Does God Love Football?

Last night, I Tivo'd NBC's new series, Friday Night Lights, which is about big time high school football in west Texas and a take off of the movie with some minor changes - it is hard not to take the Dillon Panthers for the Parmian team in the movie. H.S. football in Texas, as well as Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, is like H.S. basketball in Indiana and Kentucky. Everyone in the community knows what is happening with the team, might have the scheduled memorized, and knows that the outlook of the community rises and falls with the team's success. I've heard more than one story about Indiana school consolidation in the 1960s being largely determined by basketball rivalries. Perhaps that understanding is an urban myth. Even if it is, the description still speaks to the understanding of the importance of H.S. athletics in many communities.

I love football, especially H.S. football. I played it along with 2 younger brothers. The three of us started in Pee Wee leagues and played through college. In one of the scenes, the Dillon Panthers have a Wednesday practice with a local Pee Wee team, complete with the flashes of mother and fathers dreaming of their sons one day staring on the Panther team. At the end of the practice, all of the players gather together in the locker room as the star quarterback prepares to lead them in prayer. One of the Pee Wee players asks just before the prayer starts, "Do you think God loves football?" "Everybody loves football," answers the star QB. The prayer continues - The Lord's Prayer that is.

There are several other scenes in the show which include prayer - in the locker room just before gametime and at the center of the field after the game. The latter occasion involves prayers for the star QB who has just experienced the likely end of his H.S. football career and hopes of college or NFL stardom. Such scenes might be seen in any town, on any football field across the U.S. Even if God does love football, does prayer actually have a place in such moments and in such places? Prayer at such moments kind of has a "Holy War" feel to it for me.

It struck me also that football in this show, and perhaps even in our culture, is a religion. The fictional Dillon Panthers' stadium is a cathedral. The football stadium in Celina, Tennessee, (which we pass when we travel to see our parents) is like a white clapboard church upon a hill along some rural road. Players are like acolytes, liturgists, lay readers, interns, elders and deacons. The band along with the cheerleaders represent the choir. The officials work well as stand-ins for ushers and greeters who help everyone get where they are going. The coaches are like the priests and the head coach is the High Priest. The coach in Friday Night Lights certainly served in the role illustrated most fully at the end of the episode as he walks into the crowded hospital to see his injured, star QB. He walks through the crowd offering, I suppose, words of assurance, hugs for the parents, prayers for healing and safety. It closes with him taking the hand of the QB. It reminded me of the television representations of last rites.

Does God love football? What do you think?