For several years now I have sensed my interest in sports may have crossed the line from past-time to idol worship. I have prayed several times that if my heart towards sports was sinful that God might take away my desire for it. Since He did not take the desire away, I assumed that everything was ok. However, the last few months, in the height of football season and now in the beginning of basketball season, I found myself spending most of my free time reading sports articles during the week and many hours watching games on the weekends. Recently, while glued to a football article on the iPad like an alcoholic clinging to his booze, I looked down at my son on the floor who was lying face up, tired of playing by himself with his inanimate toy and verbally expressing his discontent. I realized at that moment that I was choosing to feed my sports addiction over engaging with my son.
My sports addiction has been especially strong this year. Although my favorite college football team (UConn) was doing poorly, I had shifted my energy to a new team. Last week the Kansas State Wildcats were 10-0 and ranked number one in the country. Since Nicole was a graduate of Kansas State, I felt it was legit to jump on the band-wagon. The team’s story was compelling too. In the late 80’s, Kansas State was considered the worst football team in Division I college athletics. They lost 27 straight games and their own players had to go door-to-door in the community to sell tickets. Then they hired a new coach, Bill Snyder. He turned the program completely around. In 1998, during the first year of the BCS, they finished #3 nationally and although eight teams were invited to play in the high profile BCS games (with #1 and #2 playing in the national championship game), K-State was left out because they didn’t have the big name or fan-base. Because of the recognized unfairness in the system that year, the BCS officials created the “Kansas State Rule” which means that the #3 team in the BCS will automatically get to play in a BCS bowl – too late to help Kansas State that year though. Unfortunately the following year, they finished ranked 6th nationally, but once again were left out of the BCS bowls. In 2005, Bill Snyder retired and Kansas State reverted back to their losing ways. A few years later, they fired their new coach and rehired Bill Snyder, bringing him out of retirement. Then this year happened. Their quarterback, Collin Klein, is an outspoken Christian who reminds many of Tim Tebow. He plays very much like Tim Tebow and at least up until last week, was the leading candidate to win the Heisman trophy. Needless to say, there was plenty for me to get excited about this year’s Kansas State team. While rooting for my wife’s alma mater I was rooting for an underdog team that was never taken seriously by the football powers that be and that was now led by a Christian. All they had to do was to win two more games and they were assured of playing in the national championship game. The two teams they had left on their schedule were lowly Baylor (losing record) and a decent Texas team at home. Shouldn’t be any problem since Kansas State had been easily winning games against very good teams all year long.
Last Saturday night Kansas State played the Baylor game. Since I did not get ESPN I could not watch the game when it was being played. However, I was able to watch the replay on the internet on ESPN3. So I woke up early Sunday morning with the rest of the family still asleep so I could watch it. I set up the computer for the game then felt the draw to read my bible before I started watching. One of the passages I read was Jeremiah 16:10-13 “When you tell these people all this and they ask you, ‘Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?’ then say to them, ‘It is because your ancestors forsook me,’ declares the Lord, ‘and followed other gods and served and worshiped them. They forsook me and did not keep my law. But you have behaved more wickedly than your ancestors. See how all of you are following the stubbornness of your evil hearts instead of obeying me. So I will throw you out of this land into a land neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’” Although my “ancestors” (e.g. father) have no interest in sports, I felt like the rest of the passage was speaking to me. The “other god” that I served was sports and I was convicted about my sin of idol worship. So again I prayed that if God wanted me to give up sports that He would take the desire away. Then I closed my bible and went on to watch my all-important football game. What I witnessed was an inexplicable unraveling of the #1 team in the country to a mediocre team at best and with it I began to see my idol start to crumble. When Kansas State lost, I started to see my love of sports in light of Jeremiah 16:19 “worthless idols of no benefit at all.”
Since my football team idol was smashed and my hopes of them winning a national championship gone, I focused my worship back to my oldest sports idol, UConn Men’s basketball. I had followed UConn basketball closely since I was in middle school when I had my gym locker next to Jeff Calhoun, son of the then new, unproven UConn Head basketball coach Jim Calhoun. Every game seemed like an important event to me. In college I would watch the games on a little black and white TV in my dorm room, ordering Pizza Hut pan pizza as one of my rituals. I saw them win 3 national championships and learned each time that the championships were not enough, I always wanted more. Two years ago, after UConn won their third national championship, I was discussing with my cousin Darren why we rooted for UConn when the only reason we had to root for them was that we were from the same state. We didn’t even graduate from the school and my very remote connection with the coach’s son was insignificant. Besides, coach Calhoun had a reputation as an ornery, cantankerous state celebrity (although when I met him at the Maui invitational in 1999, he was quite friendly and even went out of his way to find his son Jeff in the crowds so we could reconnect – I guess public reputations don’t always tell the full story) who was recently accused and found guilty of not promoting an atmosphere of compliance with NCAA regulations. Furthermore, his players’ academic performance was among the bottom handful in the country. Because of that, they were allowed fewer scholarship players and were declared ineligible for their conference and the NCAA tournaments for the 2012-13 season. It is with this backdrop that Jim Calhoun decided he would retire this year, endorsing the hiring of his two-year assistant coach Kevin Ollie. Kevin Ollie played for Jim Calhoun in the mid-1990’s and then 13 years professionally playing for about as many teams as he did years in the NBA. He was known for his good work ethic, never give up attitude and for his ability to mentor the younger players on his teams. His NBA experience was the only qualification he had to be a head coach for one of the best basketball programs in the country. But the story gets even more interesting. I learned that Coach Ollie is an outspoken Christian. He demands the best of his players and makes sure they represent the team well. On one occasion, one of the players flexed his muscles after a good play. Coach Ollie immediately put a stop to it saying that such displays are not what UConn basketball is all about. How refreshing! Now I finally had a good reason to root for UConn basketball. Unfortunately, they lost many of their best players last year including two NBA lottery picks so they were not expected to be very good this year. They were unranked at the beginning of the season and UConn only gave Coach Ollie a one-year contract because they weren’t sure if he was good enough to be the coach permanently. The team’s first game was the Armed Forces classic in Ramstein, Germany against #13 Michigan State. UConn pulled off the upset making Kevin Ollie’s coaching debut successful. One week later (the night my Kansas State football idol was crushed) UConn took a 3-0 record and a #23 nationally ranking into a game against relative unknown and unranked Quinnipiac in the Paradise Jam classic. The game was not available online so I couldn’t watch it. But with the lights off and my wife asleep in bed next to me, I was able to follow each play as it happened on my iPad. At halftime, UConn surprisingly trailed by a few points. Remembering what happened to my football idol earlier that day, I was afraid of what was going to happen to my basketball idol. I decided I didn’t want to know. I turned off and set the iPad down, metaphorically setting down my idol of sports worship. The next day I did not even check to see who won the game. It didn’t matter. Even now one week later, I do not know who won that game. Thankfully, God has taken most (but not all) of the desire for my idol away. But He did it after I made the decision and took the step of laying it down at His feet. I hope that my heart and my family’s well-being will be better for it.
Sports in and of themselves are not wrong or sinful. People who play sports are not bad and people who watch sports are not bad. I truly hope Collin Klein is successful not in winning games but in representing Christ to those who watch football. Likewise, I hope and pray that Kevin Ollie will be an ambassador for Christ in a state and a school that has turned far away from God. Nevertheless, my concern is for myself and others who watch and follow sports in the wrong way. Many times while watching a UConn basketball game I would shake almost uncontrollably, worried about the outcome of the game even well before “crunch time.” It is easy for us sports fans (more appropriately termed fanatics) to take sports too seriously to the point that it consumes us. When following sports, otherwise a neutral entity, becomes an addiction or an idol it is no longer neutral but sinful. One of the problems with the sports idol is that it often goes unrecognized because sports addictions are not blatantly sinful like pornography or alcoholism. But the addiction of sports can still be destructive. Unfortunately, most sports addicts don’t recognize the destruction. Additionally, we fail to realize that there really isn’t any benefit to our team’s winning. All we get out of it is a fleeting feeling of exhilaration (unless of course someone had a bet on the game in which they may get a financial benefit but that’s another addiction in itself). The brief thrill of victory only leads to a stronger desire for the team to do it again next year. This makes me think of the Yankees, sometimes termed the “evil empire”. Isn’t 25 plus world series wins enough? No, they want more. How much more will make them satisfied? Answer: none.
One of my favorite sports story lines of all time and perhaps my only victory in the battle over my sports addiction up until now came in 2004 and it involved the so-called Evil Empire, the Yankees. The Red Sox had not won a world series in 86 years since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. They called it the “curse of the Babe” and it did seem like they were cursed never again to win a world series – they had several times when they should have won but they always came up short. As a 12-year-old boy in 1986 I watched the ball go through Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs when they were on the brink of a world series victory. Instead, they lost again. But in 2004, something different happened. They were playing against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, the winner of which would earn the right to play in the World Series that year. It was the fourth game of a seven game series and the Red Sox had their backs up against the wall down 3 games to none. In the ninth inning, the Yankees brought their best closer in the game to finish off the Red Sox. Shockingly, he failed. No team in baseball had ever come back from being down 3-0 in a seven game series, yet that was exactly happened. The Red Sox stormed back to win the next four games and the series. They then went on to destroy the St. Louis Cardinals in a laugher of a four game sweep in the World Series. The Red Sox victory that year was the only satisfying win I had ever experienced as a sports fan. The curse had been broken and I didn’t care if the Red Sox ever won again (I sure didn’t want them to become like the Yankees who seemed to win every year) As far as I was concerned, there was no need ever to play another Major League baseball game again. I never followed baseball seriously after that and I am happy that the desire to do so is now gone.
My feelings about the Red Sox are not typical of sports fans, nor are they typical of my experience with other sports such as college basketball or football. To me and most fans, sports is like money: the more you win the more you want. I can name team after team, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State (and yes, UConn) whose fans “have” so many championships that they don’t know what to do with them all. They just know they want more. But now I have found myself wanting more the championships. More than what sports can give me. It’s time for me to be a Jesus fanatic because when Jesus won the victory, His victory was satisfying. Sports don’t benefit me but Jesus’ victory benefits me completely with forgiveness of sins. What sports team can promise that? Not even Notre Dame can promise forgiveness of sins. And unlike Notre Dame or any other sports team, Jesus doesn’t have to go back year after year to try to win again – he did it once and for all, and it was enough.
I’ve tried to think of why I and so many other people (mostly men) enjoy sports so much. There is much about sports that is redeemable. I’ve mentioned a few stories already that make for great “good vs. evil” drama. When we know the stories behind the teams, it makes each game even more meaningful. I think men love to watch sports because it fires up something in their spirit that God created. There is something in a man’s being that longs for a battle, a competition, and a champion. Since most of us do not charge daily into battle (although many are literally fighting for our country as I write), watching sports provides an outlet for us men to satisfy our need for competition. But we have to be careful not to try to use sports to fill our spiritual needs that they were not meant to fill. Only Jesus can satisfy those needs.
Having not seen or read about any sports this week has put my heart at rest. I really feel a sense of freedom that I didn’t even know I was missing. I have much more time now that I can spend with my family and invest in our future. Will I ever watch a football or basketball game again? I hope so, but I don’t know. Perhaps a sports addiction is like alcoholism – one drink and you’re back to the addiction. I hope that’s not the case. I hope that someday I can casually watch a football game or basketball game without living or dying based on the outcome. Because I know that following sports cannot give life but in some cases can bring about a spiritual death. There is too much at stake in my own heart to be ruled by a game. It’s time for God to rule my heart and for me to follow His lead.
