Calling, Sports, and Storytelling: How God Led Caleb Garner to the Classroom

In part two of this conversation, President Stan Norman and Caleb Garner pick up Caleb’s story as he moves from Mississippi State into the world of sports media and, eventually, the classroom at Williams Baptist University. Caleb describes discovering that work is both service and worship, and how roles in sports information, media relations, and communications became avenues for telling stories while God was quietly reshaping his vocational path.

He shares how graduate studies, long hours in a “24/7” athletics environment, and mentoring student workers awakened a love for teaching that ultimately brought him to WBU to lead the growing Sports Management program. Caleb also unpacks what a sports management degree can prepare students to do—from coaching and athletic administration to sports business and media—and why he believes Christ-centered leaders are desperately needed in today’s multibillion-dollar sports industry. Listeners will hear how he is pursuing his doctorate in sport management, investing in students as future leaders, and viewing every role—from cutting grass to teaching—to be an act of worship under the direction of the “Master Storyteller.”

Learn more about the health & physical education department: https://williamsbu.edu/physicaleducation/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Life Work Podcast. We are joined again by Caleb Garner. And when last we left for conversation, we kind of had you transition out of high school into college. And you said some things that I want to go back and just kind of maybe clarify a little bit about the job where you learned to serve and how work became an act of service. Because to me, that is such a profound observation. And to learn that early in life, I think is a gift of God. And I want to commend you, first of all, for uh your willingness to see your work at that time and your openness to learn that. Uh how has that been a shaping influence in the work you're doing now? And and I'm going to go back to the college experience in just a moment, but I really want to tease that out just a little bit more about the lessons you learned that serving in work is truly an act of service.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yeah, uh it's it's an act of worship. I mean, that's one of the the big things is, you know, we when we think about worshiping the Lord, we think about, you know, our typical church service a lot of times. But it's in everything we do, you know. I I think about Colossians 3. I mean, just you know, everything that we do, do it as if we're working for the Lord, as if we're as if our boss is, which is. Yes, yes, yes. Um, but you know, at the same time, it's you know, do do it in a in a you know a way that honors the Lord. Do your do your best. My parents always push me to, you know, do your best because you know, someone else may see that and be like, hey, what's different about them? Yeah. Um, and then that's that's a gateway to you know sharing your faith and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Well, that's good stuff. So when you graduated high school, is there any question about where you were going to go to school?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Oh, not at all. I applied to other schools for scholarship purposes, but I applied to West Alabama. I applied to, I think I applied to the University of Alabama because I went so I went to graduated high school at a small private school in Alabama. I was about 35-minute commute from across the state line. Okay. Um, but I was always going to Mississippi State. There was no doubt about it. Like I was absolutely a hundred percent a bulldog.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

I I I know I'm gonna get in trouble here, but was there ever any thought at all of going to the other institution?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Never, I would have been disowned.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Okay. It runs that deep. The morale is that deep.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

I would have been shunned from my family.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Okay. So you start going to school at Mississippi State University and start with Mississippi, and you mentioned earlier in the previous podcast about you thought you were gonna go into coaching because of your love for sports, and you started out on that path. What was it about early on in that path that you determined coaching's not for me?

SPEAKER_00 3:02

I think it was just, you know, as I that first semester, I uh went through a few of the the early coaching education classes, and I just was like, you know, I I don't, I'm not in love with it. You know, I it just wasn't, it wasn't um it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. And this was as a freshman, you know, when we walk in as a freshman, a lot of times we think we have it all all figured out, and that's pretty much what it was. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I wanted to be around sports somehow. Um, and then I to stay in the department, I went over to exercise physiology, kind of looking at maybe athletic training, sports medicine, okay, pre-physical therapy type stuff, and played around with that for a couple of years because I was like, you know, there's some money right there. And then I was like, I don't know if I really want to go to school for five more years.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, yeah. But you always felt a passion about sports athletics that maybe not coaching, and then after you got into it, maybe not um athletic training, not going to be a professional athlete. Where where do you look then if I'm gonna stay in the world of sports? And it's not as professional athlete, not as a coach, not as an athletic trainer. It seems to me for people on the outside looking in, the options are quickly running out.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yeah, and I thought they were. But uh, you know, being a sports fan, especially in the Southeastern Conference, I was at every home sporting event. I grew up going to baseball games there from the age of four, so I was going to all the baseball games no matter what. I was going to pretty much every basketball game, men's and women's basketball. Uh, I was going to every football game. But whenever I was at basketball games, I could see the students that were working on the scores table. They were working right there close to the action. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. I was like, they're my age. So they're definitely, you know, I can do that too. And I was just curious. I was really curious about what they were doing. And um, I had had a pre-existing relationship with the athletic director at the time there, Scott Strickland, he's now at Florida. Um, and I just shot him a message and was like, hey, I am in a career crisis, I don't know what I'm doing. Would you mind sitting down and talking with me about, you know, put potential career options? I'm interested in a career in sports and things like that. And his admin assistant emailed me back and said, here's this date and time, show up to this building. And I talked with talked with him and he directed, I kind of told him what I was interested in. I was interested in a lot of the statistical side, a lot of the media type stuff. And he said, you know, talk to Greg Ellis, he's in the Huntford Coliseum, and he'll he'll he'll get you get you where you need to go. And I went and talked to Greg the next day, and the rest was history. I started in June working in the sports information, well, it was media relations at the time, now it's communication, but we always say sports information, the sports information office, and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I got into sports writing at that time, like just actually going and covering games, which was so much fun. Um, there's some NFL guys that I covered their high school games, which was really, really fun. I got to cover college games for local newspapers, I got to take stats, I got to do, um, I got to be at games and got to be paid for being there.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So as you're talking, I'm I'm sitting here thinking, and yet where you are now really isn't in the industry of sports, even though you are working in the vocation of sports. So how did that happen? I mean, you you you were really committed. I mean, you had a pretty singular focus. I'm going to do something in athletics and sports. I'm not gonna be an athlete, not gonna be a trainer, not gonna um whatever the other one was that we were talking about earlier. And now you're into sports broadcasting and media, and and now you're on faculty at a university.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah. So really teaching was kind of not on my radar at that time. It was I I stayed in that department for two years and graduated, got a graduate assistantship, stayed there for two more years, actually being able to run communications for my own teams, which was really cool. Got to see some cool things, worked with um two SEC championship winning tennis teams. Um, the one of the best players on that team is now top 40 in the world, one of the best Portuguese players to ever play. Um, but got to see some cool things, and that led to my first full-time job at Arkansas State, and that's kind of how I moved up to Arkansas was Arkansas State was the first, you know, I applied to a bunch of places, and they were the first ones to say, you know, you want to come work for us. And I was like, Well, I need a job, so yes. And uh, I accepted accepted the job, had 10 days to find an apartment.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

So, what was the job?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

The assistant director of media relations.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

So you're still in a sports business?

SPEAKER_00 8:17

I'm still in the athletic department in sports media. Um, I was there for six years. I was there at Arkansas State for six years. I don't think I knew that. Um, it was it was really it was hard to leave there, but it was also uh it was a really good place. Um it was it was just sports information is uh it's uh it's it's a tough, it's a tough gig. It's a tough gig. Uh and I one of my advisors when I was in college joked about it because he did it before he got into a faculty role. He said, it's a young man's game. Um it's just a it's a 24-7, 365 kind of thing. And um eventually, you know, I I started to kind of oversee some student workers and I really enjoyed the the teaching aspect of teaching them the roles that I do and kind of offloading some of the things that I did, but teaching them how to do it and teaching them why we do certain things. This is how we write uh a game recap. This is how we write game notes, this is how we do this. Um, and that led to even, you know, guest teaching with you know, guest speaking to some classes at A State. And I really started to love that because it was like I showed up, I got to talk for 50 minutes, and then I didn't have to grade anything, which was kind of nice. But and then, you know, this this position came along a little bit, a little bit over a year ago. Uh, it was it was posted, and you know, I I had known Carol Halford for a long time or for a few years, yeah, and I knew she was retiring. And it's funny this this role was not really on my radar until my wife sent it to me because someone sent it to her thinking, hey, this might be a good good spot for you, because my wife has a doctorate in um in education. And it was just my wife was like, actually, my husband would be great for this. And so she sent it to me and said, You need to apply for this.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I was like, it just occurred to me the irony, you didn't want to go into athletic training because of the additional schooling, and yet you are currently working on a doctorate. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

So I don't think you dodged that bullet.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

No, you just took it different direction.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, it's it's funny. Like, I I was thinking about this on just on my walk this morning was you know, our paths are never straight, but the Lord always orchestrates it in a certain way to where He wants kind of where He wants you to be. I I I phrased it like this way in my head was being in my previous job, I was I called myself I was a storyteller. God is a chief, he's the chief storyteller. Yes, he is. And like, so like that's kind of where my you know, I was a storyteller, but my story is being told by the master storyteller. Oh and he kind of shapes it the way he wants it.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

That's good stuff. So you're working on uh doctorate in sports management. What is that? And what do people do with that? So by by the way, I brag on your department all the time. I say, yes, and one of our newer programs is one of our fastest growing programs on our campus. We have a lot of students that are studying and looking to graduate in this area, and I often get asked, what will they do with that? I think I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

So there's it's a lot of you could it's a pretty marketable degree, honestly. Yeah, um, some you some people would probably say it's not, but I think it is. Um just because it has a very kind of big, like a really small focus, it can cover a lot of different things. And the one thing I have a sports management degree, and but I have learned a lot of skills through that that I could apply to any job. Doesn't matter if it's sports or not.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

But so if I have this degree, can I coach?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

If I have this degree, can I go into some kind of business expression and sports somehow?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Sports business, sports marketing, communication, could I be a finance? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Could I work for a media team? Could I be an athletic director?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Absolutely. What could I not do with this degree? That's a good question because I I really think it's it's kind of a world is your oyster type type degree. I mean, you can kind of apply a lot of things that you've learned through it. And that's kind of what I try to bring into the into the classroom of you know, throwing in some applied things that they can they can take to another job. You know, knowing how to write, that's one of those things that I say you're always gonna have to know how to write. Yeah, like doesn't matter, AI can may take over the world, but you're still gonna have to know how to write yourself. Yes. Um, and so that's one thing I try to try to teach them is it's a basic thing where you know you can control your ability to do that, to do that skill. Um, and one thing that a lot of former and current sports information directors have always said was they've gotten they've been able to get a job just about anywhere because one, they work hard, and two, they know how to do a whole lot of different things because not only their education, but also their training on the job, they can balance different things like deadlines and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Wow. So or you can be a teacher, or you can be a teacher.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Or you can teach join the fact that's right. And that's what with with my doctorate, you know, that I'm working on, uh, I really enjoy it because it's the the cohort that I'm in, it's a lot of people from different backgrounds. Some of us are currently teaching at a school, other ones, they are either, you know, they're working for a high school, you know, athletic department. It's a it's an it's an online program, but it's still got the whole dissertation focus and everything like that. So it's still got everything except for the student teaching part, but I'm doing that now, so it's like it kind of covers covers that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

So wow. So if I'm a prospective student and I'm I come to your office and say, uh Professor Gardner, Dr. Garner, soon hopefully I am uh uncertain about my major. I'm looking, I think I want to do something in sports or athletics, but I don't know. I don't know if I want to be a coach and don't know if I want to do athletic training. What would you tell that student?

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I would say, well, that's great because you have plenty of options here. You have we have a whole array of classes that cover the entire sports industry.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Uh we have the entire sports industry.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Pretty much. It covers in some way, shape, or form. We have uh we have a class for communication where you know you learn how to write a little bit. You learn because I teach it. So, you know, you get to I love you know teaching kids how to write, okay, especially in associated press style. Okay. Um, we've got legal and ethical, so you can learn how to be a Christ-centered leader, an ethical leader, especially with all the legal challenges that the sports industry is facing today. We one or two. We could we could fill an entire uh separate episode on that. Um but we have another class that I teach is organization and administration, so it's a leadership focused class, which I really love because you can really kind of you know invest in these upperclassmen students as you know as they are getting ready to become a leader out after graduation. Um, and it's really it's almost like you kind of it is what you want to make it. Like if you want to if you come in, you say, I want I don't know what I want to do, I'll say, Well, I I'll help you learn either what you don't want to do or what you do want to do.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Okay. So you said something there that I want to dig down a little bit more, and that is the leadership component. And knowing that you are a man of deep faith, how do you view what you do as an expression of your faith? And then how are you equipping or mentoring your students to be Christ center leaders in the area of sports management?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

So kind of going back to a previous conversation of, you know, I go back to Colossians three all the time, of you know, working as if you are working for the Lord. I view whatever I do, whether it was in sports information or if it was, if it is in my current vocation, doesn't matter what I'm doing. Or I could be, you know, cutting grass at my house. Whatever I'm doing, I'm doing it for somebody else. That's not for me. It's it's not at all for me. If it is, my my focus is off. Um, it's definitely for the Lord. And that's what I try to remind myself. Sometimes I forget, but I'm also not perfect. So um, but I but I try to remind myself that what I'm doing, it's ultimately not for me. It's to serve, um, it's to serve others, the people around me, it's to serve ultimately um the Lord. So that's that's how I how I view it.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

And in this degree, this program of study, this area of your passion, you believe it has provided you and can provide students with an opportunity to serve the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Absolutely. I mean, the the sports industry is growing um every day. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, just think about in the next three years in the United States alone. We've got two mega events in the next three years. You've got the World Cup coming up in a month, which I don't think our country's ready for, and we won't go there. Um, but and then two years after that, the Olympics are gonna be here in LA and Oklahoma City and somewhere else. There's like three sites. So I think like there's a lot of opportunity as a Christ-centered leader to kind of jump into those spaces, not necessarily as a at working a mega event, but if you want to work in a high school. I mean, there's tons of you know, young people out there who need a Christ-centered leader in their life. Uh, you know, one thing that I've always thought about is the people that I've been surrounded by, other Christ-centered leaders who have invested in me. I want to be that person for other people, and that way they can then be that person for another person. It just it's a domino effect. Yeah. But then, you know, you've got all these issues with, you know, the sports industry and ethical dilemmas, and um, you know, having someone who has Christ at the center, they can think a little bit differently a lot of times than than other people in the the sports industry, and I think that's what sets them apart. I mean, in in a lot of ways, especially ethically.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Wow. I fully agree with that. So you alluded to a moment ago, you have a wife. We already talked about her. You met her high school, college, later in life.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

I met her right before COVID hit. Uh so I had been living here for a couple of about a it was a year. So I moved here in 2019. Okay. In the summer of 2019, I met her in I think February of 2020. We had just finished basketball season. I met her through my church. Okay. Um, through a young adults Bible study group. Okay. And we just kind of started talking and then COVID hit, and I moved back home to Mississippi because I was living, I was living by myself in a in just in in Brooklyn, Arkansas. And my mom was like, You're not going into the office, so just come here. And so I abandoned my apartment for a couple of months and um just lived with my family for a little while. And then um, but we kept up that conversation a little bit, and then after that, we just kind of you know, we started COVID dating, where it was like you you couldn't go out to eat. So I met her, I met her parents very early on. Um wow. And you know, there's some interesting stories early on from that, but um, but I I just really kind of we our relationship grew pretty quickly. Um got married in uh 2022, and June 10th of this year will be four years. So congratulations. Um, she's definitely much better person than I am. She's she challenges me uh ever spiritually, um, sometimes mentally. Yep, they do that too. Um, but no, she's she's phenomenal, she's um brilliant. And well, she must be. She married you. Yeah. Either that or she's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Well, I doubt that. Caleb, I'm so glad that you agreed to be a guest on the podcast. And I'm grateful to God that you're here at Williams. You are making a difference. And I'm excited about the work you have done in your first year. I'm excited about the work you have yet to do. Um you're making a difference, and I think you truly are serving the Lord in everything you do, especially here on our faculty here heading up our sports management degree. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay.