Bell preaches perseverance, trusting in God’s plan

Published 8:00 am Thursday, May 24, 2018

LIVE OAK, Fla. — He may have led Lafayette High School to its first state championship before starting for four years for the University of Florida.

Kerwin Bell may be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the highest rated passer in National Football League history.

But none of that came easy to the Live Oak-born and Lafayette County-raised Bell.

“Life is nothing but being able to persevere,” Bell told the crowd Monday night at the Live Oak Church of God’s “Iron sharpens Iron” event, hosted by the church’s Men’s Ministry.

“I know some people look at me sometimes and go, ‘Man, you were lucky.’ Well, I’m glad I was lucky because that means when the opportunity arose and came my way, I was prepared. When opportunity and preparation meet, that’s luck.

“There is one thing that I’m good at and that is being persistent. When I have a goal and I’m focused on that goal, there is nobody that can tell me that I’m not going to reach that goal. Nobody can keep me from reaching that goal. And if I fail along the way, so be it. It’s OK to fail. Don’t be afraid of failure.”

And for all of his luck and success, Bell has failed plenty.

Despite leading the Hornets to the 1981 state championship, Bell wasn’t offered to play college football.

“I’m not talking Florida and Georgia now,” he said. “I’m talking about every college in the nation said I wasn’t good enough to play college football. Division I, Division II, Division III. Nobody said I was good enough.”

So he walked on at Florida, where he began his career as the eighth-string quarterback on a roster with eight quarterbacks.

One year later after an injury, Bell was the Gators’ starter — a job he held for four years while earning Southeastern Conference Player of the Year honors on his way to being inducted into the UF Athletics Hall of Fame.

Still, a former Heisman Trophy candidate, Bell again wasn’t highly sought after — drafted in the seventh round of the NFL Draft by the Miami Dolphins.

Then his journey really began.

Crafting out a 13-year professional career, Bell was cut seven times by NFL teams.

It took eight years for him to realize his goal of playing in an NFL game — where he went 5-for-5 for 75 yards and a touchdown in his lone appearance, good enough for a perfect QB rating.

Along the way, he admits he was worried or felt like quitting at times. Especially when he got a call one offseason that the Edmonton Eskimos were releasing him despite Bell throwing for more than 3,000 yards the previous season and guiding the team to the Western Conference championship game of the Canadian Football League.

But Bell’s belief that God had a plan for him was realized once more.

“What happened was the Indianapolis Colts called about me being their backup quarterback,” he said. “See how great things work? If I had been under their contract, I never could have went to the Indianapolis Colts.

“I worried some, but then I realized that God has a plan for me. I got back on my feet and decided to trust what God had planned for my life.”

That call led to that lone shot to play in an NFL game.

It wasn’t the first time that hardship turned into a blessing for Bell.

A major knee injury early in his professional career led to a year away from playing and a spot as a graduate assistant on Steve Spurrier’s staff at Florida.

In turn that helped Bell realize the next plan God had in store for him: a career in coaching.

After six years as the head coach at Trinity Catholic in Ocala, Bell spent nine more years as the head coach at Jacksonville University and will begin his third season at the helm of Valdosta State this fall.

And with those coaching stops, Bell has relished the opportunity to mentor those players.

“I got into coaching because I loved playing football and I loved the competitiveness,” he said. “But then I realized there is more than just coaching on the field and winning championships. There was something very great about my job and that’s I get to mentor young men in the most important time of their lives.”