November 2, 2005--"In Iraq We Ran the Post Pattern"
In addition to addictively reading the NY Times, I confess that many mornings I also listen in on the "Don Imus Show." This morning, one of my favorite senators was among his guests—Rick Santorum. An about-to-be announced candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.
Imus was pressing him about his strong support for the war in Iraq in the light of the fact that no WMDs were found there and now that Scooter Libby has been indicted. Didn’t the good senator from Pennsylvania want to reconsider?
Santorum used a sports analogy that helped me understand the full implication of a story that ran recently in the Times: Santorum said, “We ran the post pattern there when we should have run a screen pass.”
I’m not much of a football aficionado, but I did recognize that a post pattern and screen pass are both offensive plays that teams use to advance the ball and score goals or points.
Back to the Times article (linked below). It is about how more and more big time football team members are encouraged by their coaches to pray both off and on the field. An inveterate channel surfer can witness this any Saturday or Sunday by noticing circles of players kneeling on football fields, in circles, holding hands, with heads bowed in prayer. And I’m not just talking Notre Dame or Bob Jones or Yeshiva Universities. Since becoming head coach at the (public) University of Georgia, Mark Richt has taken his team to church during preseason. The legendary Joe Paterno at Penn State (also a public university) has his players recite the Lord’s Prayer in the locker rooms after games (after being better in my mind than before because that way one can avoid the temptation to ask the Lord to run up the score).
Bobby Bowden of Florida State (you get it, also public) is quick to suggest that we’re not just talking about Christian prayer—“I’ve had atheists, Jews [notice the juxtaposition], Catholics and Muslims play for me, and I’ve never started a boy because of his faith.” I wonder, though, if he’s been going to the mosque with his Muslim players, and what do you imagine he might be doing with his atheists? Do I hear Hooters, Scores??
This would all be silliness if our leaders, including Senator Santorum, saw football as just another entertaining diversion. But when they begin to see the world in football terms, we may want to take a closer look at the interconnection between sports, religion, and politics.
When Bobby Bowden says that “I want my boys to be saved,” maybe we should take him up on that—saved from being sent out on a post pattern on the gridiron called Iraq.
Imus was pressing him about his strong support for the war in Iraq in the light of the fact that no WMDs were found there and now that Scooter Libby has been indicted. Didn’t the good senator from Pennsylvania want to reconsider?
Santorum used a sports analogy that helped me understand the full implication of a story that ran recently in the Times: Santorum said, “We ran the post pattern there when we should have run a screen pass.”
I’m not much of a football aficionado, but I did recognize that a post pattern and screen pass are both offensive plays that teams use to advance the ball and score goals or points.
Back to the Times article (linked below). It is about how more and more big time football team members are encouraged by their coaches to pray both off and on the field. An inveterate channel surfer can witness this any Saturday or Sunday by noticing circles of players kneeling on football fields, in circles, holding hands, with heads bowed in prayer. And I’m not just talking Notre Dame or Bob Jones or Yeshiva Universities. Since becoming head coach at the (public) University of Georgia, Mark Richt has taken his team to church during preseason. The legendary Joe Paterno at Penn State (also a public university) has his players recite the Lord’s Prayer in the locker rooms after games (after being better in my mind than before because that way one can avoid the temptation to ask the Lord to run up the score).
Bobby Bowden of Florida State (you get it, also public) is quick to suggest that we’re not just talking about Christian prayer—“I’ve had atheists, Jews [notice the juxtaposition], Catholics and Muslims play for me, and I’ve never started a boy because of his faith.” I wonder, though, if he’s been going to the mosque with his Muslim players, and what do you imagine he might be doing with his atheists? Do I hear Hooters, Scores??
This would all be silliness if our leaders, including Senator Santorum, saw football as just another entertaining diversion. But when they begin to see the world in football terms, we may want to take a closer look at the interconnection between sports, religion, and politics.
When Bobby Bowden says that “I want my boys to be saved,” maybe we should take him up on that—saved from being sent out on a post pattern on the gridiron called Iraq.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:06 AM
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