We're back with another edition of The Federalist for Radio Hour. I'm Emili Jashnski,
culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the
show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x or Twitter
depending on the day if I remember to say that at FDR LST. Make
sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and if you want to support
our work, you can head on over and subscribe at the premium version of
our website as well. We are joined today by somebody who made just a
huge ripple effect around the country with a simple act of prayer. That would
be coach Joe Kennedy, who's out with a new book. It's called Average
Joe. One Man's Faith and the Fight Change a Nation. It's also going
to be made into a movie soon as well. Coach Kennedy, thanks for
joining the show. Absolutely always great to talk to you. I mean,
just a remarkable story. A lot of people probably know your name, they're
probably familiar with the case Kennedy, the Bremerton School District over in Washington State,
and I thought before we dive into that, Coach, it might be
helpful to just start with a little bit of your background. You've led a
very interesting life. If you could tell us just a little bit about Yohia
ended up coaching football at Bremerton, that would be great. Yeah, real
easy background is you know, the unwanted kid from you know, even from
childbirth all the way through me growing up. And so I decided to join
the Marine Corps to get away from it all and become something. And after
I served for years, I got out of the Marine Corps, got married
to my childhood sweetheart, and she was working in the school district and they
want into coaches. So next thing you know, I'm working as a high
school football coach and I made the commit into prey and that's what I did.
It was something so simple as that. You know. I was also
going to ask me, you spent eighteen years in the Marines, if you
could tell us a little bit about your service. You know, again you
mentioned you you joined, like so many people, to escape from some bad
circumstances. Tell us just about where you served, a little bit more about
why you served. I'm so curious. Yeah. So, yeah, when
I say I was a bad kid, that's kind of an understatement. Yeah,
I was. I was headed down every wrong road, and I needed
something in my life. I remember even in grade school I was I had
a nun who told me that I brought nothing to society except pain, and
it really stuck with me. When people tell you your whole life you're never
going to amount to anything, it really sticks with you. And I wanted
to prove them wrong. I didn't want to be a victim of my environment,
and I wanted to proved that I could become something. So my second
love was finding the love for my country, and serving was something that I
wanted to do. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of something and
I belonged to something greater than myself, and I wanted to prove that what
I had is something that not everybody could do, which is you know,
the Marines being the toughest branch service. So yeah, I just totally just
wanted to become something incredible. And I needed the discipline, and I needed
the team building. I needed all the the intangible things that come along with
the service. And I served all over as you can imagine, about every
three years you changed duty stations. And I started out as a simple,
a decent mechanic, and I had a natural knap for training, and so
I kind of went down the training road and I was the training noncommissioned officer.
I was a swim instruct marshals instructor, rife range kind of things,
and explosive training. So anytime there was straining going on, I was involved
with that. And when I retired, I was the I was the company
guy in the first sergeant for our unit. So I was a senior enlisted
guy for our unit. And I had in my own company, which was
simply amazing, and I just got to serve with the best people in the
world. Yeah, and you've already talked about this a little bit, but
could you tell us more about your faith? And you know, you mentioned
having that that moment that must have been really poignant, must have stuck with
you hard with a nun. But you know a lot of people I think
have maybe gone through an experience like that, a sort of negative experience,
unfortunate experience with faith, and it's you know, come out on the other
end you sort of like you did. Can you just tell us about why
faith became so central to your identity and to your life? Oh? Sure,
well a little bit. I know when I was in and out of
group homes and foster homes and a boys home, that all these people were
trying to plant seeds in my life of you know, trying to mentor me
and trying to put me on the right path. And these people that were
trying to give me to understand, you know, God's love. I totally
rejected it when I was a kid, and it didn't it didn't take until
after I got out of the marine. I was getting ready to retire and
I met up with my childhood sweetheart, and she was she grew up in
the church. She was a good church kid, and I was always the
good girl. And I was just smidten with her from the moment we met
and here it is thirty one years later, and I really, I mean,
this was a girl that I've been in love with forever and had a
chance to marry her. So man, I took it. And we weren't
equally yoked. I never understood that term before, but boy, it's so
true. And she went through a rough childhood when with abuse as a kid
and also as an adult in one of her previous marriages, so she had
a lot of barriers. And I was terrible at marriage. I already ruined
to other marriages. I lived for the world. I was atheist, so
there was no way I knew what to do to how to break down these
barriers. I didn't know how to meet her on the level that she needed
and to take care of. And the only way I could do that was
finally after a year of about a year of failing as a husband and a
father, was to finally surrender to God up on the halter, and I
made a deal with him. I say, God, if you saved my
marriage, it was God. If you say my wife, I would give
you my life. And so that's, you know, my bomb that I
end my word that I had made with God. And I never turned my
back from that moment on. And as long as he kept up his book
into the bargain, of course, I couldn't keep mine. So yeah,
I'll serve him the rest of my days. So that's kind of how I
started out. I was a atheist guy, and next thing I know is
that you say my marriage. So yeah, I totally was on his side
from then on. You know, all of these experiences, the Marines,
the group homes, is that really what made you love coaching young men in
football? I mean, it seems like a really rewarding and kind of natural
way for you to give back after, you know, as a young man
struggling so much. Absolutely, and you know, in the military you're just
constantly training men and women and it's just part of your job and you never
really think about that's you know, what you're you know, you're called to
do. When I got out, I had no idea I was going to
be a coach. I didn't want to have anything to do with coaching or
really I thought I was done working. I thought I was going to retire
and live happily. Ever after I was here, I am you know,
I got the girl of my dreams and every I got a great job.
Everything is going the way perfectly, the way that I thought life should be.
And then God calls me to be a coach, and you know,
it really came down to, really, what what am I going to do
with my life? Here? I am so many people sewed into my life,
and there's so many kids out there suffering, you know, single parent
families, and I think back to when I was a kid, I had
nobody there on my side. There were very few people that would put up
with anybody like me and the people that did they tried so hard, but
a lot of them couldn't understand where I was coming from. That's why I
rebuilt so much against them. And here was my chance. And I felt
like, you know, here here what I was. You know, I'm
rejecting the very thing that I rejected. And so I'm I, you know'd
say, come to Jesus moment about that. And it's like, here's my
chance for penance and to give back. And hopefully no kid will ever to
go through the things that I did. And I really found my calling and
in coaching, And man, I tell you, I can't think them a
higher calling than serving these young men. That was that was even so much
more rewarding than the military was, because I never I never saw this as
as something that was going to be such a life changing event for me as
as coaching was. And people have heard your story, and I think a
lot of people are actually familiar with your story. Some people have unfortunately heard
it through the filter of the legacy media, which is a very different version
of the story. But Coach, if you could just walk us through a
little bit, you know, people can read this in great depth in the
book which goes through the whole story. And again that's that's out now you
can you can read it now, no need to pre order. It's right
there for you to to buy if you're curious to hear more about this incredible
story. But coach, what are the basic facts of how this case started?
It ends up going to the Supreme Court. But take us back to
the basics, just a quick overview of what happened. Yeah, So I
was offered a job on Friday afternoon, and I said, give me the
weekend to think about it. And in the middle of the night on that
weekend, I saw the movie facing the giants and it was like, God,
just you know, get punched me and said, you know, I'm
calling you to take this on. So I made my covenant and my commitment
to God that I was going to give thanks after every game winner lose,
right there on the battlefield. So that's where that all originated from. And
from that moment, on every Friday nights hunder the lights, right after the
game, we shake hands with the opposing team, I meet with the other
coaches, and I turned to walk back to my side of the bench or
to our side of the field, and I just stopped taking me for about
ten fifteen seconds, and you know, thank God, and I walked back
over to my side. Well, over time, the kids finally started asking
a coach, what are you doing out there? And I said, I
thing, just thanking God for what you guys did. And they wanted to
know if they could join me, and I said, you know, this
is America. You can join me, but I want to say no.
And so they started coming out and hit and miss over the years. You
know, if depending on the situation, sometimes the kids are you know,
really too excited about a great win and they want to just go celebrate cool.
And sometimes if they really got their butts kicked, and you know,
they they're not grateful about anything, and they want to go lick their wounds
and just go home, and that's fine. So it was hit and miss.
And then over the years they asked if because it's a small community up
in Upham, Washington, they played pee wee's, and you know, they
played in middle school together and once you get to high school, kids kind
of dripped apart. But you know, this community is small, so they
knew a lot of the other kids, and they wanted and they came and
my captains came and asked if if the other team could join us, and
I said, if you want to mate them, that's cool, but you're
going to be the ones to do it, because I'm not getting involved with
that. This is your team. So they started inviting the other team and
then so this went on, no big deal for eight years. This was
just something that we did. And we did this for eight years. And
in the middle of the eight season, somebody saw what we are doing out
there after the game, and an administrator from another school district and felt compelled
to call our principal and comment on what he saw. And he so he
called our principal and said, I just got to tell you what I saw
on Friday night. Your football program is doing some awesome things. So really
all of this started from the compliment, and so of course with any compliment,
you want to of course do investigation. And their lawyers got involved to
find out, you know, well, what did the policies say. And
the policy only the only policy in the state of even in the state of
Washington, says that you cannot encourage nor discourage kidne in prayer. And I
was like, well, I don't care if they come out or not,
not a big deal. So that was we were just fine there. Well
then you know, I started getting in the news started people started breezing the
eyebrows about it. And next thing you know, they said, well,
yeah, well, coach, we don't want you to pray with the kids
anymore. And I said, well, that's unfortunate, but I mean,
your school, your rules. So they gave me a letter direction not to
pray with the students anymore, and I stopped. I immediately stopped and never
prayed with my players again after that. But I continued doing my prayer like
I originally made my commitment to God that I was going to do well.
This school still saw that, and people said, look, he's still doing
it. He's in defiance of the school district. And so they gave me
another letter direction and told me that I needed to choose between my job and
my faith, and said I was going to be put on suspension until I
applied with the school district's directives to stop in my prayer because this could possibly
eventually become an establishment clause violation. And I was dumbfounded. I was like,
are you kidding me? You're talking about something hypothetical that might happen in
the future. So I had no other choice except for to get somebody who
understood the Constitution a lot more than I did or the school did. And
that's where first Celebrity Institute came involved and backed up, backed me up and
said, no, you're You're well within your rights, as I naturally assumed
what the First Amendment says is. You know, you have the free speech
and the free exercise clause in the First Amendment, and I exercised that right
and they ended up, you know, putting me on suspension and then I
lost my job over it. So that's where everything all started in a nutshell.
I know that was a long winded statement, but that's where it went.
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your podcast. No, I mean for the breadth of the story and everything
that happened. I thought that was very concise, because you've been there a
lot. This story has so many kind of twists and turns. And actually,
I think there are a couple of really important things. One is that
the students asked you. You didn't ask the students to pray. You weren't
demanding the students pray. They come, They came up and they asked you.
And two is that you weren't seeking a major conflict. You weren't seeking
publicity. You stopped when you were asked to stop. You were just a
normal guy who wanted to pray. And I think you know, your story
was kind of twisted by a lot of people in the media. I'm curious
about your experience with that coach and how people sort of acted like you were
coercing, abusing your position of power to force religion on people, to become
a celebrity and a sort of Christian champion hero something like that. Your story
is does not support that narrative at all. You're just a guy who wanted
to pray. Yeah, that was the most amazing thing that they kind of
took a life on its own from the other side. And I don't know
where that came from, how that narrative started. And I knew it started
right when we went to court because it originally when the letters of direction came,
it came on because it could be establishment clause violation. And I understood
that that it could possibly be. And I told Aaron, the superintendent,
who was and still is a dear friend of mine. I mean, the
school district are my friends. These guys are not my enemy. We've been
friends for a decade. My wife worked for the school district for fifteen years.
I mean, we spent holidays together, we go to church together,
We're family up in Birmerton. So I didn't want to have anything to do
with something like a lawsuit. This was so ridiculous over something so trivial as
taking a you know, a thirty second prayer of thanks after a football game.
So once once they're lawyers, and then I found out why is because
their lawyers had their own agenda of there's this group I'm not even going to
say the real name. I'm going to call them the freaks from a religious
foundation, because that's all they want is to remove prayer and religion from the
public square. And they're the ones who were the ones backing this whole their
whole agenda, which is I thought that you know, the school district should
be you know left, you know, lead that up to the judge to
decide not not take the east side, but you know, just kind of
be neutral in it and just have a judged rule on this. Is this
or is this not an establishment college violation? That was the original question and
what I ran the whole entire time was you know, am I allowed to
pray after a football game? Because that's the only thing I asked That was
my question from the very beginning. The only things I asked for was to
be able to pray after a football game and to or to be a coach
and to pray after a football game. Only two things I ever asked for
from day one was those two things. Their story changed over the years that
I was trying to see glory, and you know, I had to do
it out there in the bright lights, so, you know, on the
fifty yard line when nobody else was around, so everybody could see me.
You know, I'm going, where do you guys get this? And they
started saying things like, oh, they have to pray to play, and
I'm going, you guys obviously have never bringed Bremerton, And it was so
so ridiculous that I was like, find somebody. From the very first time
I did in my first interview, I said, try to find somebody who
felt compelled that they had to pray. Find one person, just one kid.
I mean, I coached there for eight years. There's sixty kids on
a team. That's a lot of people that have opportunities that you have.
Please find one person. They couldn't find a single person in the school in
their depositions, and even admitted it in court that nobody ever felt pressure to
break because that wasn't even a thing. It was so such a ridiculous story
to me, and that kind of bothers me to this day that none of
the courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, never once even looked
at the facts of the case on that. That was so that boggles my
mind. What happened to our courts is oh, okay, got me fired
up? No, no, no, no, that's great because I can't
imagine the level of frustration you must have experienced as this story kind of bounced
around national media and people reacted to it without you know, again, even
being familiar with your community, your football community, your school community, your
school district. And that's where I want to go next. Coaches. It's
crazy to me, especially now in the age of social media, how cases
like this can affect communities, and how communities can be affected by national media,
social media and what you said. The reason I wanted to ask this
particularly is you said something so interesting about the school district and the superintendent and
sort of being part of a community with them, and national groups sort of
ending up being involved in this local case. You know, it's not entirely
unusual in the course of history. That's kind of how the court system works.
You have local cases that ping around and work their way up to the
national court system, and then the media catches on to them. But you
mentioned the sort of national anti religious group that got involved pretty early on and
was putting pressure, applying pressure in the community to get involved early on.
What was that like to have a pretty local story that affected you and your
players, and you know, your friends that were part of your community in
your school district that were working this out on their own, then get roped
into this big kind of national conflict. Yeah. I was very confused by
that because the school district, I'm going to say the school district lawyers,
I'm not even going to say the school district. The school district lawyers.
They gave me a letter that I was not going to have any communication with
the school anymore unless it was three lawyers. And to me, that was
the most frustrating thing in the world. Here we are as adult in print
co workers, and I was still I mean, I was considered on suspension,
so I'm actually still an employee of the school district while this is going
through the courts, and I was not even allowed to talk to my employer.
And I I was so dumbfounded by this, and I'm like, who
are these clowns that are making up these rules. I'm talking, you know,
through my wife. She was the human resource director for the school district,
and I'm asking her go talk to Aaron, the superintendent, and find
out what's going on with this, and not because I'm feeding her information from
my side to find out, you know, what's going on on their side,
and poor Aaron and the school board had absolutely no idea. They were
left in the dark the whole entire time. And I'm going, who is
running this train? You know? I was just amazed that this lawyer group
is the ones that are defending all of the state of Washington, which is
run by an outside organization that has this agenda on their own. They're not
even from Washington. Why are they even involved with this? This makes no
sense to me. And why are they making such a national big deal over
something as trivial as kicking a knee? I mean, I can't take them
anything more boring in the world. And seeing somebody taking a knee and to
saying, hey, thanks God, you're awesome and walking off, I mean,
why is that even in the news? And I always agree with people,
And when I thought, why is this, you know news or and
I agree with them, why is it it isn't. This makes absolutely no
sense to me whatsoever. Why this is being heard before the Supreme Court of
the United States over something so stupid? Is thanking God, I got nothing
and so obviously protected. As First Liberty pointed, out, you know,
it's actually discrimination to it's religious discrimination to say one thing is prevented because it's
religious, when another thing wouldn't be prevented if it weren't religious. They use
the example of, for example, a phone call or for instance a phone
call, And yeah, it seems very obvious to people, but even the
most obvious things, I suppose we have to litigate in the Supreme Court these
days. Coach tell us a little bit about how this affected your community.
I'm really curious about that, because it sounds like you had a lot of
support from the community. It sounds like, you know, there are a
lot of people who understood that it was silly, this had become national news.
Even so, I imagine that there was still some tension. Oh yeah,
there's always going to be some tension, but that's always year one percent.
And they're loud and obnoxious that and I agree to meet with anybody.
You know, you're going to get your threats from these keyboard commandos and these
tough guys who live in their mom's basements and each Cheetos all day, and
you know, you know, I mean, they're the tough guys. But
I would I would meet with these guys and say, you know, if
you got a problem with me, let's talk about it. Because I'm an
adult. These fights that they do, you know, behind computers and social
media, I'm not used to those. I'm used to dealing with everything man
and man, you want to talk about it and you want to fight,
let's go meet out back and let's fight about it. But yeah, this
this for the community. They my community was so awesome, and you know,
I was. I was. I hate to say I'm a good guy,
because I'm not really a good guy. But I loved the kids,
I loved the team, and my whole entire job was not to dox's and
o's in football. I still don't know any offense or defense in football.
My whole entire job was to take care of the guys that were doing it,
doing thes and o's, and that freed up to other coaches. They
didn't have to worry about Johnny and his mom and his girlfriend and his homework
and anything else going on in his life. They only had to worry about
teaching Johnny how to do football. Now, me, I worried about them
with their parents and everything. So their parents called me. I worried about
their grades. I worried about their girlfriends. I worried about it. They
had to eat, or they needed clothes to wear, they had roof over
their head. That was one hundred percent my responsibility. And I loved it.
And the community really underst stood that that's what my role was and it
was such a need in our community. And they knew I didn't care about
football and it was just about the kids. So I was well respected for
that reason. And yeah, they were very upset that over something so dumb
as this, and you know, it's not you hear a lot of things
about the home Left Coast set all you know, crazy, it is.
Well, we're just far enough removed from Seattle, Washington that were not as
insane as them, and there's still some conservative, good people and they understood
that a lot of military there and they understand that the Constitution and the amendments
mean something. It was still and that it is worth standing up and finding.
Did this experience change your perspective on the media at all? I mean,
I've talked to people in the past who go through these crazy media circuses
and maybe went into them without any particular thoughts about, you know, whether
the media is honest or whether the media is dishonest. I know, like
real political leanings when it came to the media. But as you watch your
own story, your own details, things that you know so well because they're
happening to you, be told by journalists and cable news and all of that,
did any of that affect the way you saw the media? Absolutely?
And I agreed. I agreed to do every in any I didn't care who
it was. Now, my lawyers had a different look on it. They
wanted to do friendly ones, and I was like, no, I want
to do MPR, I want to do PBS, I want to do CNN,
I want to do every I want everybody to hear the story, because
this isn't a conservative thing, this or a Christian thing, or this thing.
This was a very much an American thing. This all had to do
with the Constitution and the first and then that's all I had to do with
And this applies to every American. So there should not be a side on
this of a liberal or a conservative, and I wanted everybody to hear the
fact, the case, and the real story. Unfortunately, I found out
that the truth side of the way media works. Now I'm not going to
say that media lies, because they really don't lie, but they will tell
parts of the truth to get that part of the truth to tell a narrative.
They will tell their narrative in the way that they want, and they
don't have to tell a single lie about anything, but they'll omit a lot
of things, and they could tell that. You can make any It's kind
of like statistics. You can make them say anything you want. You can
make numbers say whatever they want. You can do the same thing with emitting
the facts of certain things and only representing certain things. So I really started
to understand that when I do some of these interviews, be very careful what
I say because things could be taken out of context. As you very well
know, with Trump, he can't open his mouth without anything taken out of
context. You can't even make any actions without being taken out of context.
And that's happened so many times with me, and I just grin and bear
it now, because you're not going to make everybody happy, But I'm going
to keep trying to reach out to everybody and try to get more people to
understand that your job is to report the news and let us figure out what
side it to be on and that's just the way, you know, how
America unfortunately has turned into is us versus them, and that's not the way
that things should be here in America. That is really well said that it's
not so much if they don't have to tell a single lie. Because they
have so much control over how the narrative is presented. You can take,
you know, anything and spin it in a different way. And coach I
wanted to actually also ask a little bit more about your players and how all
of this you know, a when this hits the community and starts to become
a local news story, it starts to become a conversation you know, in
the coffee shop, in the PTA meetings and all that good stuff. Uh,
that's hard enough, but then it sort of becomes national. How did
this you know, as they're they're growing into young men, how do you
think this affected them? And how did it affect your relationship with them?
It's it sounds like they stuck by they stood by you. Yeah, they
really did. Uh. At first, it was it was something really cool
because we were trending on Twitter and Facebook and everything. We're trending number one
for a long time. That's all that they cared about. And I thought
that was, you know, really cute that that's all that they cared about,
is that we were trending, and you know, you gotta laugh.
And I have kids, and I had two kids in the high school at
the time too. I had my daughter and my son in high school at
the time, So I thought it was really cute that that's all they cared
about. And anytime we did interviews and stuff, they got to show off
and got to talk to the media if they wanted to, you know,
I mean, all glory goes to, you know, into the team at
all times. If they wanted to talk to me, great, if they
want to talk to the kids. It was something we were experiencing together.
Was the biggest story that happened in Bremerton ever, I mean ever, in
the whole entire history of Bremerton. This was the biggest thing to ever happen,
and it got to unfold in front of these young men and they were
very much part of the story. It wasn't like this was happening to coach.
This was happening to our football team. And I kept them involved in
every single aspect of it. When we did get down to the nitty gritty,
the news and stuff. They thought that was just a trip to be
on the news and it was a national story and Bremerton was on the now
and they could turn on every Friday and see them on the football field and
at the games. Every game was highlighted. It was on the news.
So they thought that was cool. The thing they didn't think was cool when
it got really serious, and I was my job was put on the line.
And we sat down the night before, right after practice when we have
our pregame practice, and I said I want to talk to the team,
and I had them all on a knee in front of me and I said,
guys, here's here's what's going to happen. Is that if I take
a knee tomorrow night, I'm going to be put on suspension after the game.
And they were like, oh, coach, you can't do that.
That's a bunch of bs, you know. I mean, they really flipped
out and they were like, we're gonna play our helmets down and walk off.
And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow the boat.
No, you are not doing that. And I had to get really
cerned with them. I say, your job is on the battlefield, which
is this football field here. That's where your fight is. My fight is
my fight. Your fight is out here. So you guys, you want
to you want to support me, you do it out on the field and
win. You don't do anything that you jeopardize that. So they totally understood
that, and they said, Coach, can't you just give in and go
along with the with what they said? It would be so much easier.
And I knew at that exact second that there is no way that I wasn't
going to take a knee. Could you imagine here? I asked these guys
to basically almost kill themselves on our Friday night. I don't care if their
leg hurts or they're bruised, or you know, you've got a busted finger
or whatever. I want you to fight until there's nothing left on the clock.
I don't care how much it hurts. I don't care how inconvenient it
is. Because your mom and dad's going through divorce or whatever's going on in
your life, You're going to fight for your team and because it's the right
thing to do, and there's time on the clock, and now, all
of a sudden, I have a chance to prove this I'm not just going
to talk. I'm going to be able to show this in real life how
this applies to your life. You know, here it is thirty forty years
down the road that I have opportunity lead by example, and I'm going to
give in and just quit because this is going to become uncomfortable for me and
I might lose out or No, I'm going to stand up and do what's
right, even if it's not popular thing to do. So I had to
do this and the team I told them that this is where I'm telling you
that you're going to be faced with life to make choices between right and wrong.
And you could fold and give into things like not doing the prayer,
but it's the right thing to do. So I am going to do that
even if it cost me everything. So that was a learn lesson that they
got to see in real life, and it did cost me everything. Now
tell us correct me if I'm wrong. You made the decision earlier this year
to stop coaching, tell us a little bit about how you made that decision
and what you're up to these days. Yeah, so, you know,
I knew I was going to catch Black on that, and you know they
always try to use your words against you. You said you'd be on the
first flight back, and I said, I absolutely was. I was true
to my word. They reinstated me in I think it was March. I
don't have the exact date, but the day they reinstated me, I was
in Bremerton. I flew back Bremerton from Pensacola, Florida. I was there
at the high school and I received my letter of reinstatement. I got it
hand delivered to me in the in the office at the Bremerton School District office.
So that was the first step of what I asked were out of the
Supreme Court and what I've been asking for the whole entire time. Now,
that's when spring ball started, and so we had two weeks of spring ball.
Well they hit me with they had me in the paper and said,
all right, you're reinstated, but you can't do anything until you comply with
all these roles and regulations of training and this and that. So I wasn't
even allowed to step on the football field for all the spring and I was
like, well, that's unfortunate, but I'll play your silly little game.
And I said, we'll try again in the fall. So in August,
we have our fall camp, and I showed up the first day of fall
camp. I was there every single day with our football team. I got
to meet all the kids, all the coaches, a bunch of the parents,
and we practiced every day getting ready for the upcoming season. And then
after the first game, which I was really nervous about, because here's the
second part that I never thought I would be at, is actually being able
to take in me after another football game. And you know, I knew
I was going to catch some flack from people at the school because here these
kids were in grade school when this was going through, so this is so
far down the road. They don't really even understand what was happening, and
what was going on at the time, really what happened with I mean,
this was old news and you know, the whole new coaching staff, whole
new administration. So you know, here I am now I'm the enemy because
all they've heard is bad stuff about me for years. And I knew they
were going to be trix to me. That was nothing new. I expected
that and they kind of were and I just rolled with it. I was
like, you know, let them be kids, and you know, I'm
talking about the adults and if they want to, you know, play their
little games with me, and you know, beach Eric slid them. I'm
focused on the kids. And then so we got to the first game,
and the game went so perfect that the people that showed up that I thought
it was going to be insane and there's gonna be protesters and you know,
out of control. They had so many cops there. I had people following
me and making sure I wasn't doing anything wrong, and I'm going, oh
god, this is so out of control. But the game was so good
and that fans were so perfect. It was a perfect evening. And the
game was so good that everybody forgot about the prame coach and they only focused
on the game. And we won, and nobody really paid attention to me,
which is the way it should have been from the very beginning. I
took a knee, walked out the field, and everybody goes, did he
even pray? I mean, it wasn't no big deal, because it never
was a big deal. So I went to practice on Monday and everything was
good, and my wife and I started talking about how long do we stay
here? Because I had a one way ticket to Seattle and I said,
I don't know. So we prayed about we talked about it because this is
the first time we've been able to make a decision in eight years, and
so we talked about it, we prayed, and we were like, let's
see what happens. And Tuesday morning, we got test results from my father
in law. We got a CEP back and his heart was leaking on a
repair job that they just had. He had a hangarism that got fixed,
it was leaking, and thank god, we just found out through that sat
that he's got a stage three kidney disease, which we knew we never would
have caught it. They didn'ted the CTEAM. So we were like, we
got to make a decision. You know. The whole reason we moved to
Pensacola was to take care of Dad, and that was a relatively new thing.
We moved down three years ago. And so we talked about it and
I went to practice on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning, I woke up and
I said, yeah, let's go, And so I just signed a letter
resignation. And it was the first time in eight years that it was a
decision that Denise and I was actually able to make just by ourselves the first
time in eight years, and it was wonderful. There's nothing over our heads
now, nothing at all, no school division, no law, nobody else
to make this decision except for me and her, and it was a wonderful
thing. So we moved back to Florida and we're taking car Dad. I
mean, it's amazing how long this case went on for. I mean years,
Oh my god, eight years? Are you kidding me? Eight years
and nine football season? That is insane over something so ridiculous. So was
it twenty fourteen when you first took the knee? It was it was the
season in twenty fifteen. So you've got to count out football season, a
doctor, twenty three football season. I count everything in football seasons. That's
a good way to do it. Well, you know, as we're sort
of winding down here, coach, Yeah, I have two final questions.
One is just if people I know, we have some listeners that are on
the left and you know, maybe don't come from Christian backgrounds, and they
might be skeptical that the story is you know significant, You know, who
cares if a high school football coach, you know, is able to pray
without you know, ending up in the Supreme Court, what's the big deal?
You know, we have to be able to work through these things as
a country. You know, I would argue that this has national importance,
that you know, as the title of your book goes, you're an average
joe who faced a major hurdle, an eight year court battle, just to
pray. That would be my argument. But Coach, what would you say
to people who are skeptical that this story matters, that the story is,
you know, does have national significance. What would you say to people who
take that position? Yeah, well, you know, I support and defend
their right to say those things, and I will always fight and defend that
the same. So a lot of people on whatever side they're on, they
might not agree because of the reason. You know, it just happened to
be because I was a Christian. Say it was I don't know, some
other football player that was taking a knee in protests of social injustice will hypothetically
say there was somebody doing that, Kaepernick or something. You know, if
somebody did that, when is he allowed to do that? To you know,
at the national anthem, I would say, yes, he is allowed
to do that? Is it appalling? To me, absolutely, but is
he allowed to do that? Yes, I will support and defend anybody's right
to free speech, their free exercise. I will fight for the Second Amendment.
If you lose your amendments, the rights as an American citizen, no
longer are we America. And we need to understand that that this applies to
everybody. This isn't a left a right, it's not a liberal conservative.
We need to look at as far as Americans go, all these agendas that
are going on, and you hear stupid words like the woke and this and
that, all these terms do nothing but divide us. And if you want
to take a look, read my book. And if you still want to
judge me and say I was wrong, I will eat that. I will
own that and say you know, fine, you're absolutely right. Then,
but I was supporting to defend their rights every single time to be able to
stand up and hopefully nobody will ever be faced with the having to choose between
their job and their rights as an American in any way, shape or Yeah.
That's a really helpful perspective, Coach. And my last question is what
can you tell us about the film? It's got to be wild to have,
first of all, to have the book done, but then to have
people working on a movie about your life and your story. What can you
tell us about the film. Yeah, so we started out actually before we
started writing the book. The book was actually a byproduct of the screenplay that
we started writing eight years ago when somebody I went spoke at an event and
I was telling my whole story of my background, and they were more impressed
with my background story of me and my wife and our childhood and the things
that we went through just to get to this point. And you know,
this was at the beginning of the trial, so you know, we were
zero and seven at the court and they were so impressed with the backstory.
They were like, this is like a movie. And he you know,
he was the guy that did God's Not Dead, and he said, this
definitely sounds like a movie to me. We need to do this. So
we started working on a screenplay eight years ago. And you know, with
COVID and all the stuff going on in Hollywood and strikes and everything else,
everything that's just been put on delay for so long, but we could continue
to write. So we wanted to get the story out. That's why we
wrote the book. So people could get the story out there first. And
it's not that boring story about law and the Supreme Court, because that would
be boring. That's like book nerds stuff that I would I would drive me
crazy if that's all I just about. And so so we developed a movie,
and yeah, it's right up there with Forrest Gump. It's it's the
average guy. That's just to me. I feel like Forrest Gump, I'm
a little below average to bs me. And it just goes through my entire
life and and just a great representation of the things that I've been through.
And yeah, it was so weird to watch three different actors a different level
of our ages playing somebody that for my wife and I at grade school and
then teenage, it's like twenties and then at fifty where we are today and
exposing our entire life. And we had to face some things in our past
that we have never even addressed with each other, so we had to do
some real soul searching. And it's kind of scary also. I mean,
it's cool, and it's so weird, so weird to see your life being
played out by other people, but it's kind of scary that you're going to
everybody's going to know all your deep dark secrets and there's no hiding it.
After this, it's everything's out there. Amazing. Well, the book again
is called Average Joe, One Man's Faith and the Fight to Change a Nation.
Coach Joe Kennedy, thank you so much for stopping by the show and
sharing your story with us. Absolutely, Hey, I want to thank you
for keep finding a good fight and I'm always there for you on your side.
I appreciate that so much. You have been listening to another edition of
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jaschinski, culture editor here at The Federalist.
We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom
and anxious for the fray.