Super Bowl champion baptized at 80
FARRIS, OKLA. — Winning the Super Bowl couldn’t be any better than what Carl McAdams experienced this weekend.
McAdams can attest to that.
He played defensive tackle for the New York Jets when they upset the Baltimore Colts, 16-7, in Super Bowl III on Jan. 12, 1969. Before that game, Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously guaranteed the victory by the 18-point underdogs.
Carl McAdams, center, smiles as he’s lifted out of the baptistery at the Farris Church of Christ in southeastern Oklahoma.
“I’ll take this. It means more to me,” McAdams, now an 80-year-old grandfather, said of his baptism Sunday at the Farris Church of Christ, a rural congregation 150 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.
With his walking stick in hand, McAdams stepped forward during the invitation song — “When We All Get to Heaven” — to declare his intention to be immersed for the remission of sins.
It’s a decision he first made as a 14-year-old boy — just a few years before a legendary football coach named Bud Wilkinson came to his hometown of White Deer, Texas, to recruit him to play for the University of Oklahoma.
“I knew the good Lord sent him because I wasn’t that good,” McAdams said of Wilkinson.
Actually, he was pretty good.
No. 51 Carl McAdams was a two-time All-America linebacker at the University of Oklahoma.
At Oklahoma, he twice won All-America honors as a linebacker. In 1965, he set the Sooners’ single-game tackling record with 24 against Navy, a mark that stood for 53 years.
As a boy, McAdams attended church with his mother “every time that door was open,” he explained to the 55 souls in the pews.
But after he left home for college and when he played for the Jets, he did not maintain his regular worship practice.
“The Lord gave me all these things, and I didn’t thank him for it,” he lamented.
As he reflected on his life, McAdams wondered about the certainty of his spiritual decision 66 years ago. He talked to Floyd Kaiser, the Farris preacher, about his concerns.
“I left it up to him,” Kaiser said. “I told him, ‘You know, in Acts 2 when 3,000 were baptized, there were probably some of them, too, who had doubts as to whether they knew enough for that. But if it troubles you, go ahead and remove the doubt.’”
Carl McAdams explains his decision to be baptized again to Farris Church of Christ members.
Married for 60 years, Carl and Margaret McAdams have called the Farris church home for decades. After his football career, McAdams worked in the insurance business, and the couple raised their three sons — Mack, Joe and Jay — in the congregation. Farris is an unincorporated community in Atoka County in southeastern Oklahoma.
All three sons — along with Joe’s wife, Nancy; and Jay’s wife, Kobi — came to witness the baptism. They were joined by the McAdamses’ five grandchildren: Jack, Matt, Alli, Kase and Bowen.
“Dad, you’ve lived a great life,” Joe, a member of the Merrick Drive Church of Christ in Ardmore, Okla., said before taking his father’s confession. “You were and still are an example of strength and love.
Carl McAdams, in the Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt, poses for a photo with his wife, children and grandchildren after his baptism Sunday.
“My other two brothers got together and said, ‘Hey Joe, you probably need to be the one that baptizes Dad,’” he explained to the congregation. “And I thought, ‘This will be the greatest honor ever to baptize my hero, my dad.’
“Nobody’s perfect,” the middle son emphasized to his father. “But I’ll tell you this: On this Earth, the greatest man I’ve met is you.”
Carl McAdams is shown in his time as a New York Jets football player in the 1960s.
Joe just turned 56.
He was born Jan. 17, 1969, five days after his father won the Super Bowl. His impending arrival kept his mother from attending the big game at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
But all these decades later, she was ecstatic to witness an even bigger milestone in his life — one with eternal ramifications.
“I was just so happy and blessed and thankful — all those feelings,” she said as Carl returned to the auditorium, his hair still wet as he sported a fresh Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt.
He flashed a giant smile, his contentment unrelated to the Super Bowl ring on his left hand.
“It can’t get any better than that,” he said of his baptism. “I hope the good Lord will take care of me.”
Jay McAdams, the youngest of Carl’s three sons, prays after his father’s baptism Sunday.
Carl McAdams, left, visits with preacher Floyd Kaiser after his baptism Sunday.
A truck is parked beside the sign at the Farris Church of Christ.
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to southeastern Oklahoma to report this story. Reach him at [email protected].
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