Football and Faith: A Prominent Formula

The last two football coaches at my church-affiliated Division III school have each adopted a mantra of “faith, family, football” to define their program and its priorities. Somehow, it’s not surprising, because of the slew of openly Christian football players in the major-college and professional ranks.

On the heels of a feature article on ESPN.com about the often-misunderstood Kurt Warner, we have a NCAA title game (minus Utah…) featuring Heisman winners Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford, who also find support in God.

With Bradford and Tebow in tonight’s title game, and Warner in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, journalists cannot avoid issues of faith in their pregame profiles of the three athletes, all of whom are the clear leaders of their team.

It’s foolish to examine Christian athletes merely through the lens of their televised activities, such as postgame prayer circles or gestures to the sky (almost inevitably after successes on the field). Of course, it’s also foolish to examine Christian athletes merely through their other public activities, often the “good” that they do or the ways that they profess their faith publicly.

In the Warner article, he downplays his Christianity through anecdotes about him swearing in the locker room. The broader point is that he still messes up and that he doesn’t adopt a “holier than thou” attitude, even if some Cardinals apparently feel that way, probably legitimately. At any rate, in perhaps an awkwardly intrusive way, the article is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in how religion plays out in the public sphere.

Anyway, this Tebow article is written in such a surprised, admiring tone because Tebow hasn’t yet fallen prey to the moral issues inherent in professional sports. He’s not yet negotiating for a $49 million contract instead of a $48 million contract, and in fact he won’t get anywhere near that (which sounds fine with him). Tebow does all the right things publicly. His life is about being a Christian role model.

Bradford, too, in this article, discusses his pregame ritual of reading the story of David and Goliath (from 1 Samuel).

Anyway, I primarily want to pose questions with this post.

My perception is that football players as a whole are either more public about their faith, or that a greater percentage of football players are faithful, as compared to other sports. Note the large postgame prayer circles. Note the many quarterbacks who talk about their faith and its connection to their leadership. Maybe this is a mere error of perception, because football players perform only once a week, making their games much more of an isolated event than the long, rigorous seasons of basketball or baseball. Think about this: maybe the weekly ritual aspect of football, even if games happen on Sundays, play into the weekly ritual aspects of Christianity in its mainstream American form.

I’d be interested to learn about other examples, whether of Christian football players, or of athletes from other faiths (this in particular), regardless of their sport.

~ by ericmonek on January 7, 2009.