The National Football League has been looking for a diversion from its labor pool’s predilection for carrying out sanctioned violence off the field and into the real world.
Since Commissioner Roger Goodell’s press conference hardly helped and Michael Sam is old news, this will have to do. It’s the controversy that recently ensued over a player’s penalty for “excessive celebration” that was really a form of prayer. That the player, Kansas City Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah, is a practicing Muslim only added to the diversion’s media appeal.
Some background.
First, there’s a reason for the NFL’s “excessive celebration” penalty, a form of “unsportsmanlike conduct” in the sometimes ironically quaint vernacular of a collision sport.
Player antics, you may have noticed, had been getting increasingly out of hand unless you were among those who liked cheap, lounge-act theatrics with your football. In another era the admonition would have been to “show some class.” Or “Act as if you expected to score a touchdown.” But the NFL is ratings-driven show business with network cameras poised to follow the swagger after every play.
Eventually a breaking point was reached on players’ look-at-me antics and celebratory routines. Not that boorish players have gone the way of leather helmets and not that the genie of juvenile behavior will ever be rebottled. Far from it. But there are official limits–and consequences. It now costs a team 15 yards.
The other issue is prayer.
The NFL has now acknowledged that the official should not have called that penalty on Abdullah, who had just scored a touchdown on an interception against the New England Patriots. Following his “pick six,” he went sliding on his knees before bowing down and giving praise. According to NFL rules, there is an exception if an act is deemed a demonstration of a player’s faith.
Sliding to prostration should have been a no-call. Just like “Tebowing” was–unless, of course, this is some kind of Muslim-Christian subplot. But that’s beyond domestic-violence diversion.
For some reason, football has always lent itself to the invoking of a higher power. Maybe it’s because of all those “trenches” and “battlefield” metaphors. Whatever the rationale, it’s a tradition, one that begins in high school, where invocations to “the Man Upstairs” are as prevalent as they are hackneyed.
So I say–even at the risk of offending fundamentalist football fans–let’s get real. Would prayer advocates actually vouch for the Deity’s priorities including high-school football? Friday Night Lights are that luminous?
There’s a difference between religious expression and the trivialization of religion. I say a mid-game shout-out to Jesus or Mohammed bespeaks of skewed priorities–and the presumption that agnostics need not bother to game-plan for victory.
Frankly, wouldn’t it make more sense if we all just went secular from high school onward–and simply invoked the inspiring sentiments of Grantland Rice. “For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,” said Rice, “he writes–not that you won or lost–but how you played the Game.”
How’s that for a diversion? From Ray Rice to Grantland Rice.