There is an old expression: "When your values are clear, decisions come easy."

What happens when situations you face are not so clear? My late high school football coach, James Wyman Ingram, whom I often write about in this column, committed what would now be called a major rules violation back in the fifties, punishable by suspension and/or termination.

Coach Ingram's touching story resounds even today about a young man he coached named Tillman Craft, who came to Lexington, South Carolina from the nearby Edmund community. He was a product of a broken home, causing him to be separated from his seven brothers and sisters in the fifth grade. Coach Ingram learned of the young man's plight and became his surrogate father.

He took in a youngster, one of eight children from the broken home. He fed him illegally, clothed him unethically, unlawfully took him to doctors for medical care and criminally helped him get an education. Shame on him for being a human being first and a football coach second.

Unable to put him up in his own small home because of young children of his own, Coach Ingram quietly let the boy move into the old Lexington gym that stood some two blocks from the coaches' home in Lexington. He fed and clothed Tillman, never asking for assistance or permission.

In return, Tillman slept at night in the gym at night, bathed in the showers there and kept the floors cleaned as his rent. Coach and Mrs. Ingram kept him in clean clothes, fed him and saw to his medical and physical needs.

Soon the authorities found out about it and forced Coach Ingram to move the youngster out of the gym. Coach found him a room over a doctor's office next to his home. Ingram continued to feed and provide for Tillman's needs. Years later, he excelled as an athlete for the Lexington Wildcats.

After graduating from high school, Tillman enrolled at the University of South Carolina, where he studied law enforcement. He graduated with honors from USC, the first in his family to go to college. He enlisted in the US Army, where he served his country and also excelled as a multiple sport standout on the armed forces athletic teams. After completing his military duty, Tillman returned to South Carolina where he entered the University of South Carolina School of Law, earning a Juris Doctorate.

He later went to work for the FBI and where he built a remarkable career as one of J. Edgar Hoover's finest. After retiring from the FBI, he opened his own security agency in Houston, Texas that named among its clients the Houston Rockets and the Houston Astros. He later retired a second time and bought an oil company.

You have to ask yourself the question: Which side of the law would a homeless fifth grade child have ended up on were it not for the love and concern of James Wymon Ingram? Coach Ingram clearly violated a rule that under today's standards should have caused him to be terminated.

When your values are clear, decisions come easy. The greater good of serving another human being, who could not help himself, is what drove his decision.

Fast forward to today. Coach Bill Buldini of St. Cloud High School in St. Cloud, Florida is in hot water over taking in a homeless player. My son, Cory, is an Assistant Football Coach and the strength and conditioning coach for the Bulldogs, in addition to his teaching duties in the science department and head weightlifting coaching activities. I am intimately aware of the facts behind the situation and was even delivering the motivational pre-game speech to the team moments after the coach had been suspended.

The athlete in question has played for this school for some three years and is considered a mid-level athlete. From all reports, he is an A-B student from what could be best described as a "difficult" home situation. No, he was not recruited for his athletic prowess and brought in to build a championship team. He did not have hundreds of colleges chasing after him to go to their university to play football. No, it is much simpler than that. His father lost his job and the family had to move north to find employment.

The young man clearly loves his high school and wanted to finish there. The coach took in this homeless kid and illegally put him up in his home, unethically fed him and shamelessly provided for him. It may now cost the team victories and the coaches' career could be blemished. Shame on this man; he is guilty of being a caring human being. He placed his values over victories.

The internet is all abuzz about the entire situation with thousands of hits, 99.9% of which are praising the coach and calling for the heads of the bureaucrats that stand in judgment of him.

The question is simple, when you stand before your maker to be judged, will you choose values over victories? Will you choose career over caring for others? Will you put your needs ahead of another's? Or will you do the right thing? Will you be bitter or better because of it?

We can only hope that those who sit in judgment on this coach will take this into consideration before they lay to rest a good man's career.