Kentucky Football and God

by Jonathan Harrison

The world of sports tends to be a bastion of superstition. Many unsuccessful teams blame misfortune on curses. Most teams gets lucky once a every other decade so if you're team doesn't, then they must have pissed off the owner of a goat (The Chicago Cubs), traded Babe Ruth to finance a Broadway show (The Boston Red Sox) or done something else so malicious that supernatural powers continually punish them in the most ironic way.  

While the basketball team of the University of Kentucky has been successful for decades, the SEC has pummeled University of Kentucky football for decades. Since the 1980s Kentucky has owned the second and third longest losing streaks to a single team (Tennessee and Florida respectively). Kentucky snapped the first losing streak at 26 games on November 26, 2011 when they used a wide receiver to play quarterback. The second losing streak still stands, perhaps they should try punting on every down.

During the 26 years that Kentucky lost to Tennessee, Kentucky found every way imaginable to lose: they lost in triple overtime on missed ten-yard field goals and they lost by huge blowouts (59-0 in 1994). Before the streak was snapped in 2011, I had never been alive to witness Kentucky beat Tennessee in a game of football. After 26 years, superstitions reigned supreme. Most Kentucky fans thought that a higher power was punishing Kentucky football for running off Bear Bryant in the 1950s. We didn't deserve to win in football if we couldn't keep the most successful college coach of 20th century. Apparently God really likes houndstooth.

I prayed on the day that Kentucky beat Tennessee. I prayed hard. "Lord. They've won 26 years in a row. Show us grace and mercy by letting us beat them once every 26 years." Of course, I had prayed the same prayer the last weekend in November since I was old enough to understand how football works. God remained silent.  

In the beginning, I figured that God was either cruel or putting off gratification until losing to Kentucky meant Tennessee would miss out on a national championship. Justice would be sweet. By the end of the streak, I came to the conclusion that God didn't care about the outcome of a football game or how it affected the thousands and thousands of people who idolized winning to the extent that it came between them and their relationship with God. Clearly, God has never heard "Rocky Top" sung by 70,000 UT fans after Kentucky lost to Tennessee on the last play of the game or He would smite the city of Knoxville off the map for their idolatry.

In all seriousness, why do casual fans pray more for the outcome of a game than for the people playing the sport? Football is a rather violent sport, so praying for the players would seem intuitive. Why do we care so much about a bunch of people adhering to contrived rules? Why do the actions of a bunch of 18-21 year old males dictate the happiness of so many people? And why do we believe that God has such a big influence on something so arbitrary?

I think we feel that since we care about the outcome of the game, then God must have an overwhelming interest in it as well. I don't know enough about the nature of God to reflect on how much God cares about Kentucky beating Tennessee in football. I assume that the angels sang for a whole week after it happened, but Tennessee fans probably believe that God showered them in love by letting Tennessee continue winning year after year after year. Logically speaking, God can't be partial to one sports team over another. Unless it's the Green Bay Packers, but I digress.

You can apply this same lesson to any competitive arena. Academia, job promotions, etc. We're all built to want to outlast everyone else, which is what makes the gospel so revolutionary. Not only does the most powerful being in the universe care about us, but God, almost paradoxically, seems to care more for the poor and less fortunate (e.g. Kentucky Football). The entire idea of getting ahead or being better doesn't exist in the Kingdom of God. If you want to be great, you must serve. If you're judging your success by wins and losses, then you've failed. Trust me, I know. I'm a fan of Kentucky football, I know something about failure.

Jonathan is a former aspiring librarian who has recently decided to take up farming because Paul Harvey's ghostly voice made it sound so wonderfully noble. He also feels compelled to buy a Dodge pickup. I'm sure the two are unrelated. You can follow him on Twitter @jonateharrison.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

You might also like:  

• Consuming Manti Te'o
• What If Denominations Formed Athletic Conferences
• Yes, I Am Rooting For Laundry

On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 12 - Atticus Finch Comes to Life (An Interview with Lee Camp)

by Ben Howard

In this special episode of the On Pop Theology podcast, I interview Dr. Lee Camp, theology and ethics professor at Lipscomb University as well as the mind behind the Tokens radio show, about Tokens, his latest book Who Is My Enemy? and even a little college football. Join us as we discuss taking yourself too seriously, bad book titles, and a story about an elderly woman who really doesn't like it when Notre Dame loses to the Jesuits. 

Be sure to check out Tokens online at www.tokensshow.com and on Twitter @TokensShow. If you're in Nashville, don't forget to buy your tickets for the March 7th show at Collins Alumni Auditorium entitled "The Birds and the Bees and Loving Thee." Enjoy, and as always, please rate and review the show, we'd love to hear your feedback. 

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store. If you download the show through iTunes, please be so kind as to rate and review us. We want your feedback and it helps the show to grow.  

Also, remember to "Like" On Pop Theology on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OnPopTheology for all the updates, posts, and links throughout the week.

Finally, if you'd like to stream the podcast, you can do that here: 

Peace,
Ben 

If you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to say hi, you can contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com

The Championship Myth

by Ben Howard

Even though I grew up in central Ohio about an hour outside of Columbus, I've had a circuitous root to my Ohio State Buckeyes fandom. When I was little (read: until college), I was defiantly anti-Ohio State. I mean, everybody at school was a fan of the Buckeyes. Everybody at church was a fan of the Buckeyes. Everybody in my family was a fan of the Buckeyes. I had to be an individual. So I told people I rooted for Michigan, but I actually just rooted against Ohio State.

You must be saying to yourself, “I can't believe it! I've never known Ben to be calculatingly opposed to something just because it's popular. I've never known him to be stubbornly iconoclastic! This must all be balderdash!” It's a surprise, I know, but it's true.

I didn't really start rooting FOR the Buckeyes until I went to college. Somehow through a combination of reactionary state pride (Oklahomans and Texans are crazy annoying about college sports) and trying to find a reason to hang out with a girl from Ohio who happened to be an Ohio State fan (I have done many stupider things for a pretty girl's attention), I became a real true Ohio State fan.

I'm glad I became a fan, because this season Ohio State has made me realize something that's fundamentally true about sports. Championships don't matter. At least, they don't matter as much as you think they do or as much as you're told they do.

You see, this season due to a scandal involving players exchanging memorabilia for tattoos (a NCAA no-no) and a respected head coach then lying to cover it up (a major NCAA no-no), the Buckeyes find themselves banned from the postseason. However, I still find myself finding a way to watch the game every Saturday and I'm still enjoying watching my favorite team go undefeated to this point in the season. According to what I've always been taught by sports writers, announcers and the like, I'm supposed to care less because my team can't win a title.

But it's just not true. I care the same amount.

In fact, I assume most people who watch sports really only care about the one game they're watching. They want their team to win that game. They want to be entertained and happy about that one game. For instance, the Premier League is huge in England. 44 teams compete in the two highest levels of English soccer. 20 of those teams compete in the highest level, which is one of the most popular and lucrative sports leagues in the world. Of those 20 teams, 6 have won a championship in the past 20 years and maybe only 3 or 4 teams are legitimate threats to actually win the title on a year to year basis.

If the myth of the championship holds true, then the fans of all those other teams shouldn't care at all because they can't win the league. They can only achieve different levels of mediocre.

But that's not why fans watch the game. They watch to see their city, state or alma mater represented. They watch because they enjoy the style, the strategy and the athleticism of the game. In the same way that you don't read a novel or watch a movie because it has a good ending, you don't root for a sports team because they win a title. You enjoy the story, the thing itself.

The Christian story falls victim to this myth of the championship, this myth of victory. It's not just the conservatives or the liberals, it's everybody. Whether the “championship” in question is saving the lost, getting to heaven, eliminating poverty or maybe destroying some disease that causes suffering all over the globe, the church has become obsessed with winning. We have to achieve the “big goal” at the end of the road.

Here's the problem: that understanding of Christian achievement, of winning, fundamentally misunderstands the reason for faith and the reason for the church.

Faith isn't about winning. It's about the process of belief and doubt, the ebbs and flows wherein we encounter God and then find ourselves at a distance. It's about the dynamic relationship with the God who created us, whether it's good, bad, or confusing.

You see, there's another flaw to the championship myth. It ends. And as St. Benedict so beautifully said, “Always we begin again.” There is always another season and another champion.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't aim for these lofty goals, but I am saying they do not define our faith. We are simply called to do our best in the next play, the next game, the next season. We are called to encounter the task set before us. If we win, we learn and if we fail, we learn as well. The process is not about being perfect, though it is something we hope to achieve and something we aspire to, even if only for a moment.

So dream your dreams and aspire to your goals, but if you find that you cannot reach them, do not fear. Your live is not measured in your championships, it is measured in your quests.

Peace,

Ben

You can follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

Also, you can subscribe to On Pop Theology via RSS feed or email on the top right corner of the main page.

Expectations and Badger Football

by Josh Kiel

I've touched on this before, but there's a mental process I go through between August and mid-September every year pertaining to my Saturday entertainment prospects. This is my seasonal evaluation of the Wisconsin Badger football beginning with late summer anticipation and continuing with preseason expectations and early season predictions.

I've decided this won't be a particularly good season for Badger football and that I'll need to find other venues for worthwhile entertainment on my fall Saturday's. It's not that I know the Badgers will have a bad season, I just predict they will. There's a set pattern that I've used to arrive at this prediction which I use so often to arrive at so many predictions in life.

Initially there's anticipation. In this instance, the late summer knowledge that fall and all of its wonderful benefits will soon arrive. My desires for the season include the cooler weather, the changing of the leaves, the arrival of the best styles of beer, and the hope that the Wisconsin Badgers can put together a great season that will lead to them playing in a BCS bowl game. I even have the hope that they could buck trends and win such a bowl game.

None of those things had yet arrived in late summer though so all I'm left with is the building anticipation. As the anticipation is building, events come around which develop those anticipations into expectations.

When the first cool days occur and the autumnal selections arrive at my bar of choice my expectations for fall begin developing. When the preseason rankings were released and Wisconsin was ranked 12th in the nation my expectations were built even further. With that reinforcement my expectations became high, Rose Bowl or better, and I began to expect stellar blowout performances in the first few games as the teams they were playing should have been easy pickings.

At this point the hopes are still high since I have no reason not to expect great things from my collegiate team of choice, but reality does not play to the scripts in our minds and my expectations, I was soon to discover, were far too high.

My beloved Badgers opened the season with a narrow win of 26-21 over Northern Iowa. For those not familiar with college football, as a general rule, teams with directional indicatiors in their names tend to be second or third rate and should be an easy victory for a major conference team like Wisconsin.

While this close game was concerning I wasn't totally disheartened as Wisconsin does sometimes take a little while to develop a rhythm in the first game. The following week sounded the death knell for my predictions of success, a 10-7 loss to Oregon State. It is now obvious that the team is not producing results at the level necessary to meet my prior expectations. The third weeks narrow win against Utah State only furthered my conviction that a lackluster season is before us. Now that I'm forced to lower my expectations to coincide with the reality of the results and I can't help but develop an unenthusiastic prediction for the remainder of the season.

I'm predicting that Wisconsin will finish 7-5. I also predict that this may be optimistic even for pessimism. Expectations are either upheld or disappointed depending upon results and as a rational human being I can't help but draw conclusions. Given, only 3 of 12 games have been played and they may win all of the remaining nine. That does not fit with my new lowered expectations. Predictions help us to expect future outcomes and accept them more readily.

I've come to notice I make predictions about most things in life, often pessimistically. There are a myriad number of pending outcomes in my life which are all in one phase or another of this process.

My prediction's for life are often ones of material comfort and social and spiritual dissatisfaction. Indeed they are not the most optimistic, and most would call them pessimistic.

If I'm honest this is because I can control myself absolutely, and thus control my material comfort, while I cannot control how others react to me thus leading to social and spiritual dissatisfaction, so I'm less optimistic.

Control is a primary concern for our entire culture. We crave control and do what we can to maintain it. It's my opinion that my pessimism is merely a form of taking control of the negative. If I mentally prepare myself for the worst anything can offer then I will be given a reprieve from the fallen world that we find ourselves in.

Perhaps pessimism is a way of deceiving ourselves, if we expect the terrible and only the mildly displeasing happens it may seem to be comparatively good in the end. The level of pessimism is also comparative to the stakes involved. If I'm overly optimistic about the prospects of Wisconsin football, I'll be mildly disappointed. On the other hand, If I'm overly optimistic about the course my life will take I may end up emotionally crushed at many points during the duration of it. This is the security of pessimism.

The college football season is roughly a quarter of the way in, but I've already established my expectations, similarly my life is about a third complete, but I have firmly held expectations about it as well. For me life is an endless cycle of anticipation, expectation, and adjusting expectation into prediction once enough data has been gathered. For me it is a way to maintain comfort and control. Whether the predictions are good or bad I am prepared for what I consider to be the most probable outcome of events and in being prepared I can accept them more easily.

Editor's note: I can understand the frustration Josh voices in this essay, and I think it's a feeling a lot of us experience. In the face of failure, pain, sadness, or disappointment, often occurring in situations that are beyond our control, we try to (re)claim control of our lives and assert power over our own destiny. However, I think the story of the Christian faith is one that disabuses us of this notion. I think we learn from the Christian story that the only proper use of control or power is to surrender it. Perhaps this will lead to happiness, or perhaps it will lead to more pain, I can't promise anything, but I think it leads to peace.

Josh and I would both love to hear any feedback you have or even just a quick note to say that something resonated with you.

Peace,

Ben

For updates on On Pop Theology, you can subscribe to us via the RSS and email feeds on the main page (right side of the screen near the top), or you can follow me on Twitter @BenHoward87.

On Selling Beer and Jesus

by Josh Kiel

This Thursday the college football season will be upon us. Upon its commencement, I will rejoice and be glad because I am a college football junkie. I can't get enough of it and hence my television viewing is going to increase exponentially. As with any televised sporting event this means my mind is going to be bombarded with a slew of commercials telling me exactly which beer will make my life the most amazing. This is convenient because I love beer, so Here We Go.

There will naturally be an onslaught of the "Lite" varieties of cheap tasteless crappy beers which claim that I am committing an atrocity against everything sacred if I do not drink their beers while grilling on a Saturday. Others will suggest that wherever their beer goes a party with beautiful people a plenty will follow. Some will even suggest that my choosing another beer as opposed to their brand will require me to relinquish my "man card" because drinking Domestic Swill Lite B over Domestic Swill Lite A is supposedly unmanly. 

A step above those beers, though not by much, are the imports that suggest that their beers are more sophisticated and will enable me to be a jack-of-all trades leading a woman on a crazy high pace date whilst destroying property, and that no one will care because of how cool they know I am by the green bottle in my hand {Heineken}. Or I can be a touch more like the Most Interesting(/Pretentious) Man in the World. Or, with the twist of a bottle cap, I can convince myself that my hectic loud surroundings throughout the rest of the week can be transformed into a serene beach with waves lapping upon the sand and a hot woman in a bikini lounging next to me. 

If the concept was not so ridiculous people could express outrage that they should notify the consumer "Actual results may vary". They don't need to though because they know that we know that those results won't actually happen. We are merely being reminded of the variety of different beers available for our choosing and are whimsically being prodded to buy one brand over the other. 

Since we don't actually expect those results there's little harm in the ridiculousness of the commercials. Our goal when drinking a beer is to relax and enjoy the flavor of the beer (if possible with the brands alluded to above) so we don't expect it to solve our life's problems, it's not like their marketing Christianity or something.

Is how we market Christianity all that different though? Are there any of us who have not heard it at least alluded to that Christianity is a simple and straightforward solution to all of life's problems. Follow Jesus and he will lead you to the promised land of a wife, 2.6 kids, a dog, and a house in the suburbs. Follow Jesus and we have a four word mantra to walk you through all possible decisions you may ever face. Follow Jesus and all of your troubles will disappear because the God of the universe will then be on your side and what could possibly go wrong after that. 

If only it were so simple.

What Would Jesus Do? It's simple and it conveys a point just like Here We Go, Stay Thirsty, or Life's a Beach, but it's a coverall and would rarely satisfy us in the ways we would like to be. WWJD is a difficult proposal if you find out that someone is embezzling money to pay for their children's cancer treatment. The fact that Jesus would just miracle that kid back to full health doesn't help me in making a moral judgment in how to evaluate such a situation. 

In reality, the call would be that I should assist that person in caring for their child and paying for his treatment. This could be poorly received because that would set back my savings for the house in the suburbs that I'll get with my Christian wife and 2.6 kids which, as I was raised to understand, is the standard Christian life path. 

The disconnect here is more profound and more disappointing than the resentment I may feel when after drinking a few beers I am still not the most interesting man in the world and a party or beach has not overtaken my present surroundings. The fact is that if I view Christianity as a path to something I will be left unfulfilled.

In keeping with my beer laden analogy perhaps we should view Christianity as a craft beer. The beers which have no advertising because their quality is inherent when consumed and experienced. Those that have no presuppositions that they may lead you to additional enjoyments because they are sufficiently enjoyable in and of themselves. 

I guess my primary point of all this is whether we view Christianity as a means to an end or the end itself. Whether at the end of the day our identities as Christians fulfill us regardless of where it may lead us or what it may cost us because our fulfillment is in that identity and not in the supplemental benefits that our culture has come to associate with it.