Coach Me Up with Jimmy Dykes & Chris Burke

No guest this time — just Jimmy and Chris.

They open on the MLB postseason: why the expanded wild card has been good for the sport even when it ends a 95-win season in 48 hours, why the Guardians and Brewers winning their divisions is evidence the game is healthier than people think, and what makes Pete Crow-Armstrong the kind of player you can't look away from. Chris also names the thing he's actually worried about this offseason.

Then Jimmy flips to college basketball with exhibition games days away — the five teams he'd start with, why Jon Scheyer is going to be one of the faces of the sport for the next twenty years, whether Duke's close losses are a youth problem or just variance, and whether the ACC is on its way back up.

The back half is the part worth staying for. On September 8 in Knoxville, Jimmy put on an event called Raise the Bar: 2,300 men in a room, and not one of them knew who was speaking. No Tebow, no celebrity pastor. Five or six ordinary guys with stories of terminal illness, addiction, abuse, and paralysis. He walks through what happened that night and why nobody's name mattered.

That leads Chris to Acts 4 and the detail he keeps coming back to — that the only thing anyone could explain about Peter and John was that they'd been with Jesus. Plus the line from an old Astros chaplain that Jimmy now keeps on a sticky note.

They close on parenting: Chris's oldest just started at Tennessee, and he talks about what that's actually been like, the two verses he'd hand any tired parent, and why love covering a multitude of sins is the most freeing thing in the Bible for a dad who knows he missed some things. Jimmy finishes with a challenge about prayer and the difference between a wish list and the Lord's Prayer.

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM
https://onecountry.com
https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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  Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
  Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
  All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
  Contact us at [email protected]

It started with a scoreboard he couldn't read. Will Lambley was sixteen, playing in a high school football game in Owasso, Oklahoma, when he looked up and realized something was wrong. Two weeks later he couldn't see well enough to drive. A month after that, at baseball practice, he held a ball up to his eye and couldn't make out the red seams.

Six months and a long line of doctors later, a specialist told him and his parents there was a good chance he was going blind. He has Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, a rare and irreversible condition that destroys the optic nerve.

Will doesn't smooth over what came next. He tells Jimmy about the anger, the bitterness, and the part he mostly kept to himself — being sixteen and watching every friend keep their license while he learned to use a cane. And he talks about the friend who drove him home every day after school, the coach who pulled him into his office to pray instead of to game plan, and the question that turned everything: what if God can use this?

Then came a phone call from then-Arkansas head coach Chad Morris, weeks after the diagnosis, and an invitation to speak to the Razorback football team — the first talk Will ever gave, and the one that pointed him toward the University of Arkansas.

Today he's on staff with FCA Northwest Arkansas, finishing a master's degree, hosting The Rise Above Podcast, and getting married in March. He closes with the two blind spots he sees most often in men — and they have nothing to do with eyesight.

Will's podcast, The Rise Above Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rise-above-podcast/id1709253744

Learn more about Will or book him to speak:
https://www.willlambley.com

FCA Northwest Arkansas:
https://www.nwafca.org

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM
https://onecountry.com
https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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  Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
  Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
  All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
  Contact us at [email protected]

Lee Smith never missed a Bible study in eleven NFL seasons. He prayed over his kids their whole lives. And he'll tell you straight: for most of that time, he was easy prey.

The Knoxville native signed with Tennessee out of Powell High School and didn't make it to his first training camp — a DUI arrest ended it before the summer was over. He landed at Marshall, got married at the courthouse at nineteen, had two kids in college and a third by the time the Patriots drafted him in 2011. New England cut him. Buffalo claimed him. Eleven years, 149 games, and four kids later, he walked away on his own terms.

Chris opens with a genuinely great football conversation — why the tight end has more on his plate than anyone but the quarterback, and why the guys who can block and catch never leave the teams that draft them. Then it turns.

Lee talks about the wall he built as a kid to feel safe, the father who transitioned out of the NFL badly and died at forty-six, and why it took retirement before he'd finally hand over the reins. He credits a mentor who "wasn't scared to hurt my feelings," and says he's still fighting the Lee way most days.

Now he runs Triple F Elite Sports Training in Knoxville, where the deal is total family transformation — Monday night Bible studies, scholarship spots for kids with nobody at home on the night shift, and a hard conversation with every parent that starts with: your kid probably isn't playing pro sports.

Learn more about Triple F Elite Sports Training:
https://triplefsports.com

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM
https://onecountry.com
https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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  Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
  Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
  All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
  Contact us at [email protected]

Ask a sitting Division I commissioner to grade the current state of college athletics and most will dodge. Dan Butterly doesn't. The Big West commissioner tells Jimmy exactly where he thinks the enterprise stands right now — and why the uncertainty around NIL, revenue sharing, and the portal is generating anxiety for everyone in the building, not just the athletes.

Jimmy and Dan go back more than 25 years, to Big Monday broadcasts and ten o'clock Mountain Time tip-offs. In this one, Dan traces a path that started somewhere unexpected: he tried out to be drum major of the Illinois State marching band and finished fourth. That rejection sent him to the basketball office, where he became a student manager — and where, at a summer camp in 1990, he met his wife Elaine.

From there: the Missouri Valley, helping launch the Mountain West in 1999, and then becoming a first-time commissioner on May 4, 2020, hired entirely over Zoom, at the exact moment the world shut down. Dan walks through the decision to sit out fall 2020 sports, what he leaned on when the calls were impossible, and why his first question when a student-athlete leaves is always "what could we have done better?"

He also shares the verse he keeps in his social media bio — 1 Peter 3:8 — and what "be humble" actually costs a leader who has to tell people no for a living. Plus, the concussion decision he made about his own daughter's cheerleading career, and why he's convinced she now understands it.

Jimmy closes the episode solo with a reflection on God's path, rejection, and what it really means to do all things through Christ.

Dan is the 2026 recipient of the NABC Cliff Wells Appreciation Award. You can follow his weekly commissioner's column, The Bold Type, at https://bigwest.org

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM
https://onecountry.com
https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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  Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
  Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
  All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
  Contact us at [email protected]

"You're not a cooler baseball player, and then you sprinkle some Jesus dust around the clubhouse." Yan Gomes spent 13 seasons behind the plate in the big leagues, and he's got a blunt take on how identity actually works — and how most guys get it backwards.

Yan made history in 2012 as the first Brazilian-born player ever to reach Major League Baseball. He caught Game 7 of the 2016 World Series for Cleveland, won a ring with Washington in 2019, and finished his career with the Cubs. This past February, he went back to Brazil to coach their World Baseball Classic team — the first time he's ever put the coaching hat on.

But the heart of this one is what happens after. Yan and Chris both know the strange math of retiring young from a pro sport, and they get honest about it: the bubble you live in as a player, the people you never got to meet, and why Yan's word for this season of life is simply "available."

He also gets into the comparison trap that eats up Christian athletes, why his father-in-law — All-Star pitcher Atlee Hammaker — told him to stop worrying about pressure and start breathing it in, and the three verses he's built his life around: one for faith, one for family, one for friends.

Plus: Chris finally gets to hear what the UT locker room said about him, and Yan admits the Gomes family dinner table is not always a picture of Christlike serenity.

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM
https://onecountry.com
https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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  Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
  Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
  All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
  Contact us at [email protected]

Owen Strachan: You Can't Outwork Anxiety | Coach Me Up with Jimmy Dykes & Chris Burke

You can't grind your way out of anxiety. That's the message from Dr. Owen Strachan — theologian, author, and Director of One Gospel — as Jimmy and Chris open year five of the podcast with a conversation that hits everybody, believer or not.

Owen's new book, A Call to Cultivate, digs into why anxiety has skyrocketed in a world that promised technology would make life easier. He unpacks the "hamster wheel" we all step onto when we're afraid, why men so rarely admit they feel it, and the practical habits that actually move the needle instead of just making you busier.

Jimmy asks the question a lot of high performers are afraid to ask out loud: can we outwork anxiety? Chris brings it to the field — what he learned about worst-case scenarios after getting to the big leagues, and why he doesn't actually want his kids' games to go perfectly. And Owen gets brutally honest about being a dad: he can't remove a single weed from his daughter's path, and pretending otherwise is the problem.

Also in this one: growing up 5'7" in Maine, Stephen King buying his high school basketball team's uniforms, the "divine Wi-Fi," and the 32-minutes-of-heck defense he coached last season in Louisville.

Owen's book, A Call to Cultivate: Overcome Anxiety by Thriving Where God Plants You:
https://www.amazon.com/Call-Cultivate-Overcome-Anxiety-Thriving/dp/1510786597

Listen to Owen's podcast, Grace & Truth:
https://salempodcastnetwork.com/podcasts/grace-truth-with-owen-strachan

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM
https://onecountry.com
https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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  Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
  Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
  All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
  Contact us at [email protected]

David Pollack is back — and a lot has happened since his first appearance on the show. In one stretch, he was let go from ESPN after 14 years on College GameDay, and then came the news no husband is ready for: his wife Lindsay was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Today, she's cancer-free — and David says she never once cried, never once asked "why me?"

In this conversation, David opens up about getting fired ("they told me not to come back"), why the timing turned out to be God's perfect setup, and what it looked like to watch faith win over fear in his own home. He shares why he prays for his kids' resilience instead of their protection, how making decisions before choices will change your family, and the simple three-part prayer system — Reflect, Repent, Repurpose — that transformed his relationship with God.

Plus: David and Chris dig into the state of college football, the move toward a 24-team playoff, why players are opting out of playoff games for the portal, and what's happening with Georgia baseball. And a wild connection — Lindsay's doctor at Duke is the same Dr. Henry Friedman who treated Jimmy's mother-in-law.

David's new book, Every Day Counts, is available wherever books are sold: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Day-Counts-Start-Where/dp/B0FG6Z4N9L

Learn more about David or book him to speak: https://davidpollack.com

As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.

COACH ME UP TEAM 

https://onecountry.com 

https://konexial.com

Follow us on Twitter:

 https://twitter.com/CoachJimmyDykes 

https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke02

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Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc. Contact us at [email protected]

On this weeks episode of the Coach Me Up podcast, hosts Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke are joined by Gina Rouse, former college track and cross country athlete, marathon runner, and running coach. Gina has an amazing story of how God had used running in her life to deepen her walk with Jesus. As a wife, mom to 3 kids and in her 40’s, she qualified for the Olympic trials in 2020 in the marathon.

A powerful conversation on this episode of the Coach Me Up podcast.

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As always we thank our title sponsor OneCountry.com for making this podcast possible, and to Konexial.com for their continued support of our podcast.

COACH ME UP TEAM

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Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke

Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jared Mark Fincher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.

Contact us at [email protected]

On this weeks episode of the Coach Me Up podcast, host Jimmy Dykes is joined by former college basketball coach and current staff member of the Nations Of Coaches, Dale Layer.

Coach Layer speaks in detail about Gods sovereignty in all our days, and how challenging times in life, shape us and ultimately bless us if we simply stay the course. Great wisdom is shared from Coach Layer for this weeks episode.

On this weeks episode of the Coach Me Up podcast, hosts Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke are joined by Barclay Radebaugh, Coaches Ministry Director for Nations of Coaches.

After 36 years as a collegiate basketball coach, Barclay now is mentoring the next generation of coaches.

How to lead others, dealing with anxiety and worry, loving those who are hard to love, and the importance of daily time with God highlight this weeks conversation.

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As always we thank our title sponsor OneCountry.com for making this podcast possible, and to Konexial.com for their continued support of our podcast.

COACH ME UP TEAM

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Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke

Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jared Mark Fincher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.

Contact us at [email protected]