One of the biggest crock-of-shit cliches in American Culture is: God, Family, Football.
Football is a violent sport played by violent men. There are winners and losers in football, it is--
You know what? Jesus was a real man. He died around the year 33 A.D. on the edge of Jerusalem. People forget that there were sports in the Roman Empire. Sports weren't invented with the advent of Super Bowl I, no matter what the NFL wants you to believe. There is nowhere in the Bible where Jesus references his love of chariot racing. Or wrestling. Or boxing.
Jesus did not have a blood lust for sports of any kind.
And I keep emphasizing this, over and over. You are more than welcome to love football. I love football. You just can't cite the Bible when describing your love of the game.
So it was with great dismay that I read ESPN's borderline propaganda for the game itself:
ESPN: Freshman QB phenom Dylan Raiola Followed Family to Nebraska. Listen, I'm sure Dylan Raiola is a nice kid, but the article referenced his family over a dozen times and either Jesus/God over a half dozen times. Dylan Raiola success or failure is irrelevant to the teachings of Jesus.
Now this is where I lose a lot of people. If Dylan Raiola's dream job was to be a priest, he can sell all that God, Family, Holy Orders malarky that he wants.
But that's not what he's doing. He wants to be in the NFL Player. His faith will not help him either get the football over the goal line or hit that other guy as hard as humanly possible, the 2 main goals of any football player. If you want to argue that God, Family, Football helps him train, I would argue the training for a football player mirrors the training for a soldier. Does God, Family, War work? It depends on what team you're on.
What do you perceive is the case? More NFL Players are god-fearing men, or more NFL Players are criminals?
But to me, for every Tim Tebow, who Raiola cites as a hero, there's an Aaron Hernandez. As a matter of fact, 41 of the 121 players on Urban Meyer's 2008 Florida Gators' National Championship Team have been arrested over the past 20 years, including the aforementioned convicted murderer Hernandez.
And again, I'm not specifically rooting against Raiola, per se, just the mindset that God cares about who wins a football game.
You what I really enjoyed? Unranked and unheralded Northern Illinois University pulled of one of the biggest upsets in college football history, and arguably the biggest upset since Appalachian State upset Michigan in 2007, when they upended the mighty Fighting Irish of Notre Dame last week.
Notre Dame won't join the Big Ten because they're "bigger" than the conference.
Notre Dame has their own Football Contract with NBC.
Notre Dame has an entire network of Catholic High Schools as a feeder system to their college.
They milk that God, Family, Football crap for every penny that it's worth.
Guess what happens when your arrogant, nationally recruited kids run up against a scrappy little MAC team? A NIU team that was paid $1.4 million to come to South Bend to lose?
Football is about who hits the hardest, not who prays the hardest.
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