The Reason For Sports: A Christian Fanifesto

INTRODUCTION

AUTOGRAPHS,

CLICHÉS, and the

SUMMER of

MY DISCONTENT

Ihave a confession to make.

In the summer of 1994 I worked as a ball boy for the Indianapolis Colts. I had just graduated from high school and was myself a college football recruit of some (little) consequence.¹ Unbeknownst to me at the time, I wasn’t good enough to make any real ripples in the sport, but I was just good enough to be obsessed about playing professional football and convinced myself that this was a possibility because I was as big as some of the Colts themselves (though they were infinitely faster, more agile, and more athletically touched by God). I was a hard worker. I was an overacheiver. Gritty. A hustler. I would make it, I thought. And besides, I was a good Christian² and God rewarded good, hardworking Christian athletes with lucrative contracts and platforms in pro sports, so that they could share the gospel.

Being around the Colts every day at their Anderson, Indiana, training camp was like cocaine for me. I got to lift with them in the weight room—breaking the little ammonia caplets and inhaling just before hoisting a heavy bar off my chest, just like the pros. I got to eat filet mignon and swordfish with them in the cafeteria, and play Sega NBA Jams (remember, this was 1994) tournaments with them in the dormitory at night. I got to launder their bright blue jerseys and affix the blue horseshoe logo onto their helmets. I also got to refuse future NFL Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk a ride after practice to the locker room in a golf cart, after being told that I would be fired for doing so.³ After the last practice of the day, after all of the fans had left, I would strap on my own cleats and go down to the immaculately manicured (think fair-way-groomed) practice fields to hit their tackling dummies and run through their agility ropes in my official Property of Indianapolis Colts T-shirt.

One night, walking back through the empty parking lot toward the dormitory where I stayed with the players, a car circled into the lot and pulled up, idling slowly beside me. The car had two girls in it. They weren’t super-hot NFL groupie types, though I had learned, through the summer, to spot these women. They looked very ordinary. Even a little nervous. They looked like the kind of girls who probably graduated from Anderson High a few years ago and now looked forward to hanging around training camp each summer for a little glimpse of fame.

They rolled down their window, and I figured they were going to ask me for directions, or ask me what time practice started, or if I could introduce them to Jim Harbaugh.⁴ Instead, they asked me something that has sort of haunted me ever since. They asked me for my autograph, thinking I was a real, live Indianapolis Colt and they had just gotten lucky enough to catch me walking across the lot, unencumbered by security.

I paused for a moment and ran through my options. I could tell them the long story about how, yes, I was a football player, but not for the Colts, and that my real job that summer was picking up dirty equipment and dragging blocking dummies on and off the practice field several times per day. But I figured that this would be met with confused looks, given my sweaty Property of Indianapolis Colts workout gear and reasonably athletic figure.

My heart pounded. The little egomaniac inside me had, for years, dreamed of signing autographs. I had dreamed of coming off the field and being unabashedly adored by children, young doe-eyed women, old matronly women, young men who wanted to be me, and older, cynical men who I had just won over emotionally by the strength of my game-winning performance. This was an empty parking lot in Anderson, Indiana, but I won’t lie, it kind of felt similar.

I grabbed the paper and signed my name. Just like that. They smiled, thanked me, and drove away. Now they’ll have a story to tell while working third shift, stocking shelves at Kroger. We were driving around campus and met a Colts player, they’ll say, giggling. They’ll look at my name and wonder why it hasn’t appeared on any rosters. They’ll watch CBS Sports, expectantly, waiting to see my face on national television.

It’s August 2008, or, rather, the Summer of Brett Favre. Favre, a Green Bay Packer legend, lock for the Hall of Fame, and all-around great American, has decided to retire and then unretire, making for a constant barrage of retrospectives, interviews, and speculation as to where he will end up. Even the fax machine upon which he transmitted his letter of reinstatement has become something of a celebrity. The Packers have made it clear that they are moving on without Favre, having drafted two high-profile quarterbacks⁵ in recent drafts, and Favre has made it clear that Green Bay needs to welcome him back with open arms as the starter.

In doing so, Favre has unwittingly painted himself as the Typical Pro Athlete.⁶ Obstinant. Egomaniacal. Concerned only with self. And for all of his supposed Midwestern, old school, lantern-jawed Wrangler-wearing heroics, Favre is acting a lot like, well, Terrell Owens. This is sad, and is just one reason why I’m considering quitting sports entirely.

I’m also sick, it seems, of Christian athletes.

Christian sports writing, historically, has been cringe-worthy at best. A publisher puts out a title lauding the spiritual life of Christian Jock, and then crosses fingers, hoping that Christian Jock doesn’t end up in jail, in divorce court, or embroiled in a paternity suit. These books are usually of the by (Christian Athlete) with (local sportswriter) variety and include the obligatory tales of a hardscrabble upbringing (made to sound hardscrabble even if it isn’t exactly, well, hardscrabble), the wild early years as a pro, the rededication of one’s life to Christ, at which point the blessings (Super Bowl, trophy wife, new contract, etc.) start to flow.

These books are okay if the reader also happens to be a Super Bowl champion; they would be relatable, then, at least. They’re also probably okay if you’re twelve years old. Otherwise, they leave the reader a little empty. A little let down. As though the beauty and passion they see from the athlete on the field was somehow translated into a subpar two-hundred-pages-with-photo-section that reads more like a really long public relations bio.

To many, the term Christian athlete means kneeling in the end zone for a self-congratulatory show of prayer, or a finger raised to the sky after tossing a touchdown pass. To others, it means that God is like a lucky pair of socks or a nutritional supplement, invoked at the right time in order to make one bigger, faster, or stronger in the moment of competition.

So what do we do with sports? What do we do with the scandals, the outsized personalities, the glamour, and the worldliness? Typically, evangelicals pull back. It’s what we do. When we get skittish about movies, we stop watching them, or we make our own (usually with dreadful results). When we get nervous about public schools, sometimes we pull out. When we get convicted about music, we might burn our CD collections or sell our secular music to friends.⁷

If I were emergent, I would call this book a manifesto on why Christians should stay engaged with sports. On why pulling out is the last thing we should do, and on why there is still beauty, truth, and redemption to be found in athletics. (Well, we settled on fanifesto in the subtitle instead [see Author’s Note].)

Sports are a huge part of the lives of American men, including church men. Our churches have informal basketball, golf, and softball leagues. Guys talk about sports in the church lobby. Yet with all the books teaching us how to worship with our marriages, our money, our quiet times, and our sex lives, little is written about the subject that drives most of our banter with each other and around which much of our free time revolves. Sports.

How do we worship God with this part of our lives? How do sports help us to grow in sanctification? How do we think theologically about the myriad of moral dilemmas⁸ in sports?

The last thing I want to do is to put out a book that subtly ruins sports for Christian guys, or that somehow equates loving sports to viewing porn.⁹ I don’t want Christian guys to hang their heads in shame because they spend more time watching (and enjoying) sports than they spend reading Bible stories to their toddler or asking their spouse about her day. But my hope is that Christians would begin to develop a theology of sports.

My own theology of sports has developed over a number of years as an athlete, and then several more years as a writer. Ironically, sports provides a lot of waiting around time—as anyone who has ever played or covered baseball can attest. There are lots of Is this all there is? moments spent sitting at press tables or waiting for press conferences to begin and end.

As Christians we tend to tackle topics like this with a grim determination. We clench our teeth and try to unpack sports. But the reason we care about sports at all is because they’re fun. They’re games. When we’re done playing them we miss the inside jokes in the locker room. We miss making fun of our coaches. We miss the camaraderie. As fans we experience the rush of competition by watching athletes who are truly gifted by God, and we enjoy the bond we feel with other fans. On the pages that follow, hopefully, you’ll be able to enjoy sports with me as I try to find the good in a sports world that at times has gone bad. I’m not going to try to convince you that Mike Tyson or Ricky Williams should be your spiritual guide, or that you shouldn’t cheer for Mike Vick because he drowns puppies, or that you should cheer for all American QB Tim Tebow because he etches a Bible verse on his eye-black before every game. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about all of those people. But I’ll invite you to begin formulating your own theology of sports with me.

It would be twelve years before I would sign another autograph. It happened in 2006 when I played professional indoor football for the Battle Creek, Michigan, Crunch. (Now the defunct Crunch.) I had played only a year of college football before a couple of broken legs ended that dream, and then had bounced around no-pay semipro leagues ever since, suiting up for such notables as the Jackson Bombers (defunct), the Lansing Lightning (defunct), and the Delaware County Thunder (also defunct). Then I got to play for pay with the Continental Indoor Football League. While the CIFL wasn’t exactly the big time,¹⁰ it did offer me the opportunity to wear the Battle Creek Crunch uniform, run out of the tunnel, and sign autographs on the field after the game. I would soon come to realize that these autograph sessions were more about us, the players, than the fans. The autographs weren’t worth the paper they were scribbled on. None of us were going anywhere, athletically. We were has-beens. Washed up.

Thanks to the CIFL and the BLT (the Bombers, Lightning, and Thunder), I had finally forgiven God for taking away my college football career. I had finally stopped wanting it. And I was even able to thank Him for taking it away because in its place was Him. He was bigger than my identity as an athlete. He allowed me to enjoy sports compartmentally, which is how, I think, sports should be enjoyed, consumed, and thought about. By compartmentally I mean as a part of our greater whole, which should include sanctification and holiness in Him, something I certainly haven’t mastered but to which I’m completely committed.