around the room, inevitably leading to a chorus of oohs and aahs. Then there were the more personal moments with friends and acquaintances who had followed his run to the Super Bowl—or had at least heard about it—and now wanted to check out the symbolic keepsake that came with being a champion. Those were the moments that meant the most to Brian. He was sometimes embarrassed by the way people would go overboard with their excitement and praise, but he also felt so good about others being able to enjoy what had happened to him.
Friends and family noticed something interesting as Brian continued to share his football story with others. He also started sharing more of himself. He seemed to be more relaxed than usual, more content, and he intentionally made more of an effort to keep in touch with friends. The people closest to him did not know exactly how to define what they were seeing. A mellowing? A new comfort level? A newfound sense of peace?
Over time, Brian identified a paradox that came with his long-desired validation as a professional athlete: finally getting it made him realize it was something he had never really needed in the first place. Ultimately, the true value of that ring was the way it provided a platform to reach others and impact their lives. There was no identifiable epiphany, no single moment when Brian felt a proverbial lightbulb flashing on for him to understand this. Rather, it was a slow, gradual process that brought clarity. Brian just knew that every time he had a speaking engagement, every time he had the opportunity to inspire others by sharing what God had done in his life, he felt a greater sense of purpose—a greater sense of the “significance” he had talked about at his retirement party—than he had ever experienced on any field of play. With that in mind, he came to view his ring more as a means than an end.
A friend had once told Brian about a favorite line from a movie called Cool Runnings, which is loosely based on the story of the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. On the eve of the climactic race, the coach, played by John Candy, has a heart-to-heart talk with the team’s driver, during which he tells him, “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.” That was exactly how Brian came to feel about his Super Bowl ring. He would always look back on his experience with the Patriots as the realization of a dream. He would always be deeply grateful for the way everything had turned out. But having that ring did not make him any more complete than he had ever been. It contributed nothing to making him the man he had always wanted to be—a man who put God and family above all else.
Brian started using that movie line in his speeches: If you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it. The way he saw and presented that statement, it was not only about a gold medal or a championship ring. It had a universal meaning that spoke to so many things people choose to chase in this world—money, fancy cars, big houses, lofty job titles. Brian spelled out for his audiences why he was exactly the same person with or without any ring on his finger: “Because God looks at me the same…and because I know who I am in the eyes of my creator. If I don’t seek my significance and love from God—the only true source of it—then all the rest is just a veiled attempt to fill a void that only he can fill.”
For people who shared Brian’s spiritual beliefs, those words were a perfect conclus
ion to a story they would view as “testimony”—his public profession of a religious experience and the deep faith that guided him. That was certainly the way his students at Parkview would see it. Yet the underlying lesson applied equally well in a secular setting: If you want to be a person of significance and love, you do not need to seek and obtain the same things so many others are chasing and collecting. You never need to have enough. You need only to look within yourself to figure out whether you are enough.
Brian could have incorporated the closing lines from that Cool Runnings scene into his standard presentation.
BOBSLED DRIVER: “Hey, Coach, how will I know if I’m enough?”
COACH: “When you cross that finish line, you’ll know.”
Brian knew exactly what he would someday be looking for at his own finish line. He would be looking to see what had become of the “living legacy” he wrote about in the back of his Bible one lonely night in New England. He would be taking measure of himself based on what had become of his four sons.
Acknowledgments
Right from the start, I warned Brian Kinchen about what goes into the making of a book. I told him: if I’m going to write this story, I’ll need more of your time than you could possibly imagine. Brian gave me all the time I needed, and that was only the beginning of his gifts. He also gave me his trust. He shared his family and friends with me. He opened his home and office to me. I thank Brian and his wonderful wife, Lori, for showing me nothing but kindness and cooperation as I scribbled the best I could and kept returning with more questions. Other Kinchens were equally welcoming: Brian’s parents, Gus and Toni; his brothers, Cal and Todd; and his sons, Austin, Hunter, Logan, and McKane.