Category: Uncategorized

Rain

This week in Knoxville we saw it rain like never before. I think that it rained almost every day this past week, and it set records for rainfall in Knoxville. It was really hard for someone like me who enjoys doing anything and everything outside because the rain really limits most outdoor activities.

One of the things that I learned this weekend when the rain was at its heaviest was how much social media helps us during crisis events. We were experiencing a lot of really bad flooding, and social media was helping to alert everyone of where the dangerous flooding was occurring in the city. I kept seeing tweets and pictures from the police and firefighters. Its moments like this when you become very appreciative of the power of social media. This power is not limited to just during floods, but social media has become crucial during any life-threatening event.

A Different College Experience

As I have talked a lot on here about reading books, well I have been blown away by a book this week and wanted to share my thoughts on it with you! I had the opportunity this week to read my friend Brian Mills (@briandmills247) book called “A Different College Experience”. Most people want to beat around the bush when it comes to college kids and their faith, citing that they will just go through “phases” and that’s just the way it is. But I am thankful for people like Brian Mills and Ben Trueblood (also an author of this book) who are being proactive with tackling the biggest issues college students will face.

One of my favorite things about how these issues were faced in this book, was how much scripture was integrated throughout each chapter. You are not just receiving advice from two pastors, but more importantly reading what the bible has to say about each issue. This is something that I found super beneficial in my college experience because often times christians on a college campus can feel isolated. This could not be farther from the truth because you are never alone with Jesus.

There is hope! This is a huge takeaway that I received from this book and is something that is so simple but important. I want every college student or high school student to know that there is hope in your experience. “Loneliness is an epidemic on college campuses”, hope is often too far lost with college students but as we see in Romans 8:37, “know that we more than conquerors through Christ”.

Lastly, keep good company because bad company corrupts good morals (read Luke 6:45). No one can fight peer pressure forever, you might be saying “no” but regardless the bad lifestyle will still chip away at you without you knowing it. Place yourself around people who build you up and go for it together.

I was blessed by all the messages in this book. Deny temptation for the true freedom that is found in him, and always remember that greater is he!

Communication Experiment

Yesterday I decided to do some social experiments in order to better understand the college campus. This idea must be from all of the communications research that I have started doing in my graduate degree, so this is quite a new thing for me to do. The reason I did this was I noticed that walking around campus most students would not even look anyone in the eye as they walked by each other.

I was on the bus because it was pouring rain as I was leaving my social media class, and it was packed with students. I then tried to talk to everyone on the bus because I love communicating with people when not one person attempted to lift their head from their phone. The bus was completely silent as 25 students not only were not talking to anyone but were not even lifting their heads from their phones. Later that day I noticed the same thing walking to workouts when I passed people trying to dodge each other while having their heads in their phones. It is quite a sad skill that we have developed as a society that we are able to navigate while not even looking up.

This is a quick blog thought but I just want to encourage everyone to be more aware of how much you are looking at your phone when you are around people. You never know what kind of benefit you will receive from talking to the stranger on the bus next you, or meeting someone new on the sidewalk as you are walking.

Game Watching Tips

As Tennessee plays Kentucky tonight in a basketball, It made me think about a few game watching tips. Tonight’s game is going to be an emotion-filled game for a lot of Tennessee fans considering it is versus Kentucky, and that we are #1 in the country. These tips might help a few people out there watching the game tonight, and I have developed these from playing experience and observing fans during games.

  1. Do not negatively tweet players or coaches. They are not going to read your comment and have a revelation about their mistake. So there is really no benefit then to sending the tweet and could only come back to haunt you on social media one day.
  2. Have food, this my favorite because I love food! Watching sports is supposed to be fun and a great pairing is some good food. My personal favorite and go to food is popcorn.
  3. Have positive people around you, and try to limit “experts” in the room. You all know the people that claim to be “experts” but in all reality have no idea what they are talking about. These people are draining to watch a game with.
  4. Stay off the phone, and stay in the moment. Do not be the person who misses the big play because you were too busy on your phone!

These are few quick tips from Riley that I hope can help stimulate your mind for tonight or any future game!

Nash

Anyone who knows me probably knows about my dog named Nash. I am posting pictures of him on my Snapchat a lot. I try not to be one of those people who is only posting pictures and videos of their pets on Instagram, so that is why I use Snapchat more when it comes to my dog. I feel like Snapchat is more informal and personal because I know almost everyone whom I am friends with on there, which gives me a better feeling of posting more about my dog.

Well, Nash is a golden retriever, and he is the most stereotypical golden retriever you would ever meet. He has the long golden fur and a huge smile always on his face. I love that whenever I am in a bad mood, I can always count on him to give me a good smile. I wish everyone could have a chance to meet this amazing dog because he would love to meet you too.

Nash often reminds me of some of life most simple lessons, and it is hilarious how these lessons come from a dog. One is how happy Nash is whenever he sees anyone come through a door. He is always the first one to greet a friend or a stranger. Now I know he is a dog, but recently I have been realizing how much people are drifting away from personal communication these days. Sometimes I think we need to be reminded to just be friendly and greet people wether we know them or not.

Leaders are Readers

As I am cruising at 30,000 feet in the air heading to the SEC offices in Birmingham for the weekend, it gives me some good time to disconnect from the world below. I don’t have to deal with my phone and so it gives me an easier way to read my new book in silence. I thought I would hop on a quickly tell you what I have been thinking through this flight as I started this new book called, “Chasing the Lion”. I love reading, and a big reason why is put best by Dr. Jay Strack when he says, “Leaders are Readers”.

I have not always been an avid reader and really have lacked the desire to read any books when I was younger. One thing I learned through my undergraduate degree was how valuable expanding your knowledge and mind was. As Athletes, we train our body day in and day out while pushing the limit on how much our bodies can actually take. Not many people educate athletes on what to do when your body ages past the point of competition or when sports does not work out as a profession long enough.

Thankfully I have figured out there is a point where you transition from using your body as a means for a living to then using what you bring to the table from a mental standpoint. As simple as this sounds for a lot of people reading this, it is a foreign concept to guys who grew up always relying on their bodies to get them to success.

So with this knowledge I have fallen in love with learning the past few years in school and especially outside of it. That is where reading comes back into play because it is one of the best ways to learn. If you want to excel in life as a leader outside of the field then you need to fall in love with the art of learning and reading. I encourage anyone who wants to be a good reader but can’t seem to get it together to try a few easy steps.

  1. Find a good book, as simple as this sounds, it is actually quite difficult. Everyone has their different taste but reach out to people you know who are good leaders or are successful in your eyes for their opinion on a book.
  2. Find an area in your life that you can escape too in order to read. My place is a coffee shop because I can sit comfortably without getting distracted.
  3. Have a notepad, it helps a lot to remember what you are reading if you write downs thoughts and quotes from your reading. It also helps you focus on what you are reading instead of reading just to read.
  4. Turn your phone over and on silent. Your phone is the biggest enemy to your reading and learning. All the social media posts and texts will still be there after you are done.


Living in the Unknown

One thing that I have learned about living in Knoxville, Tennessee is that you never truly know what to expect as for the weather. One day it can be 30 degrees and snowing, and then two days later you are on a golf course wearing shorts because it is 65 degrees now. When the weather changes people go onto twitter to complain about how they hate the inconsistency the weather brings to their lives. Well, I love it and I will tell you why I brought this simple example up!

It is always an adventure in life when you do not know what to expect. What kind of life are you living when something as simple as the weather not being consistent with your expectations throws you off? Not a good one in my opinion because often most people want everything planned with every exact detail. As a human and more importantly if you are a Christ follower than this is not the way to live.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;  in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”- Proverbs 3:5-6.

The beauty of this is that when you have your full faith in Christ then he holds all of your plans, which gives the freedom to live freely in the unknown. That is why I love living in a life full of unknowns every day because I know who holds my plans. So we should not get caught up in having to plan everything and having to lean on life always being consistent. Because the only thing in life that is consistent is the God who created it.

The 24 Hour Rule

Sports are often amazing because they bring out passion and emotion in people. Sports is one of the biggest areas where we as players and fans get invested with our emotions. Sports will leave you clinging on to 10 seconds of action with everything you have while completely forgetting everything else that is going on. It grips us with 1,000 tons of force, but what happens when things go south?

Whatever the event is, the more emotionally invested you are in it, the harder the loss feels. Often times people take to social media to vent their emotions about the outcome or what they think went wrong. Here I am to say that this issue is not just for fans but also to players. Taking your frustration out on social media is not going to be beneficial for either party.

There is no reason you should be coming after guys on social media for messing up on a play while you are on the couch, likewise, no player should be on social media after the game going after fans for showing their passion in unproductive ways. We are usually all on the same team as fans and players, and we both want the same goals. This is why the 24-hour rule is something that we all can use.

The 24-hour rule is that whenever something that you are emotionally invested in like a game has ended badly, wait 24 hours to post anything on social media. When you wait 24 hours it gives you time to process. I promise you that usually, you will be thankful that you did not post whatever you were wanting to post the day before. I have always used this approach and I encourage everyone to try this out the next time a big game comes around.

Disconnect to Connect

I love social media. I love everything that accompanies the way we can now communicate instantaneously with people across the world. There is some great power in this, but it always reminds me of one of my favorite movies which is Spider-Man. In Spider-Man he is told by his uncle that with great power comes great responsibility. We need to be responsible with what we post, but for this blogs sake, we need to be responsible with how much we abuse this power within our lives. I say this reffering to the easy ability for us to sit on our phones checking and posting on social media throughout the day.

We have become addicted to checking our feeds and scrolling. Most of us even unconsciously have developed muscle memory to go and automatically hit that space on our phone where our social media app is. I know this because I am currently going “dark” on Instagram and Snapchat this week, and I sadly too often will naturally hit the space on my phone where these apps used to be just to realize I am hitting a blank screen.

Disconnecting to connect is something that I thought I needed, and I think it is healthy for all of us to practice every now and then to make sure that we are not engulfing our lives behind a screen. This allows us to refresh our life and regain abilities to make better use of our time because it is so limited. We cannot get too caught up in everyone posting their great moments in life, only to miss great opportunities for ourselves while checking a feed.

I encourage anyone who is reading this blog to evaluate your habits on social media and how often you are mindlessly scrolling on a feed. Take a break to go enjoy all of the wonders and most importantly the people in this world. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Do not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near”. At the end of the day do you want to look back and regret all of the opportunities you missed because you were busy looking at other peoples filtered lives all the time? Or do you want to be able to tell the stories about all of the lives you have changed, and all the adventures you experienced? God has so much out there for you to experience once you learn how to disconnect to connect.

Opening

Hello to whoever happens to find themselves on this blog of mine. I never thought that I would start a blog because I rarely find myself sitting on my computer, but here I am for my graduate class so I am going to make the most of it!

I am Riley Lovingood and I am in my 5th year of playing college football for the University of Tennessee. I am in graduate school for communications and also am working on a global securities certification. My goal for this blog is to share my thoughts on the things that I am passionate about which includes my faith, football, marketing, politics, and other areas.

College is a time where everyone has plenty of learning experiences, and when you add into that being a college football player it turns into a completely different experience. It is something that I would not trade in for anything because the experience is priceless. You get to learn how to make a schedule while having a list of responsibilities each day and having 60+ hours a week of work with football, and then squeezing in school. It teaches you a lot. You also learn how to deal with a lot of different valuable areas in life, as in dealing with adversity, media, different people, and many more different ways that I will go into with this blog. One of these areas is social media.

Social media: It can take 10 years to build your brand but only 10 seconds to tear it all down. This is one of the earliest lessons that I learned, and I will relate a lot of this blog with. You always want to air on the safe side when it comes to posting on social media. I will leave you with the rule that I always use for social media from Oswald Chambers which is, “If in doubt, don’t”.