By golly, I keep finding vindication.
No less a source than the august Christian Century featured not one, but two blogs on the subject of football this week, specifically on the Richie Incognito issue (addressed in this blog here). First, one Arthur Remillard, a religious studies professor at a school in Pennsylvania, took up the issue, decrying a culture of "muscle men" in the NFL (placing Incognito in that category) and lamenting the lack of a genuine "warrior culture" in said league, by means of some "wait, what?" exegesis on a verse from 2 Samuel and a call for a culture that "prizes achievement and teamwork but not at the expense of human dignity." Today Carol Howard Merritt took up the theme, questioning how a supposed "warrior culture" dedicated to "the protection of the weak and the advancement of all righteous causes" really fits into football at all, and questioning how the violence of the sport can be thought of as redemptive or palliative at all.
I wonder if the two might be talking past each other a little bit. To be clear, Remillard is criticizing Incognito's apparent behavior towards Jonathan Martin. Still, I have to admit I find the gorefest of 2 Samuel 2 an odd place to appeal for a cure for a "muscle-headed" locker room culture. Who exactly are the "weak" in football -- I mean, in the game itself? Is this some back-door way of calling Peyton Manning or Tom Brady a sissy? I can't quite see how the concept fits into the on-field nature of football.
Remillard also cites a British publication (nineteenth-century vintage? I have not been able to find it) which speaks for the "muscular Christianity" of that era in claiming that "a man's body is given to him to be trained and brought into submission, and then used for the protection of the weak." Now the initial clause there seems to be a variant reading of Paul's claim in 2 Corinthians 9:27 that "I punish my body and enslave it," but Paul does so not for any "protection of the weak," but "so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified" (NRSV) in an extension of the running metaphor employed in previous verses. (Paul also notes that "athletes exercise self-control in all things," an assertion that looks downright comical in light of the decided lack of self-control found among numerous athletes on road trips, or where PEDs are concerned.) Paul has very different ideas about "the weak" in this passage than his nineteenth-century "muscular Christianity" appropriators seem to understand.
Off the field, who is "weak" in connection to football is laceratingly clear at times, and their lack of protectors is largely ignored or brushed aside.
December 1, tomorrow as I write this, is the one-year anniversary of a murder-suicide involving an NFL player. While the event drew a great deal of media coverage at the time, one won't necessarily hear much about it aside from this uneven ESPN article, which makes clear that the Kansas City Chiefs, the team for which Jovan Belcher played at the time he killed his pregnant girlfriend and then himself, are not entertaining thoughts about the event at all. Indeed, the team has imposed an omertà on the event that would make the Mafia blush with shame. Kasandra Perkins is not allowed to register on the radar of the Chiefs.
I guess, in the broader, off-field scope of the game, Kasandra Perkins would count as "the weak."
Merritt cannot separate the violence inherent in the game on the field from the violence of the culture that consumes the game as entertainment, and points to the lack of celebration of those who practice peace. This is an eminently good and even pastoral concern. The historian in me (or perhaps it's the hymnologist in me) can't help but observe that English-speaking Christianity has a long way to go to undo a couple of centuries' worth of damage done by its popular theology, i.e. its hymnody.
Consider this list:
"Am I a soldier of the cross?'
"Arm these thy soldiers, mighty Lord"
"God is keeping his soldiers fighting" (an old Salvation Army hymn)
"Onward, Christian soldiers"
"Soldiers of Christ, arise"
"We are soldiers of Christ"
That is an incredibly selective list, limited by the presence of the world "soldier" or some variant thereof (and only a limited selection of those hymns). Because Net Hymnal doesn't include it, the list doesn't cite "Soldiers of Christ, in truth arrayed," the "seminary hymn" of my previous school of record that I don't talk about anymore. And that list doesn't include such gems as the World War I-vintage "Over the top for Jesus," apparently seeking to generate an image of Christ vaulting out of some trench in France.
My point (and I do have one) is that the Christian church -- mainline, evangelical, you name it -- has been marinating in hymns bristling with warfare imagery for quite a long time, and such imagery as reinforced over and over again for decades or even centuries is going to color the way Christians look at the culture around them. Football plays into that warfare mindset in a way no other sport can match. Consult George Carlin's classic baseball-vs.-football routine for a quick reminder of how that works. "Aerial assault." "Bomb." "Field general." Linemen struggle in "the trenches." It was pretty much inevitable that a church that has a long track record of "Onward, Christian soldiers" is going to be attracted to the warlike cadences of football, and it's not going to stop just because a few mainline denominations stop singing those hymns.
I doubt Remillard and Merritt are really as far apart as they seem; nobody is nominating Richie Incognito as Christian Century's Man of the Year. What I fear is that the church has eyes that are so colored with our own fascinations (present or past) with the imagery of battle that it may not be able to see with clarity the inherent problems with a sport that is both so intrinsically violent and so proud of its violence. We may be so caught inside our own history that we cannot find the voice or the words to speak to the degradations practiced by player upon player, or visited upon players in their retirement years as brains fail and lives unravel, or upon spouses or girlfriends or children suffering physically or emotionally. We just may not be able to find a place to stand to speak with integrity when confronted by the Richie Incognitos or Jovan Belchers or Kasandra Perkinses or Junior Seaus that trouble our religion-like fandom. And we may end up mute in the face of a thing that looks awfully, tragically like injustice.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
The Pope agrees with me!
If you thought it was a dubious enterprise for me to start blogging about sports and faith, the joke's on you! I just got a big-time ally on my side! No less than Pope Francis agrees with me!
No, not exactly, but he did make an interesting statement on the subject of athletes and exploitation to a group of officials connected with the Olympics. It was not at all inconsistent with the public profile the Pope has projected so far, but perhaps issued in a venue to which some might not pay attention.
What I find interesting (and sympathetic) about the statement is that Pope Francis kept his focus on the potential for exploitation of the individual athlete in the name of profit, to state it simply. The Olympics "movement" was an interesting realm into which to venture, as one in which high-stakes commercialization and potential profit for individual performers in the form of endorsement deals is a recent development, in my lifetime at least (I'm not that old). Given the tone of his remarks, I'd imagine the Pope could have a field day with the system of intercollegiate athletics in the United States (just think how many people are attending or watching college football games as I write this on a Saturday afternoon) and its labyrinthine rules about financial benefits mostly being denied to the athletes (once described as "student-athletes," mirroring the "amateur ideal" that used to rule the Olympic movement, in theory) participating in sports that move dumpster-loads of money around. Talk about a system that "reduces athletes to mere trading material," to borrow Francis's words.
This is not a plea for paying college athletes. I have a dumpster-load of doubts that any such system can be achieved with anything like equanimity and justice in the divine sense. For example, somehow I doubt that the field hockey team, even a national-championship level team, is going to benefit much from a system of paying collegiate athletes. American systems of remuneration just don't work that way. While athletes may well be easily exploited by large financial systems in just about any sport (read this long-form piece on the financial travails that beset most boxers to get an idea of such systems at their worst, abetted by the athletes' own failings in that case), athletes are also capable in some cases of playing the system. What are the chances that Johnny Manziel, just to take one example, will be at all content with receiving the same stipend as a reserve point guard on Texas A&M's women's basketball team? I'm not seeing it. From there you get into quagmire pretty quickly. And if Alex Rodriguez (and his agent, Satan) aren't engaging in a massive game of playing the system right now, you can eat my hat.
Of course, the athletes are not the only potential victims of exploitation in any system. The previous post on this blog delved into the machinations behind the Atlanta Braves' sudden announcement of a move to suburban Cobb County (Part 2 of that post is still going to come). Stadiums of course don't build themselves, and at least for now Cobb County is apparently on the hook for about two-thirds of the projected costs of construction. While I'd be deeply pleased if those Cobb County politicians who ran this deal to get the team were going to reach into their own pockets to pay the county share, I'm not holding my breath. Somebody is going to pay for it, whether it be Cobb residents in the form of whatever taxes are imposed, or visitors to the area in the form of hotel taxes or meal taxes. I suppose it is possible that Cobb is the ultimate suburban paradise with no poor people, no hunger, no struggling schools and underpaid teachers and such, but I've never heard anybody describe it that way. Somebody is going to get stuck with it.
Indeed the whole system of remunerated athletics depends on somebody being willingly stuck with it. Collegiate athletes at least get the chance at a (quite expensive these days) college education as part of their deal, though an awful lot of them seem to find that unimportant. Pro athletes take on a lifetime of pain in many cases as the payoff for their years of participation (and I'm not even talking about the CTE issue in football); playing any sport at a high level extracts a toll on even the healthiest of athletes. Fans get, I suppose, an outlet for emotional investment, a sense of tribal identity, a steady diet of unscripted drama with the ending unknown, or an experience potentially shareable by the whole family, among other things. If either party decides the price is too high, they do have the option of walking away, or (as fans) not walking up in the first place, i.e. not buying tickets or merchandise or watching games. (Fans of the Tampa Bay Rays excel at the former.)
Still, I applaud Pope Francis for recognizing the impact of commercialized sport and its moral implications in society. Perhaps I'll talk to him about a guest blog post in the future.
No, not exactly, but he did make an interesting statement on the subject of athletes and exploitation to a group of officials connected with the Olympics. It was not at all inconsistent with the public profile the Pope has projected so far, but perhaps issued in a venue to which some might not pay attention.
What I find interesting (and sympathetic) about the statement is that Pope Francis kept his focus on the potential for exploitation of the individual athlete in the name of profit, to state it simply. The Olympics "movement" was an interesting realm into which to venture, as one in which high-stakes commercialization and potential profit for individual performers in the form of endorsement deals is a recent development, in my lifetime at least (I'm not that old). Given the tone of his remarks, I'd imagine the Pope could have a field day with the system of intercollegiate athletics in the United States (just think how many people are attending or watching college football games as I write this on a Saturday afternoon) and its labyrinthine rules about financial benefits mostly being denied to the athletes (once described as "student-athletes," mirroring the "amateur ideal" that used to rule the Olympic movement, in theory) participating in sports that move dumpster-loads of money around. Talk about a system that "reduces athletes to mere trading material," to borrow Francis's words.
This is not a plea for paying college athletes. I have a dumpster-load of doubts that any such system can be achieved with anything like equanimity and justice in the divine sense. For example, somehow I doubt that the field hockey team, even a national-championship level team, is going to benefit much from a system of paying collegiate athletes. American systems of remuneration just don't work that way. While athletes may well be easily exploited by large financial systems in just about any sport (read this long-form piece on the financial travails that beset most boxers to get an idea of such systems at their worst, abetted by the athletes' own failings in that case), athletes are also capable in some cases of playing the system. What are the chances that Johnny Manziel, just to take one example, will be at all content with receiving the same stipend as a reserve point guard on Texas A&M's women's basketball team? I'm not seeing it. From there you get into quagmire pretty quickly. And if Alex Rodriguez (and his agent, Satan) aren't engaging in a massive game of playing the system right now, you can eat my hat.
Of course, the athletes are not the only potential victims of exploitation in any system. The previous post on this blog delved into the machinations behind the Atlanta Braves' sudden announcement of a move to suburban Cobb County (Part 2 of that post is still going to come). Stadiums of course don't build themselves, and at least for now Cobb County is apparently on the hook for about two-thirds of the projected costs of construction. While I'd be deeply pleased if those Cobb County politicians who ran this deal to get the team were going to reach into their own pockets to pay the county share, I'm not holding my breath. Somebody is going to pay for it, whether it be Cobb residents in the form of whatever taxes are imposed, or visitors to the area in the form of hotel taxes or meal taxes. I suppose it is possible that Cobb is the ultimate suburban paradise with no poor people, no hunger, no struggling schools and underpaid teachers and such, but I've never heard anybody describe it that way. Somebody is going to get stuck with it.
Indeed the whole system of remunerated athletics depends on somebody being willingly stuck with it. Collegiate athletes at least get the chance at a (quite expensive these days) college education as part of their deal, though an awful lot of them seem to find that unimportant. Pro athletes take on a lifetime of pain in many cases as the payoff for their years of participation (and I'm not even talking about the CTE issue in football); playing any sport at a high level extracts a toll on even the healthiest of athletes. Fans get, I suppose, an outlet for emotional investment, a sense of tribal identity, a steady diet of unscripted drama with the ending unknown, or an experience potentially shareable by the whole family, among other things. If either party decides the price is too high, they do have the option of walking away, or (as fans) not walking up in the first place, i.e. not buying tickets or merchandise or watching games. (Fans of the Tampa Bay Rays excel at the former.)
Still, I applaud Pope Francis for recognizing the impact of commercialized sport and its moral implications in society. Perhaps I'll talk to him about a guest blog post in the future.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Stadiums, race codes, and cold hard cash (Part I)
For a blog that isn't going to get out of the double digits in readership any time soon, the major sports sure do seem to be competing very hard to get included in it.
It isn't as if the NFL has done anything to relinquish its hold on the questionable-ethics crown in American sport. The Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin story continues to splay out in ugly fashion. A random drug bust or two also broke out during the week. One player got caught on video engaging in Asian stereotyping, which couldn't feel good to the NFL after the preseason outcry over video of a different player dropping n-bombs. While the deaths of two different high school players due directly to injuries sustained on the football field are not strictly NFL stories, and should not be objectified as such, you can bet the NFL was unhappy to see them happen.
However, basketball jumped into the fray, and in a way guaranteed to cause a fluster among commentators. An NBA player took to Twitter to drop some of his own n-bombs, and announced to the world that such n-bombs would continue as a part of the "culture" (shades of Incognito/Martin, or shades of hip-hop?) that made it o.k. And hockey made its bid to get included as well, with an NHL player offering up the kind of twisted logic -- in which the thuggery of the NHL with its more-or-less endemic brawls on the ice somehow makes the sport safer (one wonders what Derek Boogaard would say, were he still around to address the issue) -- that reminds you the NHL has its own head-trauma issues.
But one of the main sub-motivations of trying to develop a blog on this subject is the conviction that sports are not extraordinary in their plunges into the depths of human failure. They are, at their worst as well as at their best, reflections of our own worst and best, and sometimes projections of our worst and best. Sometimes our own failings actually bleed over into how sports are run. While college football fandom would be an easy target, and I'm sure will eventually make its way into this blog, this is the week for me to prove I won't spare my favorite sport. Thank you, Atlanta Braves, for the chance to prove that.
In case you didn't hear, the Braves managed to let loose a surprise announcement that at the end of their current lease at Turner Field in the city of Atlanta, the team would be decamping to the suburbs, in a stadium in the northwest suburbs of Cobb County.
If you're thinking "hey, wait, Turner Field isn't that old, is it?" you are correct. Formerly the principal stadium for the 1996 Olympics, Turner Field isn't as old as most of my seminary classmates. Apparently, however, the Braves look at Turner Field and see an inaccessible dump: they claim that the facility needs something like $250 million in improvements, is inaccessible to public transportation, and doesn't have enough parking. Oddly, though, the cost of a new field will be between two and three times that amount (though Cobb County is apparently going to foot the bulk of that), will be completely inaccessible to public transportation*, and will have even less parking.
*more on this later
There is not much around Turner Field; that much is true. The area has not developed. How much the city of Atlanta is to blame I will leave for others to decide. But one unavoidable element of the story involves folks who aren't going to be able to go to games out in Cobb County quite so easily, undevelopment around Turner Field or no.
Turner Field isn't quite on top of a train stop for MARTA, the city's metro system, but there is one about a mile's walk away. There are fans, evidently, for whom that walk isn't a big deal, high crime potential or not. However, those fans won't have that option with the new location, because the MARTA system doesn't reach to Cobb County.
This is by design. Cobb County's design, not MARTA's.
Indeed, one of the apparent conditions for Cobb County to pursue this stadium deal (at least in the eyes of a certain party chairman in Cobb County) was that the move wouldn't be accompanied by a MARTA expansion.
This is Atlanta we're talking about, or particularly the city/suburbs divide. The race issue was going to come up.
Anyway, to the point of this blog:
1) The Braves are a business. They apparently believe that they will better serve their fan base by moving to this suburban location to the north, calculating that they'll gain enough to offset any loss of fans from, frankly, any other part of the Atlanta area -- not just the city proper. No sane person is going to drive from, say, Jonesboro to a game in Cobb County. If they want to make that calculation, that's their prerogative, and moral/ethical judgments don't necessarily apply.
2) What Cobb County is thinking, I'm not sure. The last linked article notes that the same pol is adamant that Cobb County citizens won't pay higher taxes to fund this new stadium.
Hmm. So, where is that $400+ million going to come from? Just how does Cobb County plan to pay for this? Oh, so they're pledging tax revenues after all, you say? Should be fun to see how this plays out.
As always this is going to raise the question of just what is going to get de-funded to pay that amount? Or how much are Cobb County taxes going up? Or do they resort to the old trick of getting others to pay for it, in the form of fees on things like hotel stays or restaurants? I have no plans to stay in a hotel in Cobb County any time soon, at least.
3) Here is where I'm going to get agitated: this stadium plan and location is going to be an environmental nightmare. And that, in this world, is damned immoral.
At the juncture of two of the busiest freeways around one of the highest-traffic cities there is, this is going to introduce a heck of a lot more traffic. Just what the world needs, more emissions. Is the memo not getting through? POLLUTION IS BAD. I don't care whether you believe in human-influenced climate change or not (which at this point is about like saying you don't believe in gravity or basic physics), POLLUTION IS BAD. So Cobb County, already a traffic nightmare (and believe me, they aren't all driving Priuses or electric cars), is going to add even more traffic to the mix eighty-one times a year. Any way we can just build a dome over the county so they can keep all that extra pollution to themselves?
As if the American addiction to cars (and frequently large and inefficient ones at that) weren't bad enough in emission terms, now we're just going to add to it. What kind of psycho handles traffic planning in Cobb County? The 75/285 area is a nasty, congested mess under the best of circumstances; how do you possibly plan to avoid making traffic snarls (and the emission that comes with them) any less problematic?
This is thoroughly justifiable from the point of view of a faith that emphasizes the need for humans to be good and just stewards of creation. (And please don't embarrass yourself by bringing up the burn-it-up drivel of the likes of Mark Driscoll; you'll tell me nothing about a genuinely faithful few of creation stewardship, and nothing good about yourself.) Apparently the regional dysfunction between Atlanta and its suburbs (whether you chalk it up to old attitudes that never die or not) is going to lead to a fairly profane ecological cock-up. When any other sane sports franchise wants to get near rapid transit, the Braves are running away from it (and for the Cobb-and-rob crowd among you, I've taken the train to games in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and I'm still alive, so shove it). And yes, for this, they can justifiably be held morally responsible as much as Cobb County.
(PART 1: PART 2 TO COME)
It isn't as if the NFL has done anything to relinquish its hold on the questionable-ethics crown in American sport. The Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin story continues to splay out in ugly fashion. A random drug bust or two also broke out during the week. One player got caught on video engaging in Asian stereotyping, which couldn't feel good to the NFL after the preseason outcry over video of a different player dropping n-bombs. While the deaths of two different high school players due directly to injuries sustained on the football field are not strictly NFL stories, and should not be objectified as such, you can bet the NFL was unhappy to see them happen.
However, basketball jumped into the fray, and in a way guaranteed to cause a fluster among commentators. An NBA player took to Twitter to drop some of his own n-bombs, and announced to the world that such n-bombs would continue as a part of the "culture" (shades of Incognito/Martin, or shades of hip-hop?) that made it o.k. And hockey made its bid to get included as well, with an NHL player offering up the kind of twisted logic -- in which the thuggery of the NHL with its more-or-less endemic brawls on the ice somehow makes the sport safer (one wonders what Derek Boogaard would say, were he still around to address the issue) -- that reminds you the NHL has its own head-trauma issues.
But one of the main sub-motivations of trying to develop a blog on this subject is the conviction that sports are not extraordinary in their plunges into the depths of human failure. They are, at their worst as well as at their best, reflections of our own worst and best, and sometimes projections of our worst and best. Sometimes our own failings actually bleed over into how sports are run. While college football fandom would be an easy target, and I'm sure will eventually make its way into this blog, this is the week for me to prove I won't spare my favorite sport. Thank you, Atlanta Braves, for the chance to prove that.
In case you didn't hear, the Braves managed to let loose a surprise announcement that at the end of their current lease at Turner Field in the city of Atlanta, the team would be decamping to the suburbs, in a stadium in the northwest suburbs of Cobb County.
If you're thinking "hey, wait, Turner Field isn't that old, is it?" you are correct. Formerly the principal stadium for the 1996 Olympics, Turner Field isn't as old as most of my seminary classmates. Apparently, however, the Braves look at Turner Field and see an inaccessible dump: they claim that the facility needs something like $250 million in improvements, is inaccessible to public transportation, and doesn't have enough parking. Oddly, though, the cost of a new field will be between two and three times that amount (though Cobb County is apparently going to foot the bulk of that), will be completely inaccessible to public transportation*, and will have even less parking.
There is not much around Turner Field; that much is true. The area has not developed. How much the city of Atlanta is to blame I will leave for others to decide. But one unavoidable element of the story involves folks who aren't going to be able to go to games out in Cobb County quite so easily, undevelopment around Turner Field or no.
Turner Field isn't quite on top of a train stop for MARTA, the city's metro system, but there is one about a mile's walk away. There are fans, evidently, for whom that walk isn't a big deal, high crime potential or not. However, those fans won't have that option with the new location, because the MARTA system doesn't reach to Cobb County.
This is by design. Cobb County's design, not MARTA's.
Indeed, one of the apparent conditions for Cobb County to pursue this stadium deal (at least in the eyes of a certain party chairman in Cobb County) was that the move wouldn't be accompanied by a MARTA expansion.
This is Atlanta we're talking about, or particularly the city/suburbs divide. The race issue was going to come up.
Anyway, to the point of this blog:
1) The Braves are a business. They apparently believe that they will better serve their fan base by moving to this suburban location to the north, calculating that they'll gain enough to offset any loss of fans from, frankly, any other part of the Atlanta area -- not just the city proper. No sane person is going to drive from, say, Jonesboro to a game in Cobb County. If they want to make that calculation, that's their prerogative, and moral/ethical judgments don't necessarily apply.
2) What Cobb County is thinking, I'm not sure. The last linked article notes that the same pol is adamant that Cobb County citizens won't pay higher taxes to fund this new stadium.
Hmm. So, where is that $400+ million going to come from? Just how does Cobb County plan to pay for this? Oh, so they're pledging tax revenues after all, you say? Should be fun to see how this plays out.
As always this is going to raise the question of just what is going to get de-funded to pay that amount? Or how much are Cobb County taxes going up? Or do they resort to the old trick of getting others to pay for it, in the form of fees on things like hotel stays or restaurants? I have no plans to stay in a hotel in Cobb County any time soon, at least.
3) Here is where I'm going to get agitated: this stadium plan and location is going to be an environmental nightmare. And that, in this world, is damned immoral.
At the juncture of two of the busiest freeways around one of the highest-traffic cities there is, this is going to introduce a heck of a lot more traffic. Just what the world needs, more emissions. Is the memo not getting through? POLLUTION IS BAD. I don't care whether you believe in human-influenced climate change or not (which at this point is about like saying you don't believe in gravity or basic physics), POLLUTION IS BAD. So Cobb County, already a traffic nightmare (and believe me, they aren't all driving Priuses or electric cars), is going to add even more traffic to the mix eighty-one times a year. Any way we can just build a dome over the county so they can keep all that extra pollution to themselves?
As if the American addiction to cars (and frequently large and inefficient ones at that) weren't bad enough in emission terms, now we're just going to add to it. What kind of psycho handles traffic planning in Cobb County? The 75/285 area is a nasty, congested mess under the best of circumstances; how do you possibly plan to avoid making traffic snarls (and the emission that comes with them) any less problematic?
This is thoroughly justifiable from the point of view of a faith that emphasizes the need for humans to be good and just stewards of creation. (And please don't embarrass yourself by bringing up the burn-it-up drivel of the likes of Mark Driscoll; you'll tell me nothing about a genuinely faithful few of creation stewardship, and nothing good about yourself.) Apparently the regional dysfunction between Atlanta and its suburbs (whether you chalk it up to old attitudes that never die or not) is going to lead to a fairly profane ecological cock-up. When any other sane sports franchise wants to get near rapid transit, the Braves are running away from it (and for the Cobb-and-rob crowd among you, I've taken the train to games in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and I'm still alive, so shove it). And yes, for this, they can justifiably be held morally responsible as much as Cobb County.
(PART 1: PART 2 TO COME)
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Lament for Ray Easterling*
Just killing time with our eyes to the skies
Waiting on Science our Savior
--Chagall Guevara, "Murder In the Big House"
You knew, if you decided to play football extensively, your body was going to pay a price.
The examples were out there. Earl Campbell, once the most punishing running back in the league, barely able to walk. But it wasn't as though football was the only sport that exacted a physical toll on its participants. Baseball pitchers who could no longer lift the pitching arm to comb their hair, basketball players with incredibly painful knees, hockey players with more dental work than teeth. But you knew, if you decided to play football, you would pay a physical price.
Nobody told you that you'd lose your mind, or could.
Of course, on one level, you had already lost your mind, just to play the game, or perhaps given it away. Don't think. React.
Don't ask questions. Just get along. (Ask Jonathan Martin.)
Don't be too smart. Fit in. (Ask Chris Kluwe.)
Again, nothing you couldn't experience in any locker room in any sport. Possibly taken to greater extremes in the football locker room, if only because of the sheer numbers compared to other sports, but unique only in degree, not kind.
But nobody told you that you'd lose your mind.
That you would lose your mind and your quarterback, your fellow cornerback or linebacker or center, wouldn't. How is this fair? You worked as hard as they did. Harder, even. You were the one who wasn't quite as fast or wasn't quite as big, so you had to hit extra hard, hustle extra hard, play with even more reckless abandon. You had to go twice as hard to be half as noticed. And now, this, while that other guy keeps making even more money by being on TV and talking about football.
Nobody told you that the family you never got to know while you were playing would end up being strangers to you before you got to see the children grow up. Nobody told you that, even as your fingers were growing too gnarled to tie your shoelaces, you'd also forget why you were putting on your shoes in the first place.
You are asked if, knowing what you know now (when you can remember), if you would do it all again. You say yes. Of course you say yes. You do remember the cheers, the crowds, the thrill. That much you remember. That is the only thing that is real anymore. All else is a fog, a shade that comes and goes, as fixed as a mist and as graspable as a shadow. Good days, bad days.
What do we owe these who lost their lives, if only slowly, by timed-release manslaughter?
What do we owe the Tony Dorsetts and Mark Dupers, who now know that their own brains are also corrupted in like manner, whose own memories are uncertain and being lost, who forget where they're driving to and how to get there mid-trip? Surely we owe more than a GPS and a suicide hotline?
Maybe, at some point, we shut the hell up. The word is used here very theologically; the hell of self-justification, the hell of denial, the hell of saying "it used to be worse in Teddy Roosevelt's day," the hell of thinking it's only a few (as if one isn't too many), the hell of thinking "I am only one person so it doesn't really matter." Building more and more walls between us and the God we claim to worship so that God can't see us adoring these other gods, doing our damnedest to avoid thinking about it that way, or thinking of how many of you have been consumed so far.
Maybe we quit uttering blithe nonsense about how technology will fix the problem, newer and better helmets will save the day, and we can go on in our mindless adoration of the violence and flash without having to think about this. No technology will save you now. Technology might make clear what happened to you, and might rescue you just a little for your loved ones, who can at least take whatever meager solace comes from knowing that that wasn't really you. You are gone, beyond the salvation of any new helmet, your memory paid off by a league following the moral compass of Big Tobacco (deny deny deny, pay off what you can't deny).
Maybe we utter a Prayer of Confession. Merciful God, we have sinned against you and your children in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and done, and done and done and done and continue to do… . We keep on consuming it, if not in the stadium itself then at home in front of the wide-screen idol, fortified in our rituals with buckets of junk food and beer. We don't believe we can be redeemed, and we don't want to be even if we can.
But maybe, at some point, if we have some humanity about us, for you and your fifty-some brothers we know lost for the entertainment of others . . . maybe we mourn.
*Note: Ray Easterling played for the Falcons back in the '70s, when I was growing up in middle Georgia; he lived most of his life in Richmond, where I live now, until killing himself in 2012. That's why his name was chosen for this lament; any number of other names could have been used, and no particular biographical claim is intended.
Waiting on Science our Savior
--Chagall Guevara, "Murder In the Big House"
You knew, if you decided to play football extensively, your body was going to pay a price.
The examples were out there. Earl Campbell, once the most punishing running back in the league, barely able to walk. But it wasn't as though football was the only sport that exacted a physical toll on its participants. Baseball pitchers who could no longer lift the pitching arm to comb their hair, basketball players with incredibly painful knees, hockey players with more dental work than teeth. But you knew, if you decided to play football, you would pay a physical price.
Nobody told you that you'd lose your mind, or could.
Of course, on one level, you had already lost your mind, just to play the game, or perhaps given it away. Don't think. React.
Don't ask questions. Just get along. (Ask Jonathan Martin.)
Don't be too smart. Fit in. (Ask Chris Kluwe.)
Again, nothing you couldn't experience in any locker room in any sport. Possibly taken to greater extremes in the football locker room, if only because of the sheer numbers compared to other sports, but unique only in degree, not kind.
But nobody told you that you'd lose your mind.
That you would lose your mind and your quarterback, your fellow cornerback or linebacker or center, wouldn't. How is this fair? You worked as hard as they did. Harder, even. You were the one who wasn't quite as fast or wasn't quite as big, so you had to hit extra hard, hustle extra hard, play with even more reckless abandon. You had to go twice as hard to be half as noticed. And now, this, while that other guy keeps making even more money by being on TV and talking about football.
Nobody told you that the family you never got to know while you were playing would end up being strangers to you before you got to see the children grow up. Nobody told you that, even as your fingers were growing too gnarled to tie your shoelaces, you'd also forget why you were putting on your shoes in the first place.
You are asked if, knowing what you know now (when you can remember), if you would do it all again. You say yes. Of course you say yes. You do remember the cheers, the crowds, the thrill. That much you remember. That is the only thing that is real anymore. All else is a fog, a shade that comes and goes, as fixed as a mist and as graspable as a shadow. Good days, bad days.
What do we owe these who lost their lives, if only slowly, by timed-release manslaughter?
What do we owe the Tony Dorsetts and Mark Dupers, who now know that their own brains are also corrupted in like manner, whose own memories are uncertain and being lost, who forget where they're driving to and how to get there mid-trip? Surely we owe more than a GPS and a suicide hotline?
Maybe, at some point, we shut the hell up. The word is used here very theologically; the hell of self-justification, the hell of denial, the hell of saying "it used to be worse in Teddy Roosevelt's day," the hell of thinking it's only a few (as if one isn't too many), the hell of thinking "I am only one person so it doesn't really matter." Building more and more walls between us and the God we claim to worship so that God can't see us adoring these other gods, doing our damnedest to avoid thinking about it that way, or thinking of how many of you have been consumed so far.
Maybe we quit uttering blithe nonsense about how technology will fix the problem, newer and better helmets will save the day, and we can go on in our mindless adoration of the violence and flash without having to think about this. No technology will save you now. Technology might make clear what happened to you, and might rescue you just a little for your loved ones, who can at least take whatever meager solace comes from knowing that that wasn't really you. You are gone, beyond the salvation of any new helmet, your memory paid off by a league following the moral compass of Big Tobacco (deny deny deny, pay off what you can't deny).
Maybe we utter a Prayer of Confession. Merciful God, we have sinned against you and your children in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and done, and done and done and done and continue to do… . We keep on consuming it, if not in the stadium itself then at home in front of the wide-screen idol, fortified in our rituals with buckets of junk food and beer. We don't believe we can be redeemed, and we don't want to be even if we can.
But maybe, at some point, if we have some humanity about us, for you and your fifty-some brothers we know lost for the entertainment of others . . . maybe we mourn.
*Note: Ray Easterling played for the Falcons back in the '70s, when I was growing up in middle Georgia; he lived most of his life in Richmond, where I live now, until killing himself in 2012. That's why his name was chosen for this lament; any number of other names could have been used, and no particular biographical claim is intended.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Incognito no more: bullying in the NFL and elsewhere
Seriously, NFL, you shouldn't have.
Not even a week ago I struck out on this foolish errand of blogging about sports stories and where Christian faith intersects with them (or, as the subtitle above suggests, doesn't). Somehow the NFL saw fit to christen my efforts with stories that could probably give me a year's worth of fodder if I were so inclined. Slow down, NFL, somewhere along the way this blog needs to get around to baseball, hockey, basketball, soccer, the Olympics, collegiate athletics, youth travel teams, etc. Quit hogging the oxygen.
Rest assured that the ongoing story of football's struggle with the increasing awareness of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) will get into this blog. For now, this Rick Reilly column will provide an intermediate reflection. I've been bothered by this for a while now, as this post from my original blog will hopefully suffice to demonstrate. The recently released book League of Denial is loaded in my Nook reader and I'm working my way through it when my academic reading allows (which, admittedly, isn't often), and I did watch the Frontline documentary. The news of apparent diagnoses of living former players such as Tony Dorsett will get attention, and sometime soon, hopefully.
But it's impossible to look away, like a gruesome road accident, from the mess involving the Miami Dolphins this week. The improbably named Richie Incognito is temporarily (one presumes) suspended from the team for the apparent bullying of a teammate and offensive line-mate, Jonathan Martin. If the transcripts of the phone calls from Incognito to Martin, the tweets and other contacts, are true, we know at least that Incognito is not at all above using racial epithets to inflict pain, that he doesn't know when to quit, that he's a monstrous freeloader, and that he has some of the most disgusting fantasies about how to treat another human being ever put to electronic preservation. Martin, on the other hand, has come off pasted with adjectives ranging from "intellectual" to "soft" to "weak" or worse, depending on which former coaches or teammates you hear. We've been indulged with stereotypes about football players from Stanford (Martin) as too "thoughtful" for the apparent cesspool of ignorance that is the NFL, as compared to the Nebraska (Incognito) types (thereby proving that cheap and dishonest stereotypes can be fabricated for pretty much any differentiation between human beings you can imagine). We've had the all-important pronouncement (from the Dolphins' general manager no less) that Martin should have slugged Incognito, as well as all manner of other nonsensical blather from other Dolphins personnel with the requisite circling of the wagons around the besieged Incognito. We've had a funny takedown in true Man Up fashion of the whole Man Up culture perceived as the root of dysfunction, and the requisite invocation, in so many words, of the hoary and threadbare cliche that You Will Never Understand Because You Never Played The Game, from someone I'm not sure ever played the game (as if "understanding" would in any way render Incognito's words and actions as morally pure or ethically justifiable). I'm not quite sure whether this constitutes genuine irony or something else, but the only place on sports media behemoth ESPN's web empire that has genuinely managed to engage in questions about what this sorry debacle says about manhood and sports comes from espnW, typically that niche of the site dedicated to women's sports.
By now you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering when the whole faith issue gets blended in. Or, if you know your British or American church history, perhaps you've already put it together. Either way, the sad truth is that the church in particular has been, frankly, part of encouraging this particular sports culture for a while now, at least a century and a half.
The Apostle Paul (or deutero-Paul if you're into that sort of thing) was occasionally prone to drop in athletic metaphors in exhorting readers or hearers to live into their calling in Christ -- "press on toward the mark" in Philippians 3:14, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race" in 2 Timothy 4:7, and others. (There is also the injunction to "glorify God in your body" in 1 Corinthians 6:20; I have to wonder if 300-lb. offensive linemen were really what Paul had in mind.) From that slim start the church has made a veritable if sporadic cottage industry of equating physical fitness with spiritual piety. For our purposes it is probably sufficient to point to the Victorian-era vogue for "muscular Christianity" (make of it what you will, to the degree you trust Wikipedia) as a genesis for the modern entanglement of the church with sport as a means to manliness. If some of its earlier advocates saw "muscular Christianity" as a means to protect the weak, its later manifestations (particularly in the US) didn't necessarily carry over that concern; rather, it became something of an opportunity for pride (as most any kind of spiritual striving can do), a near self-parody in the hands of a group such as the PowerTeam (anybody else out there remember them?), and the launching pad for such evangelical celebrity athletes as Tim Tebow or Jeremy Lin. It lives on to some degree in modern organizations like Athletes in Action or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, in benign or positive ways as far as I can see. To some degree, indirectly it becomes a cudgel in the hands of neo-Calvinists such as John Piper or Mark Driscoll.
Where, then, will the church's witness come from when bullying -- an act increasingly found unacceptable in society more broadly -- rears its vicious head in the most popular of American sports? Are we waiting for the currently team-less Tebow to speak ex cathedra? When bullying (under the supposedly more harmless guise of "hazing") ends up with children taking guns to school, drunken frat boys plunging from balconies, or marching band members (!!!) beating their drum major to death, can an evident bully like Incognito (a man with some serious self-control issues in his past on the field) simply wait for this to "pass" and get off the hook without provoking some manner of self-examination among the faithful who also get their entertainment from the game? Or do we engage in some sort of tortured attempt to teach our kids that bullying is wrong, but we're still going to go drop bucketloads of money to go watch the bullies play?
One more ESPN columnist, in one of those fanciful "stories from the future" columns writers resort to occasionally, speculates that the events of the most recent week in the NFL -- the Incognito/Martin scandal, plus the Dorsett story, an avalanche of injuries and the scary health issues faced by a pair of coaches -- will mark the beginning of the end of the NFL if not the game of football. I think Mr. Fleming overestimates the conscience of the American football fan. Am I wrong?
I don't think so.
Not even a week ago I struck out on this foolish errand of blogging about sports stories and where Christian faith intersects with them (or, as the subtitle above suggests, doesn't). Somehow the NFL saw fit to christen my efforts with stories that could probably give me a year's worth of fodder if I were so inclined. Slow down, NFL, somewhere along the way this blog needs to get around to baseball, hockey, basketball, soccer, the Olympics, collegiate athletics, youth travel teams, etc. Quit hogging the oxygen.
Rest assured that the ongoing story of football's struggle with the increasing awareness of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) will get into this blog. For now, this Rick Reilly column will provide an intermediate reflection. I've been bothered by this for a while now, as this post from my original blog will hopefully suffice to demonstrate. The recently released book League of Denial is loaded in my Nook reader and I'm working my way through it when my academic reading allows (which, admittedly, isn't often), and I did watch the Frontline documentary. The news of apparent diagnoses of living former players such as Tony Dorsett will get attention, and sometime soon, hopefully.
But it's impossible to look away, like a gruesome road accident, from the mess involving the Miami Dolphins this week. The improbably named Richie Incognito is temporarily (one presumes) suspended from the team for the apparent bullying of a teammate and offensive line-mate, Jonathan Martin. If the transcripts of the phone calls from Incognito to Martin, the tweets and other contacts, are true, we know at least that Incognito is not at all above using racial epithets to inflict pain, that he doesn't know when to quit, that he's a monstrous freeloader, and that he has some of the most disgusting fantasies about how to treat another human being ever put to electronic preservation. Martin, on the other hand, has come off pasted with adjectives ranging from "intellectual" to "soft" to "weak" or worse, depending on which former coaches or teammates you hear. We've been indulged with stereotypes about football players from Stanford (Martin) as too "thoughtful" for the apparent cesspool of ignorance that is the NFL, as compared to the Nebraska (Incognito) types (thereby proving that cheap and dishonest stereotypes can be fabricated for pretty much any differentiation between human beings you can imagine). We've had the all-important pronouncement (from the Dolphins' general manager no less) that Martin should have slugged Incognito, as well as all manner of other nonsensical blather from other Dolphins personnel with the requisite circling of the wagons around the besieged Incognito. We've had a funny takedown in true Man Up fashion of the whole Man Up culture perceived as the root of dysfunction, and the requisite invocation, in so many words, of the hoary and threadbare cliche that You Will Never Understand Because You Never Played The Game, from someone I'm not sure ever played the game (as if "understanding" would in any way render Incognito's words and actions as morally pure or ethically justifiable). I'm not quite sure whether this constitutes genuine irony or something else, but the only place on sports media behemoth ESPN's web empire that has genuinely managed to engage in questions about what this sorry debacle says about manhood and sports comes from espnW, typically that niche of the site dedicated to women's sports.
By now you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering when the whole faith issue gets blended in. Or, if you know your British or American church history, perhaps you've already put it together. Either way, the sad truth is that the church in particular has been, frankly, part of encouraging this particular sports culture for a while now, at least a century and a half.
The Apostle Paul (or deutero-Paul if you're into that sort of thing) was occasionally prone to drop in athletic metaphors in exhorting readers or hearers to live into their calling in Christ -- "press on toward the mark" in Philippians 3:14, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race" in 2 Timothy 4:7, and others. (There is also the injunction to "glorify God in your body" in 1 Corinthians 6:20; I have to wonder if 300-lb. offensive linemen were really what Paul had in mind.) From that slim start the church has made a veritable if sporadic cottage industry of equating physical fitness with spiritual piety. For our purposes it is probably sufficient to point to the Victorian-era vogue for "muscular Christianity" (make of it what you will, to the degree you trust Wikipedia) as a genesis for the modern entanglement of the church with sport as a means to manliness. If some of its earlier advocates saw "muscular Christianity" as a means to protect the weak, its later manifestations (particularly in the US) didn't necessarily carry over that concern; rather, it became something of an opportunity for pride (as most any kind of spiritual striving can do), a near self-parody in the hands of a group such as the PowerTeam (anybody else out there remember them?), and the launching pad for such evangelical celebrity athletes as Tim Tebow or Jeremy Lin. It lives on to some degree in modern organizations like Athletes in Action or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, in benign or positive ways as far as I can see. To some degree, indirectly it becomes a cudgel in the hands of neo-Calvinists such as John Piper or Mark Driscoll.
Where, then, will the church's witness come from when bullying -- an act increasingly found unacceptable in society more broadly -- rears its vicious head in the most popular of American sports? Are we waiting for the currently team-less Tebow to speak ex cathedra? When bullying (under the supposedly more harmless guise of "hazing") ends up with children taking guns to school, drunken frat boys plunging from balconies, or marching band members (!!!) beating their drum major to death, can an evident bully like Incognito (a man with some serious self-control issues in his past on the field) simply wait for this to "pass" and get off the hook without provoking some manner of self-examination among the faithful who also get their entertainment from the game? Or do we engage in some sort of tortured attempt to teach our kids that bullying is wrong, but we're still going to go drop bucketloads of money to go watch the bullies play?
One more ESPN columnist, in one of those fanciful "stories from the future" columns writers resort to occasionally, speculates that the events of the most recent week in the NFL -- the Incognito/Martin scandal, plus the Dorsett story, an avalanche of injuries and the scary health issues faced by a pair of coaches -- will mark the beginning of the end of the NFL if not the game of football. I think Mr. Fleming overestimates the conscience of the American football fan. Am I wrong?
I don't think so.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Oh, yes, it matters
Today in Boston they had a parade. Not on
account of some civic holiday or victory in a war or any such, no. The
parade is being held because a baseball team that plays primarily in Boston won
four games in a series designed as a best-of-seven format, against a team that
plays primarily in St. Louis. I say "that plays primarily in"
because, of course, the teams don't "belong to" either city in any
legal sense, nor in a residential one (most players scatter to warmer climes in
the offseason), nor indeed in any other sense besides the fact of playing a
majority of their games in that city, except for what might be called the
"heart" sense. Thousands of citizens in Boston claim the Red
Sox as "their" team, even their "home" team, and go to
sometimes mind-boggling lengths to demonstrate their loyalty to that team.
On occasion, as was the case this year with the Red Sox and Boston in the
wake of the Marathon bombing, the team actually draws closer to "its"
city than is typical of the hired mercenaries that professional team sports
players are, for all practical purposes. Still, viewed in the abstract,
it's an odd thing, even if has become a tradition stretching over decades.
In other parts of the country, thousands upon
thousands of individuals are descending upon cavernous coliseums and smaller-scale
gridirons in large cities and college towns and even smaller towns to watch
dozens of huge boys slam into each other at frightening speeds wearing layers
of armament, seeking touchdowns and glory. Some of these individuals (or
"fans," which may or may not bear relationship to the far scarier
word "fanatic") perhaps attended the colleges or universities hosting
these games today; many did not. This after many of these same folks
crowded into high school stadiums for football games last night, and before
many folks will trek to one of thirty-two stadiums designated for use by
professional football teams playing in a league that rakes in cash in
unimaginable fistfuls, some small pittance of which cash goes, after much legal
gnashing of teeth and years of garish denial, to the men whose minds were
broken by their participation in the game, or in many cases to their survivors,
a league with the power to snap its fingers and cause ESPN (a rather large
financial player in sport itself) to run contritely away from a documentary on that subject by
two of its own best investigative reporters.
A not-small number of fans tuned into football of a
different sort today, the kind that actually requires feet on the ball more
routinely, broadcast from England or other points in Europe. They were
probably spared the sound of any racially-based taunting from fans in the
stands towards players of obvious non-European origin. Some fans of that
sport will take in the playoffs in the domestic league tonight.
Other fans will turn out for games in the NBA or
NHL, two seasons just getting started as baseball ends and football nears the
homestretch. Fans of college basketball await season-opening games in
just a few days. Players will play, fans will scream and cheer and groan
and maybe boo and maybe worse. Some players will be injured. Many
will watch games at home, singly or in groups. Rivers of alcohol will be
consumed. And billions of dollars, insane amounts of money, will change
hands.
Some teenagers or even younger kids spend virtually
all year playing a single sport, the whole concept of "seasons" going
out the window, in an effort (I presume?) to improve their chances of getting a
college scholarship or going pro. Kids skilled at tennis or other
individual sports uproot their entire lives to enroll in and live at
"academies" in nice sunny places to pursue that sport virtually
full-time. This latter is pretty old-hat by now. In high schools
and colleges, being "on the team" has moved far beyond a
get-out-of-school-free pass or anything so small; it has almost evolved into license to rape. And the only word in
that last sentence I regret is "almost."
Frederick Buechner, in The Alphabet of Grace,
sagely observed that "where your feet take you, that is who you are."
Others have made note of the power of money to reflect the priorities of
those who have it and spend it. These facts alone, in my opinion, are
quite sufficient justification to hold up the world of sports, those who play
it and those who watch it and those who own it, up for critical scrutiny from a
perspective informed by faith, theology, doctrine, belief, or whatever
religious buzzword you choose. It is a powerful, lucrative, and pervasive
societal presence. To pretend it is beneath consideration, somehow an
abstraction from the "real" business of living as Christ-followers in
God's world, is as insanely wrong-headed as an uncritical opportunistic embrace
of sport as a vehicle for marketing faith, or particular varieties of it.
The title of this blog is taken from a remark I
remember well from my south Georgia childhood, something like this:
"Football is not a religion. It's way more important than
that." The remark, or some variant of it, was usually delivered
tongue-in-cheek even if it shouldn't have been, even if it should have been
uttered flatly as an unexceptional statement of fact. There are of course
many who take in sporting events for whom it is far less than that, an
occasional escape or diversion. Still, the money changes hands, and
that escape may be implicated in more brain damage, or the sham of the
"student-athlete" or funds for a ballpark instead of schools, or who
knows what yet-undiscovered shame or scandal. Where our feet take us is
who we are, at least to some degree, and our money reveals our love.
I am a fan, particularly of baseball, somewhat of
college basketball, increasingly of MLS soccer (awaiting Sporting Kansas City's
playoff match tonight). These days I can't make myself watch football
without wondering how many years are being taken off lives with every hit, but
I keep up enough to follow conversations during the week. I haven't
really followed the NBA closely since Dominique Wilkins left the Hawks, but
again, I do keep up. If you doubt my bonafides, I'd invite you to
investigate my t-shirt drawer, or drawers; more baseball t-shirts than I can
count, major and minor leagues, including eight just from spring training sites
in Florida, some of which are no longer in use, as well as a Sporting KC
t-shirt and one from the Kansas Jayhawks' national championship back in 2008, and
a few assorted Florida State shirts.
I'm also a seminary student hopefully graduating in
May and hopefully headed towards a pastorate somewhere, with an itch to write.
Between the two, I just don't think the role sports plays in the world can be ignored by people of faith. I'm not arrogant enough to think that
I'm the perfect person to do it (I can't wait until somebody attacks me over
presuming to speak on the subject when I Never Played The Game), but I'm
arrogant enough to think that somebody needs to speak to it, and
I'm expendable enough that I might as well hold the fort until bigger names and
smarter thinkers than I get around to it.
Hence, a new blog. My other
blog is still in existence, and I'll still write on it as often as
possible. Where that one is a bit more personal, I'm naive enough or
arrogant enough to hope that this one might go somewhere. For now,
it starts small, as I work out the kinks (and finish seminary!). I have a
heap of ideas but would not mind suggestions.
Do I expect to change the world? Hah. I
don't even expect to change your mind. But I do expect you to think about
it, at minimum, and be ready to ask questions sometimes; to question assertions
that somehow rule out a course of action when a problem seems intractable.
Is football scrambling brains? Don't tell me that football can't be
curtailed or eliminated if no other solution is found. Don't tell me that
superstars can't be suspended for cheating (this means you, Alex Rodriguez).
Don't tell me can't, ever, when it comes to sports and their
scarring of society, no matter how much good they might sometimes do or how
much enjoyment they bring.
Because if we ever accept the word
"can't" when addressing the ways sports becomes a blemish on
society, the church should just fold up and disappear just as surely as it
should if it ever accepts poverty or prejudice or any other societal ill you
name as intractable and gives up screaming for justice.
At least, that's what I think.
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