Marshall

How many rejection letters from the same high school does it take for a football coach to conclude the school doesn’t want to hire you?

Jose Razo, the head football coach at unbeaten Marshall High, applied for the Barristers’ head coaching position in 2019 and 2022, only to be turned down. You’d think that the Marshall grad had gotten the message that somebody didn’t think he could be head coach.

Instead of abandoning a program he had been with since playing linebacker at there since he was 15 years old, he decided to remain as an assistant coach.

“It was never personal for me,” he said. “It was, ‘I’m going to stay and help the kids.”’

When the job opened again in 2025 and Razo interviewed for a third time he told himself, “It’s now or never.”

Razo finally received an email informing him he was being promoted to head coach after 18 years serving as an assistant. Talk about being patient. Talk about having no ego. Talk about complete loyalty to a school.

“He stuck it out for the kids and the program,” said Eagle Rock coach Andy Moran, who coached Razo at Marshall in 2005 and 2006.

Incredibly, it’s Moran and Eagle Rock standing in the way on Friday night trying to prevent Marshall from going 10-0 in the regular season. Moran, who is a mentor for Razo, has never lost to Marshall since leaving in 2012.

Razo remembers asking Moran what he should do after being turned down twice. “They didn’t give it to you because they already have you,” Moran told him.

Said Razo: “I had to prove myself to them.”

Standout quarterback Nathaniel Cadet said every day Razo, 37, passes along insights and offers inspiration to players

“Coach Razo’s loyalty is unmatched,” he said. “He’s a great role model, and his commitment to the team makes players want to play under him. He’s a good father and brings his son to the games. He got a college education, and I believe he comes from a similar background to a lot of our players, so he sets a great example for us.”

Marshall is a school that attracts students from many little communities, but the football team’s success has brought everyone together to form a large community on Friday nights.

Razo deserves a standing ovation for his commitment to the school and his players. There’s not many coaches who would have stuck around when twice told “we’re going in a different direction.”

Rejection usually makes people angry and is motivation to run away.

Razo was different. He stayed, kept teaching and coaching, and waited for his alma mater to give him a chance to lead.

What a lesson of perseverance and patience to pass along to his players.

Marshall always had its coach nearby. Someone just needed to open their eyes. Thankfully, Razo put faith in himself that someone would recognize his talents.

Win or lose on Friday, Razo has proven he deserves to be a head coach.

Marshall Faulk is an extraordinarily active 53-year-old. The first-ballot NFL Hall of Fame running back is the head football coach at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. He runs a foundation in his name that assists underprivileged youth. He works out. He plays a lot of golf.

And he has Parkinson’s disease.

Faulk revealed his diagnosis on The Caring Neurologist podcast this week, saying he noticed Parkinson’s symptoms on the golf course.

“The rigidity in my hand, just sometimes after I play a lot or I practice a lot,” he said. “I just thought it was normal nerves when putting and stuff like that. But it started to be times where I was playing, but I wasn’t in a match, and it would still do that. I was like, ‘Wow, is that normal?’”

Faulk said he was diagnosed about 18 months ago. An unfailing optimist in his social media dispatches and a fiery truth-teller when addressing his team, the former Rams Super Bowl champion described himself on the podcast as “one of the lucky ones” because he caught the disease early.

“The doctor was like, ‘You need to go get checked,’” he said. “You need to go have X, Y and Z done. You’re at an age, it’s possible; it’s likely that it’s not, but you need to go get checked.’”

He jumped on the phone to speak with other former NFL players who share the diagnosis.

“They told me about some of the symptoms and things they had that they thought [were] just football-related, that it didn’t relate to Parkinson’s in any manner,” Faulk said. “They wish, in those early stages, if they had maybe just known a little earlier, they would be in better shape.”

Former Green Bay Packers greats Brett Favre and Ahman Green currently live with Parkinson’s. So does former quarterback Bernie Kosar.

St. Louis Rams’ Marshall Faulk, left, straight-arms Lofa Tatupu of the Seattle Seahawks during a 2005 NFL game.

(Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)

Perhaps the most noteworthy sports figure to battle Parkinson’s was boxing great Muhammad Ali, who died in 2016. Faulk met Ali at a dinner and said on the podcast that he is comforted by the memory.

“He leaned over to me and he whispered, ‘You a bad boy,’” Faulk said. “And then he made a couple other comments. I was like, ‘He’s all there.’ So knowing that, I didn’t look at it like life is going to end.”

Faulk was seemingly indestructible as a player. An All-American at San Diego State, he was drafted second overall by the Indianapolis Colts in 1994 and immediately made an impact, rushing for more than 1,000 yards for the first of seven times and being named NFL rookie of the year.

Faulk was traded to the then St. Louis Rams ahead of the 1999 season and led their “Greatest Show on Turf” offense to a Super Bowl XXXIV victory in January 2000. The following season, Faulk was named NFL MVP. He transitioned to the NFL Network broadcast booth after retiring in 2005 having rushed for 12,279 yards and 100 touchdowns while also catching 767 passes for another 36 touchdowns.

He got into coaching in 2025, joining Deion Sanders’ staff at Colorado. When the opportunity arose to become the head coach at Southern, Faulk didn’t hesitate even though he already had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

“I could have stayed at Colorado. I was comfortable. But I’ve never done well in life when comfortable,” he said at his introductory news conference at Southern. “And I’m not gonna lie to you. This is uncomfortable, and I like it.”

The Jaguars, an HBCU school competing in the FCS, are 3-4 in Faulk’s first season after going 2-10 in 2025. Faulk’s messages to his players go beyond football. On Thursday he posted this on Instagram: “Protecting your game goes far beyond avoiding injury.⁠ Protect your body.⁠ Protect your mind.⁠ Protect your circle.⁠ Protect your future.

“The decisions you make away from the field can have just as much impact on your future as what happens between the lines,” he continued. “Choose the people, habits, and environments that move you closer to where you want to go.⁠ Send this to a young athlete who needs this reminder today.⁠”

Helping others is why he decided to open up about his Parkinson’s diagnosis, he told host Dr. Sandeep Thakkar on the podcast.

“I want to help as many people as I can,” he said. “What you want to do with that information is pass it on to the next generation to make sure that they have it better, that they know more. And you’re doing it to leave this world a better place than it was when I got here.”

TOPEKA, Kan. — At 94 years, the Kansas GOP’s streak of one-party dominance in Senate races is the nation’s longest because even in the toughest years, disaffected Republican-leaning voters have reliably drifted back to the party’s fold before Election Day.

But Republicans fear this year could be different, setting the race between Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton on track to be the most expensive in state history.

Hamilton, founder and senior pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, has raised significantly more money than Marshall, who is seeking his second term. Hamilton’s candidacy — and voters’ disapproval of President Trump’s handling of the economy — have upended GOP hopes of seeing Marshall coast to victory as the GOP tries to hold its Senate majority.

Kansas, which Trump carried in three presidential races, is an unlikely Senate battleground. Republicans redirected money from the North Carolina Senate race to help Marshall, and Trump flew to Kansas this week to hold a rally for him, calling Marshall “one of the greatest senators in our country”.

Stalwart GOP voters sensed a serious threat even before Trump announced his rally.

In Topeka, 81-year-old Julie Adamson has been praying about the election, but she’s also knocked on doors for Marshall, about 200 by her count. She said if Hamilton wins and Democrats control the Senate, “We’ll see, ‘impeach, impeach Trump.’”

“And nothing will get done for our country,” she added.

A formidable candidate emerged in a tough year for the GOP

Before entering the race, Hamilton already had a public profile in vote-rich suburbs through building his Kansas City-area Church of the Resurrection into a 25,000 member congregation. Churchgoing Protestants also knew him as the author of several dozen books, and he’s honed his speaking skills through weekly sermons.

Hamilton has positioned himself as a moderate and made rising prices, particularly for fuel, a key issue. During a debate Wednesday, both he and Marshall endorsed barring transgender girls and women from female sports teams. Hamilton called for local officials to make such decisions but suggested Marshall and other Republicans have been bullying transgender people by making the issue prominent in campaigns.

Marshall, a mostly retired doctor, portrays Hamilton as too liberal — radical, even — for a state where less than 26% of the 2 million registered voters are Democrats, while more than 44% are Republicans.

During Wednesday’s debate, Marshall repeatedly said a Hamilton victory would put Democrats in charge of the Senate and that Hamilton would vote with liberal Democrats.

“We need to remind everybody that control the Senate goes through Kansas,” he said.

There are signs that voter enthusiasm is with the Democrats as advance voting has surged across the U.S. compared to the last midterm. In Kansas, it has more than doubled for the same period.

Amanda Chavez Thomson, who is part owner of a small home-restoration business, said she believes change has been needed “for quite some time.”

“I think we finally have a candidate that can give us that energy and that surge that we need from people who may be on the fence or may not have voted in the past,” she said.

Fundraising emerges as a key concern for Republicans

Since the state’s August primary, Republican groups have committed to spending more than $26 million on television and digital advertising to boost Marshall, more than what they spent in his first race in 2020, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Including Marshall’s campaign, total GOP ad spending would exceed $32 million.

But Hamilton and Democratic groups together have committed to spending more than $38 million, according to AdImpact. Total ad spending — involving more than 40 groups outside the campaigns — would be about $71 million, a record for Kansas.

One of the reasons the GOP is pushing money towards Marshall may be that the incumbent has proven a lackluster fundraiser. Between the state’s August primary and Thursday, Hamilton has collected more than 10,000 contributions from Kansas residents, while raising $8 million from across the U.S., online campaign finance reports show. Marshall has about 200 contributions from Kansans while raising $905,000 total.

“People are crying out, saying, ‘Come on, Roger Marshall, speak up for us,’” Hamilton said during Wednesday night’s debate.

Marshall talking about liberal Democrats and ‘wokeness’

Marshall’s campaign and GOP groups have tried to knock any shine off Hamilton’s public image by attacking how he’s led his church and using snippets of his own sermons to portray him as too “woke.” During Trump’s rally, Marshall called Hamilton “the most radical liberal Democrat to ever get through a Senate primary in the history of Kansas.”

But such attacks aren’t resonating with at least a few disaffected Republicans. Don Hineman, a western Kansas rancher and former GOP state House majority leader, said he’s tired of “woke” being as an insult.

Hineman, who has signed on to the Republicans for Hamilton group, added that no one “was more ‘woke’ than Jesus Christ.”

Democrats have countered with television ads over Marshall’s pursuit of unpaid patient bills from the practice as an obstetrician that he gave up a decade ago. State court records online show that from 1996 through 2016, Marshall or his practice filed at least 700 debt-collection lawsuits, occasionally 10 or more a day.

The New York Times first reported the extent of the litigation. It said that in 81 cases, patients were arrested for missing court dates and quoted two experts who called Marshall’s tactics extreme. During Wednesday’s debate, Marshall said he’s faced a “gross mischaracterization” of his actions.

History and loyalty have been key assets for the Kansas GOP

Democrats can hold out hope for a Hamilton victory because the state has sizable blocs of moderate Republican and independent voters who’ve regularly swung elections to their candidates for governor and who protected abortion rights in a statewide vote in 2022.

Yet Republicans still have two key assets: Kansas’ political history and the loyalty that even unhappy Republican-leaning voters show to the party.

Not only have Democrats lost every Senate race in Kansas since 1932, no Democrat has come within 10 points of winning since 1974. In both 2014 and 2020, races considered tossups in mid-October fizzled, and Marshall’s predecessor, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, won.

Leroy Towns, a former Roberts chief of staff, said many Republicans in 2014 who considered voting against Roberts “just couldn’t do it.” Towns — who switched parties because of Trump — is backing Hamilton.

Towns believes Hamilton will win, but added, “That Republican pull at the end of an election is really, really strong in this state.”

Hanna and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. Cappelletti reported from Washington. AP writer Nicholas Ingram in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.