The Growing Together book discussion of How People Change kicks off this Thursday! Email the Executive Office at questions@nafwb.org today to participate.
Finding Football
Football season is here! I realize that some people will want to click off this screen to find something else to read right about now, but bear with me.
In the larger span of my life, my interest in football is relatively recent. I only began watching football very closely around 2009-2010. Before then, I would only tune in now and again for big games. I would also watch my home state South Carolina Gamecocks play whenever they weren’t a complete dumpster fire. But baseball was largely my sport of choice to watch and play from childhood through early adulthood.
Somewhere along the way, this interest dwindled. Baseball became too slow and less strategic. Average players were paid exorbitant salaries. The aftermath of the “steroid area” was also discouraging. Meanwhile, professional football came into my line of sight.
I never understood the intricacies of football, having not played it in middle or high school. But I began watching and kept watching. For so long I had thought that baseball was the “thinking man’s game.” But realizing there are more football players on the field at one time than baseball players—and they’re constantly in motion—forces you to reevaluate what we mean by thinking, strategy, and complexity. Football, it turns out, is physical and mental in ways I had never recognized before. Since then, I’ve been hooked.
Fall Liturgies
Football is a kind of liturgical experience in this country, partly due to its embeddedness in a particular season. We Americans love autumn and all it brings: cooling weather, changing leaves, pumpkin spice, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc. While some regions of the country may sometimes only experience two distinct seasons, fall is recognizable in enough places to have a feel of its own. And football is part of the rhyme and rhythm of the fall.
What’s happening in your town this Friday? A high school football game. What’s happening in your region on Saturday? College football. What’s happening on Sunday—usually within a few hours of wherever most people live? Professional football.
“Friday night lights” illuminate communities around the nation. While most who watch high school football realize the level of play often leaves something to be desired, there’s still an alma mater to watch on Saturday. And with the explosion of interest in Fantasy Football in recent years, a remarkable number of Americans tune in on Sunday to see how their players are faring.
If liturgy is partly about ordering time and space, and partly about meaning-making activity done in concert with other people, then football is most certainly a liturgical experience.
A Caution
All these things being said, I’ll be the first to register concerns about football’s tendencies.
First, too many adults spend too much time in the stands on Friday night screaming at their child’s coach for a bad play call. Sit down, please. No one came to watch you advise the coach.
Second, the recent developments surrounding NIL (name, image, likeness) in the college game are troubling. They leave me wondering about the long-term integrity of a sport where amateur players on scholarship can, for all practical terms, be bought. It’s already enough of a concern that the highest paid state employee in more than one state is the head coach of the university football team. No doubt this reflects some misplaced public values. Indeed, college football increasingly feels like the Wild West.
Finally, what can we say of the professional game? In the early days after the death of George Floyd, the National Football League did far too much to give unthinking cover to all kinds of social justice activism. While this pandering has been tamped down some as the league has adjusted to its audience--one who cares considerably less about what Progressive Twitter cares about—it lingers in places.
I have other concerns about the way football and football players are idolized in America, but suffice it to say that thoughtful fans of any sport or hobby will always have to guard against giving too much of themselves to games over God.
A Hope
So what’s the case for football? Is there a generally positive case to make for it as a beneficial activity within the framework of common grace? Does it occasion the opportunity for youngsters to learn to work together for a cause larger than themselves? Does it provide a space for communities to come together to root for something besides partisan political causes? Does it provide a venue for healthy, regulated expressions of physical aggressiveness among young men?
I suppose football has the capacity to provide these goods and others. But maybe it’s okay to not have a long list of justifications for the activities we enjoy. Perhaps it’s sufficient to say that activities like football, when played within the framework of the rules, provides human beings with an opportunity to pursue athletic excellence. And while excellence of this sort isn’t to be sought after by Christians in the same way we seek spiritual and moral excellence, vocational excellence is still within the bounds of our discipleship.
Is your son gifted at throwing a football? Is your believing neighbor a defensive coordinator for a local college’s team? Is the kid being raised by a single mom in your church’s youth group needing some adults to be there for him? Perhaps football, like other activities, provides opportunities for fulfilling vocations and ministries God has given us.
Currently Reading:
Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe.
Quote of the Week:
Christ means for his church—which is a word people, created by his word—to be led by word men. These word men, these teachers, as we’ll see, have two main tasks: to lead and to feed…An important clarification to add is that the teaching provided by the elders is not to be thought of as “the ministry” of the church. It’s not the pastors who do “the ministry” while the congregation receives it or watches it. Rather, “the ministry” is what the congregation does in the world, in every nook and cranny of the community, in the home, in the neighborhood, at work, at play, in each other’s lives, and in the lives of unbelieving friends, neighbors, and coworkers. What the pastor-elders do in their teaching and leading is “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:12).