Struggle And Joy: Sport And Theology, Part One, The Question of American Football

So here I am, like millions of other Americans and Christians, watching Sunday Night Football, still smarting from the loss by my Washington team.  But at least it gave me and my son cause to text each other during the game, and a new set of shared memories and camaraderie.  At least my beloved Auburn Tigers won a close game this weekend.  I didn't attend Auburn, but my father graduated from what used to be called Alabama Polytechnic Institute (“Old API,” he would say).  When I arrived at my NE Alabama parish in 2009, I had to inform the mostly Crimson Tide fans that I had been indoctrinated a long time ago, sorry.

Having been raised in Florida, I remember the Miami Dolphins of Don Shula, though to be honest, the first player I admired was Joe Namath of the New York Jets.  Even in my preteen years, I guess I was drawn to the rebels.  All of this is simply to emphasize how hard it is, given the lifetime of fond memories I've accumulated of this game, to ask if it is morally right for those who call ourselves Christian to take pleasure in this game, and to financially support it.

“Now I say to you, ‘You are gods, and all of you children of the most high. Nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.’” (Psalm 82:6).  There are so many ways in which human beings have wrongly claimed godlike status over others throughout human history.  Perhaps the healthiest manifestation of this godlikeness has been the friendly competition of sports.  To watch trained athletes perform amazing feats of strength, speed and agility is to thrill at the possibilities of the human body which God created.  And to the extent that competitive sports must involve struggle, a certain amount of violence will be inherent in any organized sport. 

I've always accepted that violence, so long as it was controlled.  But that is exactly the point I'm afraid we may have reached with American football.  Close to home, a young man is dead at 25, having played high school and college football. And he already was suffering from the dreaded CTE.  At this point, the evidence seems clear to me that the prolonged period of violent collision inherent in the game greatly increases the chances of its players literally losing their minds in the years after they retire, when none of us are looking.

And the scandalous abuse cases in the NFL have exposed the fact that the rate of domestic abuse among NFL players is disturbingly high.  Does the infliction of violence on the field of play make the infliction of violence off the field more likely?  And given what we now know about the probable long term effects of the game, can we really distinguish between our cheering on of footballers and the Romans cheering on of the gladiators?

Part of me answers, absolutely.  Modern football players aren't slaves.  Many of them are born into cultures of poverty and violence.  But our Creator has blessed them with physical talent and the potential to do incredible things with their bodies.  They are free to decide what to do with those gifts.  Who are we, from the comfort of easy chairs and big screen TVs, to preach to them about violence?  I get it.  But it seems the “Christian thing to do,” when we’re cheering our favorite players on that big screen, to imagine a different scene on that screen, 15-20 years after the big game.

Imagine that player so broken in body that his entire house has to be designed so that he doesn't have to bend his back or knees to reach down for anything.  Imagine his family having to care for him round the clock after his brain has become so damaged that he can do nothing for himself.  Imagine how that family will support themselves after the money this player made in his brief career has been spent caring for him.  Then let us ask ourselves who claim to be Christians: how much more are we willing to pay today for that game ticket, that jersey, NFL Mobile and Sunday Ticket, in order to care for those players we so admire when we’re no longer looking at them?

It seems to me that if we’re not willing to imagine those former players after their image has long faded from the screen; if we’re not willing to pay more now for the pleasure they give us so that they and their families can be cared for when we don’t see them any longer; and if we want that star player back on the field regardless of how they treat their family now; then we will have truly become Romans.