America’s new national pastime?
I mean football, not Catholic-bashing–though any faithful Catholic should be outraged at this morning’s Super Bowl headlines announcing “Steelers beat Cardinals.” I will look for Bill Donohue’s righteous anger at some point today. (“Would The New York Times have allowed a headline saying ‘Steelers beat Rabbis’? Of course not! This is a blatant double-standard. And of course, it’s no surprise that President Obama was rooting against the Cardinals….”)
My outrage is more disappointment, as I am a dedicated Giants fan, and not only did the Giants fall flat in the playoffs (and against the Eagles, of all teams), but last night’s game was terrific, every bit as grand as last year’s stunning Giants’ victory. And the Boss’ halftime show was the first truly memorable halftime entertainment I can recall–memorable in a good sense, not the “wardrobe malfunction” creativity. He injected at least some Jersey authenticity into the event.
But of course football is a guilty pleasure–so much violence and gladiatorial ferocity. Could anyone whose faith was forged in Roman amphitheaters enjoy this? Over at First Things, Jeffrey Marlett argues in the affirmative, more or less, using Sal Paolantonio’s book, How Football Explains America, as his entrypoint. Paolantonio makes interesting observations about football’s reflections of American values, and its wholly different and largely unheralded course of racial intergation from that of baseball. Marlett also gets to the religious orientation–and value–of football:
Originally, football was envisioned as a vehicle for moral improvement. It reflected America’s purported Protestant character and embodied both individual and communitarian values like teamwork, individual effort, manliness, and integrity. But problems arise when violence is glorified instead of merely accepted. Some insist that football canonizes everything wrong in American life. George Will’s quip comes to mind: football combines the two worst features of America—violence interspersed with committee meetings.
Will is of course a baseball purist (though not a Catholic, I am told) hence his bias. Marlett tries to enlist John Paul’s “culture of life” motif in defense of the sport, but admits misgivings:
Indeed, religious themes lurk throughout his assessment of American football. The sport offers a compelling, almost mythical scene: two teams, clad in helmets and body armor like medieval knights, engage in a lengthy series of short, intensely violent clashes to control both an object (the ball) and territory. Every autumn, high school boys and college men reenact this battle, but pro football attains levels of spectacle previously reserved for religious or gladiatorial spectacle.
Unlike baseball’s long leisurely season, football’s short season offers no second chances. Thus each game possesses its own biblical finality; win and celebrate with tambourine and dance, lose and it’s Lamentations. Autumn Sunday afternoons have become a set of sixteen services where believers, clad in their teams’ color and insignia, often carrying its relics, gather to celebrate their team’s performance and join in the drama of its liturgy.
Still, the interweaving of football and religion requires further exploration. George Carlin’s contrast between baseball and football captures something about the nation: “Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall when everything is dying.” Perhaps we need football for the decline of the year, as the days shorten and grow colder, and a slower, pastoral diversion for hot summer days, each game with its own beauty. While football might explain something about America, it might not always fulfill it.
Nor does it fulfill our religious ideals. So, can one be a football fan and a good Christian? More to the point, is football Catholic? (Vince Lombardi, the Maras, the Rooneys–good company.) Or (Evangelical) Protestant? (All those Jesus-thanking Bible Belt players from The Big Schools.) Is the mediocre state (sorry) of Notre Dame’s program an affirmation of its Catholic identity–or a sign of its wobbly hold on Tradition?
I’m also a Giants fan, so I wasn’t particularly interested in last evening’s game, but I agree that it was a very good game, especially the final quarter.
Just a minor point. Is George Will a Catholic? I’ve always thought he was an Episcopalian, though I saw part of an interview he did with Colbert last summer or early fall, and Will said he’s an agnostic.
The thing about football is that it is complicated. Those guys are big, yes, to be able to make tackles and block, and such, but the real art is that they have to be able to figure out how to be in the right place at the right time to make the plays. If you watch Dancing with the Stars, you will notice how well the professional football players tend to do. They don’t have much technique, so execution of the steps is a bit problematic, but they definitely have no problem figuring out the pattern of motion that we call choreography, especially since it only involves one other person at a time (and that person usually ways less than half of the people they encounter the field).
So, although the superficial enjoyment of the game is the physicality, it wouldn’t sustain the level of interest without the complexity of the underlying action. That’s why the quarterback is still the single most important player on the field, and it’s a good thing that the league goes out of its way to avoid unnecessary roughness against him.
William Collier: Yes, Phil Lawler informs me also that Will is not a Catholic, and assumption I have made before, for whatever reason, and always forget to double-check. If he’s agnostic, that is interesting. Some believe his writings on baseball evince a “dour Calvinist sensibility.” That’s the problem with purists…
David, you’re funny.
Don’t you think Bruce looked a little tired? His vitality, forced?
Don’t you think the ideals of human excellence become disproportionate when excellence must be endlessly competitive?
Kathy, au contraire–I thought he looked energetic and the real deal. Yes, he’s aging, though not quite approaching Keith Richards sepulchritude.
But it may be me: The Boss has me by more than a decade, and I couldn’t manage a single one of his gyrations without calling 911.
The songs were old–but good. Astonishing how old they are. Astonishing how much more relevant they seem than, well, Justin Timberlake. But I am talking like an old fogey.
PS: Re competition, I think we’re in agreement. I believe Michael Novak, in his writing on sports, makes the distinction best between the athletics of St. Paul’s era and the competition of modern day sports.
There is a long tradition of boxing intertwining with Catholic culture in the US. In my father’s day, it was Irish and Italian. Now it’s various Spanish speaking cultures. Problematic?
I agree with you, David, that Bruce looked good and seems to be aging pretty gracefully. His voice, on the other hand, is in terrible shape. But I’ve never been a Springsteen fan — and I’ve actually thought the last several halftime shows were surprisingly good. Since the Janet Jackson debacle, they’ve been going with classic rock icons, and I think it’s paying off. I don’t want to see Justin Timberlake again until he’s a bona fide legend. Or at least the closest thing we have.
Instead of thinking of football as religion, think of it as comedy: football is the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, while baseball is Charlie Chaplin. The perversity is that it takes an astonishing amount of talent and hard work to pander to people’s baser instincts (mirth at hitting and punching) in a way that provokes amusement and not horror. In that light, football is like a lot of the rest of the entertainment industry, but I still don’t see any religious parallels.
After the “wardrobe malfunction” debacle, the Super Bowl halftime shows have been selected for minimal risk. I’m sort of sorry to see that Bruce Springsteen has chosen to be in the same category of thin gruel as Paul McCartney, the Stones, and Up With America. I know he’s still composing and recording new material. It would have been nice to have some of that performed before the largest television audience of the year. Instead it was stale ’70′s and ’80′s stuff.
I’m also sorry to see that he has become his father, but think that about myself every time I look in the mirorr.
Mollie, I didn’t see your comment until I posted my own – I guess we think differently about this :-)
Jim–
I’m going to have to politely disagree about your “stale 70′s and 80′s stuff” comment. How could he not play “Born to Run” and “Glory Days” during the Super Bowl? :) Besides, they’re arguably his most famous songs.
Also, he did play the title song from his new album–”Working On A Dream”–strategically (?) being reased today, I believe.
I’m a Springsteen fan, so perhaps I overlooked some of the shortcomings in the halftime performance: It wasn’t his normal concert venue, he was limited to 12 minutes in total, etc. I agree with Molie that his voice seemed more strained than usual. The thing that struck me the most, however, was a brief TV shot involving something not integral to the performance. During one of the songs, Clarence Clemons had put his trademark saxophone down and was playing a … cowbell. The famous Saturday Night Live skit with Christopher Walken immediately jumped to mind (“I gotta have more cowbell!”), but then the image of Clemons with a cowbell became even more incongruous when I realized that no one going to hear it anyway among the din. ;)
Professional football seems to lead to serial concussions that all too often issue in brain damage. Could it be part of the “culture of death”? I think the bishops should look into this.
At least he didn’t sing Girls in their Summer Clothes. What kind of rock and roll is that?!
I am cured of my fanaticism about boxing. There is something perverse about enjoying someone getting pulverized in the ring or on the gridiron. The appeal of football is its complicated plays; positioning, seams, swing passes. go patterns. flairs, wide receiver, tight end, split end, backs, punts, center, tackle, guard, ends, linebackers, safety, and cover 2 and cover 1.
Yet would it go without the violence? Like the gladiatiors the players come out of tunnels, beat their chests, clunk heads and bounce off one another for motivation. I remember distinctly one Giant game where I heard the words come from my mouth: “kill him.”
Sports has the uncanny ability to put one in a good or bad mood for a couple of days. Those fights among fans at soccer games are a consequence of emotions out of control.
There is a lot to the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. But boxing and football can bring out the beast in the best of us.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, football, similar to military service actually, attracts a vastly disproportionate number of practicing (or devout or pious, or insert favored term) Christians and Restorationists than the overall population. Take yesterday’s game for example – Kurt Warner, the QB for the Arizona Cardinals, and his wife are very active Evangelical Christians. On the other side of the ball, the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu is a very devout member of the Greek Orthodox Church with a particular devotion to the Blessed Mother – I think he actually converted a few years ago from Catholicism is my recollection. Last year’s Heisman winner and two-time BCS champion, Tim Tebow at Florida is another great example – if he does not go into the NFL, he will likely do Evangelical missionary work in SE Asia, particularly the Philippines, where his parents are missionaries and where he spends his summers doing same. Or Steve Young, Hall of Fame QB for the ‘Niners – lineal descendant of Brigham Young and active in the LDS Church. Etc.
Plus, look at Texas.
“The thing that struck me the most, however, was a brief TV shot involving something not integral to the performance. During one of the songs, Clarence Clemons had put his trademark saxophone down and was playing a … cowbell. The famous Saturday Night Live skit with Christopher Walken immediately jumped to mind (”I gotta have more cowbell!”), but then the image of Clemons with a cowbell became even more incongruous when I realized that no one going to hear it anyway among the din. ;)”
That’s so funny that you focused on the cowbell, William – I was noticing the same thing, and thinking about the same SNL skit! Maybe next year they should have Blue Oyster Cult …
Speaking of Clarence Clemons – what the heck was he wearing? it looked like kind of a super-long sports coat, but the lapels were set off in a way that made them look like a priest’s stole.
I guess, if the status quo is Catholic and Protestant gangs brawling in the streets, Notre Dame playing Ivy League College or Land Grant State on the gridiron seemed like a civilized alternative.
Years ago, there was much moralitry discusion about boxing and college boxing (including Notre Dame’s Bengal Bouts) has ebbed into the past.
Pro and big time college football are brutal violent sports, supported by numerous alumni/ fans who live viacriously through their team or alma mater or both.
Once one platoon footbal lwas dropped in the 50″s – end of great teams at Fordham, USF etc. -and TV money grew and grew, specialization of behemoths, now student athletes under the guise of expanding athletic oportunities, became de riguer.
I’m truly ambivalen tabout what athletics has done for poor blacks -opened up and more than a few times real opportunities and an ability for folk to se how much talent (other tjan just athletic) exists in the ghetto, and exploitation of jocks with crud courses to bring big monies to big schools.
Not sure Notre Dame is shot as a football school.
Our parish prtiest thinks it’s so importan ti thas a special place on the parish website -yuk.
The issue might be what should a football school be?( Go, St. John’s, Collegeville.)