You know the call.
You’ve been in the process for weeks. You prepped. You drove to the interview. You sat across from the committee and said everything right. You left that room feeling it — this is the one. And then, a few days later, your phone rings, and someone on the other end says, “We really appreciate your time, but we’ve decided to go in a different direction.”
And the direction they went was the guy who already had the title you’ve been working toward.
I know that call. I lived that call. Multiple times.
When I was grinding to land my first head coaching job, I kept getting to the final meeting. Not the first cut. Not the phone screen. The final table. And every single time, the door closed in the same way — they went with the guy who already had head coaching experience.
Here’s the part that’ll make your jaw tight: I couldn’t get that experience without someone taking a chance on me. But no one would take a chance on me without the experience.
If that’s not a rigged game, I don’t know what is.
I remember sitting with that frustration — and that’s being polite about it. I was angry. I felt overlooked. I felt like the process was broken, like the people making decisions couldn’t see what I already knew I was capable of. I had put in the work. I had paid my dues. I had done everything right.
And I still didn’t get it.
That’s when a quote from Coach Clint Hurdle hit me in a way I wasn’t ready for. In his book, Hurdle-isms, he says:
“Life’s not fair. The only thing fair in life is a ball hit between first and third.”
Read that again.
Not a motivational poster. Not a soft landing. A hard truth from a man who spent decades in professional baseball watching fair become unfair and unfair become fate. He’s not telling you to smile through it. He’s telling you to stop measuring your situation against a standard that doesn’t exist.
Life isn’t fair. The process isn’t fair. The committee isn’t always right. The guy they picked over you isn’t always better.
None of that changes what you do next.
So what if you missed the promotion? Work hard. So what if you feel slighted? Work hard. So what if they passed on you again? Work hard. So what if you failed today? Work hard. Not because working hard guarantees the outcome you want. But because what you build in the waiting — the character, the competence, the clarity — is what makes you ready when the right door actually opens.
And that’s where Revelation 3:7 lands for me:
“What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.”
I want you to sit with both halves of that verse. Not just the open door — the shut one too.
The committee that passed on you? God already knew. The job you didn’t get? He closed it. Not because you weren’t good enough. Not because He was punishing you. But because that wasn’t the door He was opening for you.
When David Lowery handed a 27-year-old Coach O the keys to the program at Fellowship, I wasn’t the polished candidate. I wasn’t the safe hire. I was a transactional, young, inexperienced coach who was still looking at the wrong scoreboard half the time, fueled more by ego than by purpose. And somehow, he took a chance.
That door opened, and nobody could shut it.
Looking back now, the other doors had to close. Not because those programs didn’t deserve a good coach, but because I wasn’t ready to be the coach they needed. The waiting didn’t just delay my opportunity. The waiting made me for it.
Here’s what I know about the coach who’s reading this at 10 pm, frustrated, replaying the interview, wondering what he did wrong:
You may not be in the wrong profession. You may just be in the right waiting room.
God’s timing isn’t slow. It isn’t late. It isn’t unfair. It’s precise. And while you’re chomping at the bit to make the next move happen — working the phones, updating the resume, shooting your shot at every opening — don’t forget to let Him steer.
Do the work. All of it. Every day.
But hold the outcome with an open hand.
Because when He opens that door for you, I promise — nobody on any search committee is shutting it.
The standard is yours. The timing is His.
Let’s get to work.
— Coach O
Revelation 3:7 (NIV) | Clint Hurdle, Hurdle-isms
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