Editorial: Ken Sparks, a life well lived

A wave of sadness washed over East Tennessee on Wednesday with the word that Carson-Newman University football icon Ken Sparks had succumbed to cancer.

Carson-Newsman and Sparks were inseparable, venerable institutions.

He had dedicated nearly four decades to shaping young men's lives who played football for the university. That was more important to him than any of the championships, the trophies, the accolades, the numbers.

► More: Ken Sparks, coaching icon at Carson-Newman, dies at 73

“I’m grateful to be part of a profession where you can teach about life while you’re teaching blocking and tackling,” Sparks said in 2010 when he was honored with the Robert R. Neyland Trophy.  “The Lord has blessed me.

“I hope that through things like this I can honor the Lord and that it has more meaning than what’s on the scoreboard at the end of the field.”

Sparks, 73, a Knoxville native, retired after the 2016 season, after courageously battling through his cancer diagnosis in 2012.

Polite, warm, always smiling, Sparks coached 37 seasons, recorded 338 wins, made 25 playoff trips, won 21 South Atlantic Conference titles and 5 national titles for the university where he graduated in 1967. He coached in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and the National Collegiate Athletics Association Division II as well as at several high schools before returning to Carson-Newman in 1980.

In addition to the Neyland Trophy, Sparks has been honored with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Lifetime Achievement Award. Sparks was elected president of the American Football Coaches Association in 2007. In 2002 he received the All-American Football Foundation’s Johnny Vaught Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sparks earned NAIA coach of the year honors in 1984 and was voted SAC coach of the year 12 times.

A forgiving man, he gave troubled players who had lost their way at other institutions a second chance.

“You’re going to have influence, whether you like it or not,” Sparks said last November when he retired. “Everyone of us is an example of something. We can talk all we want to, but our walk is what tells people who we are.

“The Lord has put us in a position where we’ve been able to have an audience of players and people that want to know the message. That’s what I hope I’ve been true to, the Lord’s message.”

When Sparks announced his retirement, Carson-Newman athletics director Allen Morgan called it a sad day.

"It's a day we honor Ken and the legacy he is leaving for how he has touched young men's lives in a way far greater than wins on a football field.

"He has molded boys to become Christian young men, husbands and community leaders where they too can give back.  So today, it's Ken Sparks' day.  The entire Carson-Newman community gives thanks for what he has done not only for Carson-Newman but for the greater good of mankind."