College football hall of famer David Pollack’s identity in Christ remains a constant through trials and tribulations

Liberty University welcomed College Football Hall of Fame member David Pollack to the Convocation stage on Friday morning, where he shared about how his faith has helped him find his identity through the trials and tribulations that life has brought to him.

The star linebacker from the University of Georgia sat down for a conversation with Vice President of Spiritual Development Josh Rutledge and talked about how he went from being a kid who had never stepped foot in a church until he was in high school to becoming a proud proclaimer of the Gospel.

Pollack was introduced to church through a friend, who invited him to attend a “lock-in” with his youth group. But his faith journey was accelerated after he met his high school physics teacher, Mark Watson, who was one of two key mentors in his life who sparked his faith journey.

Pollack said he used his outside reading time during his junior year to read the Bible, and Watson encouraged him to start with The Gospels.

“We started to talk about the prophecies and the things that came to life and my life was completely changed,” Pollack said. “And that’s because a seed was planted by somebody and a life was lived. The way Mark Watson lived his life showed me that he had something inside of him that was special.”

After high school, Pollack went on to have a decorated career at Georgia, where he was one of the nation’s best defensive players for three years. Pollack won the SEC’s Defensive Player of the Year award two times, and was named first-team All-American three times from 2002-2004. In 2004, he won the Chuck Bednarik Award, handed out annually to the best defensive player in college football.

But while the on-field accomplishments stacked up for Pollack in Athens, Ga., it was another spiritual mentor he had there that was stacking building blocks of faith — head coach Mark Richt — who remains one of Pollack’s closest mentors today.

“He taught me how to speak and how to walk it out and to live it, so that was huge for me,” Pollack said. “There’s nothing you can do to prepare you for the spotlight … Here’s something that was really cool: (being) liked versus respected. There’s a big difference.”

In order to be liked, Pollack said, it’s easy to build your identity based on how others view you, or how you view yourself. But building your identity from “the top down, how God feels about me,” is far better.

“When you go to (the University of Georgia), it’s kind of like ‘OK, have fun,’” Pollack said about the college environment. “Learning how to build my identity, and once I learned how to build my identity and be different, it was amazing.”

An identity in faith continued to be important for Pollack after his four years at Georgia.

After his collegiate career, Pollack was a first-round selection of the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2005 NFL Draft, but his career was cut short after one full season when he suffered a career-ending injury early into his second season.

“I told everybody since I was six-years-old, ‘I’m going to play in the NFL,’ and I would get a whole lot of ‘Oh that’s cute, so does everybody else,’” Pollack said. “I get to the NFL, I accomplish my dream, this is all I’ve ever wanted. But second year, second play … I hit the running back and it was the first time I had ever hit somebody and I couldn’t move.”

Pollack fractured C-6 and C-7 vertebrae on the play, and he knew immediately it was “probably over.”

But in the ambulance, Pollack thought, “God is for us. And if I learn this as a senior in high school and I go through college and God is for me, I know he’s for me in every situation.”

The injury put Pollack in a halo neck brace for four months, forcing him to learn what it means to “be still and know that I am God.”

“It was the first time I did it, and I started to hear from God,” he said. “I started to see Him showing up in my life a lot more.”

Although he never played in another game, the lessons Pollack learned while he was in the brace prepared him to be a better husband, father, and friend to those in his life.

Pollack likened it to failing a class and having to retake it in order to learn from previous mistakes.

“I don’t think it’s any different with our faith, with patience and anger. When we fail a class, if we’re not going to learn to go to God and seek his guidance, we’re going to take that test again,” he said.

“But when you start to go to Him and realize we need to rely on Him, I think we start to pass some of those tests and start to mature and grow up.”

Pollack also told students to create and embrace their “holy habits:” the things that should be non-negotiables in our walks with God.

“Society is going to tell you to believe your own truth,” Pollack said. “But there’s one truth: if you’re not spending time in that Word, how are you going to obey it?”

Earlier this year, Pollack was laid off by ESPN, another trial that started a new season in his life. Shortly after being laid off, Pollack posted a grateful message on social media thanking the people he worked with at the company, partly because of the deep roots of his faith.

“What does God say I am? What is my identity? I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be able to see this school,” Pollack said about the opportunities he’s getting now to speak to people like Liberty students. “When we take it and we say ‘God is for me’, like we talked about in the good (times), we watch Him work and watch Him move.”

One of Pollack’s next big steps of faith is his upcoming “Banquet of Blessings,” an event he’s holding in Athens on Nov. 20 to feed hundreds of homeless individuals, an idea that came out of Luke 14:12-14.

“We’re going to throw a feast and we’re going to serve them because I don’t know when the last time many of these people were served,” Pollack said.

Before closing Convocation, Rutledge encouraged students who live in the Atlanta and Athens area to get involved with the banquet as it falls during Liberty’s Thanksgiving break.