Today I had the joy of speaking with Mark Harman, a seasoned choir director in Nebraska, about the possibility of starting a “Gridiron Glee Club” at his school.

The idea of building a choir made up entirely of freshman football players is no small undertaking—but he immediately understood the “why.” And there are so many reasons why this matters.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I do believe this concept has the potential to reshape how we think about choral music. What if more schools embraced this? What if we began sharing best practices for getting football players to sing? What if this became normal?

Yesterday, I told my class that I had a Zoom call scheduled with a choir director in Nebraska. Their reaction was immediate:

“How did they hear about us in Nebraska?”

I told them about the blog—that I’ve been documenting their journey. Within seconds, they were all on their phones, scrolling, laughing, and honestly… a little stunned to see themselves as part of something bigger.

It was a strange and beautiful moment.

(The irony, of course, is that I had written up four of them the day before for being on their phones during instruction. And right on cue, our incredible freshman principal, Ms. Fey, stopped by before class to remind them—again—no phones. Perfect timing.)

Later in class, I needed to talk individually with a few students about next year’s choir placements. So I offered what I thought would be a clever incentive: ten minutes of “free time” at the end of rehearsal.

But something had shifted.

Because of the pride they felt—because they saw themselves differently—they didn’t want free time.

They wanted to keep singing.

So we did.

After weeks of slow progress, messy rehearsals, and small wins, they locked into a beautiful three-part chord at the end of You Raise Me Up. One student raised his hand and asked, “Can we do that again?”

So we did.

MNPS has provided matching neckties, and our boosters are preparing white dress shirts. The transformation is happening—not just musically, but personally.

I cannot wait for the spring concert. It’s going to be something special.

At the beginning of the year, I told them: “If we do this right, we might end up on Good Morning America.”

Can y’all share this post so that someone at GMA might notice?