“Hi, my name is Ned, and I am addicted to football!”

I have come to believe that the NFL and the NCAA, driven as they are by greed, are hoping to replace faith in our society.  They want us to exchange faith for hedonistic activities aimed to ensnare as many of us into gambling and other resource-draining activities as possible.  Through clever public relations, they pretend to support the Armed Forces, social justice, and first responders among us, but this is all really clever window dressing to cynically separate sports fans from their incomes. 

As a Christian, I suspect that football is encouraging people of faith to violate several of the Ten Commandments.  The most obvious of these is God’s call for us to keep the Sabbath day holy.  Many Christians see Sunday as the Sabbath, while some see it as Saturday.  Under the current traditional football schedule, college games are played on Saturday, and professional games are played on Sunday.  It seems to me that this arrangement forces believers who are coaches, players, stadium workers, and cheerleaders to violate the 4th Commandment and live with troubled consciences.  This schedule also forces fans who are believers to make choices that favor sports to the detriment of Sabbath observance. 

Once upon a time, professional football was a Sunday sport.  Now the NFL plays on Mondays, Thursdays, Sundays, and even Saturdays when college football winds down.  The ever-increasing expansion of football is hard to ignore.  Way back when, NFL games would start after most Christians had returned from morning worship on Sunday.  With the advent of games in Europe, however, Christians have to choose between going to morning worship and watching NFL football from London or Hamburg. 

The lure of sports enticing people of faith away from the Sabbath is not new.  In the award-winning film Chariots of Fire (1981), the Paris Olympics (1924) included Scottish running star Eric Liddell, a devout Christian, and forced him to choose between his faith and his sport.  To the astonishment of his countrymen and the sports world, Liddell chose his faith.

Look as we might, we see no “Eric Liddells” in football today. You will see players genuflecting, praying, and wearing symbols of their Christian faith during games.  The occasional John 3:16 placard will show up in the stands behind the goals posts as one team is lining up for a field goal.  These displays indicate that faith in Jesus is still alive, but only under the tight control of football.

Football also urges us to ignore other commandments.  The first says you shall have no other gods before me.  Is football asking us to give it first place in our lives?  Will football save our souls?

Another commandment says, You shall not make idols.  Look at the sales of football paraphernalia.  As I was walking my dog the other night, I saw a six-foot blow-up Santa in a neighbor’s yard.  Instead of his traditional red costume, he was wearing Ravens Purple and had a football instead of a sack full of toys under his arm!

I could go on, but I am still Ned, and I am addicted to football.

Ned Cosby, a prolific contributor to American Thinker, is a former pastor, veteran Coast Guard officer, and a retired career public high school teacher. His newest novel OUTCRY is a love story exposing the refusal of Christian leaders to report and discipline clergy who sexually abuse our young people.  This work of fiction addresses crimes that are all too real. Cosby has also written RECOLLECTIONS FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE, tracing his own odyssey from 1954 to the present.  For more info, visit Ned Cosby.

Image: Marco Verch Professional Photographer via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).