It's 9 p.m. and the rally is still days away. But Bill McCartney is sitting quietly in his hotel room, preparing for the biggest gathering ever of the Promise Keepers, the group he founded seven years ago. A day full of meetings has caused his 6-ft. 1-in., 200-lb. frame to slump, turned his trademark baritone voice into a whisper and probably added a touch more gray to his short, salt-and-pepper hair. But his eyes, peering out from behind steel-rimmed tinted glasses, still possess an uncanny intensity as he meditates on the first chapter of Paul's Letter to the Colossians, the Scripture text for his address to the hundreds of thousands he expects in Washington's National Mall this Saturday. Even in his exhaustion, he feels the resonance of the 24th verse: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake."
McCartney has managed to touch the hearts of men who don't consider themselves religious at all--the way a coach can get the toughest jocks to huddle for prayer. Of course, McCartney was born to be a coach. "From when I was little, I never saw myself doing anything else," McCartney says. "I knew I was gonna be a coach all my life." After graduating from college, he plunged straight into coaching football, and it was during his tenure as a defensive coordinator at the University of Michigan that he and his wife Lyndi, who were originally Roman Catholic, became more fervent Christians, inspired by the Protestant evangelical organization Campus Crusade for Christ.
McCartney and his family moved in 1982 to Boulder, where he transformed the hapless Buffaloes of the University of Colorado. First he had to struggle through some miserable losing seasons (including a 1-10 record in 1984) and criticism that he favored Christian players over less devout teammates. Gradually, though, McCartney put together a winning streak, leading to a spectacular 1989 season that earned him five national Coach of the Year honors and culminated in beating Notre Dame at the Orange Bowl in 1991. In that year he signed a dream 15-year contract with Colorado, worth $400,000 in a good year, plus bonuses.
But his life as the father of four children suffered as he pursued football. In 1989 his only daughter, 20-year-old Kristyn, became the out-of-wedlock mother to the child of Colorado football star Sal Aunese, a notorious campus playboy. (In 1993 she gave birth to a son fathered by another of McCartney's varsity players.) Meanwhile, his wife Lyndi drifted into depression as her children grew up and moved out and her husband remained on the road.
It was in this period McCartney started Promise Keepers. In the spring of 1990 he and his friend Dave Wardell, an official of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, were preparing to travel from Boulder to Pueblo when McCartney was struck by a vision of stadiums filled with men willing to become deeply committed Christians. "He jumped in the car and said, 'Let's pray,'" says Wardell. "We prayed for three and a half hours. This guy is strong. He's stronger than bear's breath."