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Blair Cash – George Fox University/Multnomah University, Retired

CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award

by Blake Timm, Great Northwest Athletic Conference Assistant Commissioner For Communications

“Jesus saves but who got the win?”
 
If anyone can come up with the definitive answer to this longtime riddle, it is Blair Cash, who has spent parts of the last four decades in careers in both sports information and Christian ministry.
 
“I knew pretty much from high school on that I was going to go on to some kind of Christian ministry or sports in some way,” Cash said. “I have been fortunate in my life to do both of those.”
 
Cash, who retired in 2018 after a short tenure at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon, will receive his Lifetime Achievement Award from the CoSIDA this June. The award caps a 27-year career as a full-time sports information director and a lifetime of example in balancing profession and faith.
 
Believed to be the only seminary-trained minister to also hold CoSIDA membership (he is ordained through the Presbyterian Church USA), Cash’s career path took him from press box to pulpit and back to the press box again. In athletics, that career path has included stops at Belhaven, Montevallo, South Alabama, Texas State, Samford, George Fox, the Northwest Conference and finally Multnomah.
 
 
Cash’s journey through athletics started on the baseball field where he was the starting second baseman for his high school team but, in his own words, was not good enough to play in college. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Cash enrolled at hometown Belhaven, where he quickly learned the joys of keeping basketball statistics and the baseball scorebook while pursuing a degree in Christian education. During the summers, Cash worked as a stringer at the Jackson Daily News to learn the art of sports writing.
 
Then came a chance meeting with CoSIDA Hall of Famer Langston Rogers.
 
“Delta State came down to play us and he told me that he was the full-time sports information director. I said, ‘You make a living doing this?’ ‘Yeah.’ He was sort of my first role model because he was the first full-time SID that I had ever met.
 
“When I was about to graduate, our athletics director Charlie Rugg said that the school had never had a full-time SID and that they needed one. Would I be interested? I went home and told my mom and dad that they were going to pay me to do this stuff — can you believe it!”
 
Cash spent one year at his alma mater, five years at Montevallo and then moved on to Division I South Alabama where the lifetime baseball fan had the chance to work with legendary major league and college coach Eddie Stanky. Even in the early 1980s, however, the grind of a Division I one-man shop weighed heavy. Feeling that he had stopped growing in his faith, Cash left sports information and entered the Reformed Theological Seminary. He was ordained in 1989.
 
“Going to seminary, I always pictured myself in a rocking chair with a pipe, a cup of hot tea, some nice quiet music playing and reading Calvin’s Institutes,” Cash laughs. “And that is literally what I did for four years the way it worked out.”
 
Cash met his wife, Debbie, while in seminary and the couple moved to pastorates in Edinburg, Texas; Natchez, Mississippi and then back to Jackson, where he served as the youth director for the church he had grown up in. Cash was never far removed from sports, though, volunteering to keep stats at Texas A&M-Pan American and Belhaven as well as serving as the official scorer for the Jackson Generals minor league team.
 
It is interesting the ways that the higher power moves us. In Jackson, it became clear that ministry wasn’t going well. Had he been anywhere else than his home church, Cash believes that he would have been fired. It was around that time that God guided Cash to the place where he would be happiest.
 
“Our pastor, David Smith, asked me that when I wake up in the morning what did I wish I could be doing,” Cash said. “I said, ‘David, I have been fighting this for 15 years. I am happiest when I am sitting over at Belhaven helping keep basketball stats or at Smith Wills Stadium keeping the book for the Jackson Generals.”
 
And thus it was that Blair Cash moved back from the pulpit to the press box.
 
After short stints at Texas State (then known as Southwest Texas State) and Samford, Cash and his family moved from the Southwest to the Northwest for a 15-year tenure at Division III George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. For his work with the Bruins, he was twice named the winner of the Jack Sareault Award, honoring the Northwest Conference’s Sports Information Director of the Year.
 
It was at George Fox where Cash built his best experiences in the profession. Those included a 2004 baseball national championship, a 2009 women’s basketball national championship and a near perfect game for Bruins’ pitcher Scott Hyde (broken up only by a hit batter who was picked off on the very next pitch).
 
“You don’t remember the scores but you remember the people you knew and the friends that you made,” Cash said. “The highlight was my 15 years at George Fox. In 27 years in the business, over half of it was at one place. It was the best job I ever had.”
 
Two years removed from full-time work, Cash now gets to enjoy his favorite parts of the profession as he helps out colleges throughout the Willamette Valley. A master baseball scorer, Cash also spent 10 years as the official scorer for the Triple-A Portland Beavers and continues to score for the short-season Hillsboro Hops.
 
While Cash never strayed far from sports during his ministry career, he also never strayed far from ministry during his sports career. For five years, Cash taught a freshman-level Bible Survey course at George Fox and continues to serve as a pulpit supply minister for the Presbyterian Church’s Cascades Presbytery. For many years, Cash also officiated over the annual chapel service at the CoSIDA Convention.
 
So about that riddle, “Jesus saves but who got the win?” Of course Cash has an official scoring decision.
 
“I would say God got the win. He came up with the plan.”