So to start out, this is a hilarious video. If this describes you, or a loved one, it’s likely you should continue reading…
This post has a tongue-in-cheek element to it, but as a recovering sports nut myself, it’s also meant to be taken seriously. Too often we can rationalize sinful or idolatrous behavior “because it’s sports,” as if sports were a trump card to do or think whatever we want.
5 Ways to Tell if Your Sports Fandom Needs to be Checked:
1. You get angry during the game. You throw things. You punch things. You yell. A lot. Your children are afraid of you.
2. You get angry after the game. Your day is ruined because your team lost. Real life things like your outlook on life, your relationship with your spouse, your kids and others are negatively affected because a group of people who have no clue who you are didn’t score as many goal-baskets as the group with the other colored shirts on. And you can’t handle this. So you take it out on life and all those around you.
3. You objectify athletes. Typically we only think of objectification of women as something that we should avoid. What’s the problem with objectification? Objectification takes someone who is human and it makes them into something that isn’t human. It takes someone and makes them less human. Humans have a certain level of innate God-given dignity and value. Instead of seeing a person with this dignity and value, objectification sees them as an object for me to consume for my pleasure. Honestly ask yourself, do you see athletes as human beings who are fallible, make mistakes, have feelings, and have a sense of value to them as people, or do you simply see them as commodities? Are you happy when the team you’re playing in fantasy football loses their best player to injury? Do you gleefully race to the waiver wire to try to pick up their backup? Or do you think about the injured player, how painful that injury must be, how brutal the recovery will be, and how he just lost his ability to get his big contract extension. You probably don’t care about any of those things. If it’s a team you like, you just hope his backup is halfway decent so your team doesn’t lose the game or have a bad season. Jerry Seinfeld gives helpful commentary here:
“But it’s sports,” you say. It’s harmless. Typically, objectifying human beings is never a good pattern to get into. It takes you far from reality, which isn’t a good place to live. It teaches you humans aren’t humans, which isn’t a switch you can just turn on and off.
4. You rip on athletes in everyday conversation – Imagine if someone at your workplace made an error. They forgot to staple something. They miscalculated some numbers. How would you talk about them? How would you want people to talk about you if you were the one to make the error? It probably wouldn’t be excusable to rip someone up and down, call them worthless, or to wish death upon them. And you certainly wouldn’t want people saying or thinking these things about you when you mess up. But why is it when a quarterback throws a football and the other team catches it, we immediately yell out such things at him? But it doesn’t stop there. We go online. We make up condescending nicknames. We call him things like “worthless” and “a waste of space.” “But it’s sports, it’s harmless.” Really? A Christian friend of mine who played on a major Big Ten college football team had to delete all of his social media accounts after getting death threats from people because they wanted him benched. Was that harmless? Was that “just sports” for him? The fact is, 99.99% of the country couldn’t do any better. But because fans can’t do any better, they feel entitled to throw all kinds of horrible things at those who can, but who aren’t perfect like fans think they should be. We are messed up people.
5. You worship athletes – If a guy drops a ball, he gets death threats. If he catches a ball, he gets worshiped. It’s a ball. What’s more important: being a good dad or being a good point guard? What’s more important: having integrity or having a 4.3 second 40 yard dash? What’s more important: putting others above yourself or putting up enough stats for your fantasy team to win? If your favorite athlete walked into the room, how would you react? “But it’s sports.” So does that make it okay to worship someone? Does it make it okay to not care about things that actually matter as long as someone is good at putting a ball over a goal line? Who is more impressive to you: your favorite player, or Jesus? Who would you rather meet in person? Who do you get more excited about? Who does your life revolve around?
Sports are fun, but a mature view of them understands they are completely meaningless in the scheme of things. Not only are they meaningless, they can also become detrimental to who you are as a person if you’re not careful.
Enjoy sports.
Appreciate them.
But live in reality.
He is:
Author of Beyond the Battle: A man's guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world
Host of the The Flip Side Podcast
Join an online men's small group led by Noah and team at BeyondTheBattle.net
Great video, that’s me in almost every way.
Sports are a rediculous anachronism from an age where the possibility of war on a day to day basis was real. Now they’re just a relic from our barbaric past.
Are the Lions playing this weekend?
PS-The Eagles are TERRIBLE this year!
Who dares trash my beloved eagles anonymously???? 🙂
Crazy video. . . the answer to What if Adam Sandler and Wierd Al Yankovic had a baby. . .
Gee, thanks for hitting so close to home on that one… 🙂
I’ve been trying to make changes in this area for a while but it isn’t easy. I’m actually thinking of not playing church softball next summer because I make too big of a deal about it and let it ruin my weekend (and then in turn my wife’s) just because I had a bad night.
Being a sports fan becomes so ingrained, it’s not just a switch you can turn off. The wake up call for me was with college football. Suffice it to say, a lot of things that have happened in and around the sport recently made me realize how wrong it is that our society has put so much pressure on these 18-23 year old kids. Those in that age group whom I know personally seem barely removed from teenagers. The players don’t (or at least shouldn’t) get paid. Most of them will never go pro. But fans who likely didn’t even go to those schools live and die by what they do on the field. So I’m trying to make an effort to not care about which shirts college players wear. I’m trying to get to the point where I’m not emotionally invested in the game, but instead am rooting for the players from every school just like I would cheer for the college students at my church to do well in their pursuits, make something of themselves, and contribute to society.
My hope is that this will just be the first step and that I’ll slowly be able to take the emotion out of all sports.
Thanks for the confession Steve 🙂 –Dude I have been a hardcore sports fan for my entire life up until around two years ago. I started praying Hebrews 12:27-28 that God would visibly show me his “unshakable Kingdom” in contrast to the “shakable kingdom” of this world and that I would then invest in his kingdom. It’s been a revolutionary prayer for me. There were a few other things that made me look at football different specifically like having some of the starting MSU players go to my church and to disciple them through some of the pain and anxiety they faced from superfans hating on them, treating them like objects rather than real people. I also played semipro football for one season in 2012 and had some former MSU players on our team, and realized that these guys are just like anyone else, just happened to be good at football, which is really a pretty stupid/arbitrary thing to worship someone over — but also in that experience seeing how desperate for hope and Jesus most football players are, but how they are filling that void with football and self-glory and as a result, will never see Jesus until their playing days are over most likely. and lastly the stuff about concussions scares the crap out of me and makes me look at the game differently. anyway, there’s my confession! blessings brother
Hebrews 12:27 The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe,