@brandonspeck

Tyson Lee spent his football career trying to figure out how to get into opposing defenses.

His post-football career is spent finding ways into schools to spread the Christian message he holds atop the football honors he wracked up as a quarterback at Columbus, Itawamba CC and Mississippi State.

Lee is back in Starkville, working with the MSU Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He works on campus and travels high school and junior high campuses in Oktibbeha and Lowndes Counties – maybe adding Winston next year.

“I help with FCA Huddles, mentor any way I can,” Lee said from June’s Tupelo (Miss.) Christian All-Star Football Camp.

Football is in the rear view, but as he showed at TCPS, his game is still a big part of who he is. So is his unashamed faith. And so is FCA, which despite more and more opposition to the Christian message in schools, has become a gateway.

“Now FCA has favor to get into a lot of the schools, so it’s so big we can take Christ into the schools,” Lee said, “get in these kids when they’re young, so when they get out of college, they’ve been developed, they’ve been impacted. Hopefully they’re serving the Lord by then.”

Lee had a remarkable career. At ICC, he became the first football student-athlete in school history to earn academic all-America and first-team all-America recognition in the same season. At Mississippi State, he made an immediate impact, starting eight games his first year on campus as a junior. He threw for a career 2,963 yards and 11 touchdowns.

His new job as an FCA staff representative is to aid anyone who wants to be part of FCA with the resources they need to have an active club at their particular school.

“We use athletics as a tool to take Christ in,” Lee said. “So we want to grab coaches, grab teachers, grab anybody that wants to be a part of our FCAs.”