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Murphy Martin Commentary
April 27, 2006

 "HIS NAME IS STILL MAGIC"

There they were, several well-known names from the glorious days of America's team, gathered together to once again help one of the favorite causes their former coach cherished off the football field. It was the annual gala banquet before the most successful one-day golf tournament in the southwest, maybe in the nation. Last Sunday evening, four-hundred people joined the former gridiron stars at the Westin Stonebriar Hotel in Frisco to break bread and help a MAGIC name live on. It was the 29th Annual Tom Landry FCA Golf Tournament banquet.

Although Coach Landry lost his life to leukemia in 2000, the magic in his name lives on. It lives on through the annual golf tournament bearing his name. Proceeds from this one-day golf event account for the majority of monies needed by the largest Fellowship of Christian Athlete's Chapter in America to operate each year. The Greater Dallas FCA has a full-time staff of eleven people who travel an average of ten-thousand miles a month working with coaches and teachers in 325 schools in the greater Dallas area.

There are 219 certified FCA Huddles in those schools and FCA staff people
have already made more than 1,897 visits to school campus' this year. During a time when many courts prohibit prayer and the use of God's name in schools, FCA huddle groups are the only avenues many students have to Christianity.

Gene Stallings, former head coach at Texas A and M and Alabama, where he won a national collegiate championship, and fourteen-year assistant to Landry with the Cowboys, was Honorary Chairman of this years event. Hall of Famer Roger Staubach received the Tom Landry Award this year. Jim Myers, Landry's assistant Head Coach for many years was given an Inspiration Award for his continued work on the annual event.

Other former NFL greats on hand were Hall of Famers Mel Renfro and Tony Dorsett and soon to be inducted Rayfield Wright. Former Super Bowl MVP Chuck Howley, Robert Newhouse, Former Coach Jerry Tubbs, and former NFL star Jim Ray Smith. The Belle of the Ball was Mrs. Tom Landry and Tom Landry, Jr. was also in attendance.

This tournament has grown from a meager beginning when less than $25,000 was raised to the last 15-years when the event grosses an average of about $500,000 each year. Upwards of 175 players tee it up at Stonebriar Country Club and they also auction some wonderful items to add to the final gross. But in the end the main ingredient that keeps this tournament alive and makes it tops in the giant Southwest is the name--TOM LANDRY!

Coach Landry once told me in an interview: "God is first in my life. My Family is second. And, football is third." Even six years after his death his values are still honored and remembered by many. And when you put the Landry name on something as meaningful as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes--it's MAGIC!

The Coach is missed but he will never be forgotten!

Murphy Martin

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