God Is Not A Football Fan

“….I really felt the Lord’s hand was on this team”

– Tony Dungy

Down go both Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins, two of the most openly pious head coaches in the NFL since Tom Landry aka ‘God’s Coach’ himself stalked the sidelines. The twosome were rudely knocked out of the NFL playoffs over the weekend despite many inferences that their teams were somehow anointed by God to win the Super Bowl. It would have to been interesting to see just who the almighty would have picked had both teams and their blessed coaches advanced to Detroit for Super Bowl XL or would he have had the game just go on in an eternal tie so as to not show preference for his favored sons, pissing off secular fans everywhere and undoubtably having corporate advertisers singing Glory, Glory Hallelujah. Dungy’s faith is mentioned in nearly every article and interview and ‘Jesus’ Gibbs is so holier than thou that he has not only appeared as a top speaker at national prayer breakfasts attended by the holy roller in chief G.W. Bush but he actually approved his NASCAR team to feature a car hood logo promoting Mel Gibson’s sadistic, gory Jew bashing piece of B Movie cinematic shit The Passion of the Christ.

With the chosen ones now left with months of free time on their hands to petition the lord in prayer can we now all get over the tired and obscene idea that God actually gives a flying fuck about who wins a football game? I mean doesn’t God have better things to do with his time and omnipotence, infinite power and wisdom than to waste time squandering it over such silly and meaningless pursuits? You would think that the near continual invocation of his name by self righteous jackasses the likes of Mark Brunell, Kurt Warner, Reggie White and Jon Kitna among too many others to name would place the almighty upon his great throne every Sunday and Monday night along with the odd Saturday vigorously punching the buttons on a huge universal remote and an eternal subscription to the NFL Sunday Ticket in order to keep tabs on his personal favorites. The ever increasing presence of religion in popular culture with an onslaught of Hollywood entertainment including the most recent franchise, C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (promoted by evengelical megachurches throughouth the land), the best selling pulp trash novels of the Left Behind series as well as the ongoing invocation of religion in advertising and product pimping is as demeaning to the true message of Jesus Christ as any simple blasphemy. The use of religion as a promotional tool shows the deeply disturbing cultural sickness by it’s reduction to a moneymaking vehicle as well as dangerous by continuing to reinforce the image of the U.S. as a ‘Christian Nation’ that threatens our very system of government with being overrun by the true believers seeking to implement theocracy. The theocratic movement despite it’s necessity of using simplistic explanations to complex issues as an allure to converts is in and of itself a huge paradox when it utilizes the most potent of all technologies that is television to further indoctrinate the masses. But what would religion in post 9/11 America be without it’s hypocrisy and myriad contradictions.

Now about that overturned interception by the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu which is one of the worst officiating decisions that I have ever seen in nearly forty years of football watching, to call it curious would be an understatement. Rest assured that it wasn’t the hand of God that intervened on several occasions during this weekend’s AFC divisional playoffs (the pallor of controversy for some reason did not seen to extend to the NFC) with the incredible overturn of the potentially game clinching Pittsburgh interception as well as the refs not throwing a flag on an earlier blatant pass interference call that should have gone against the Colts as well as the phantom interference call on the notorious Colt killer Patriots that gave the Denver Broncos a first and goal on the one during Saturday night’s game. God had nothing to do with it although the fingerprints of Wall Street were everywhere, it seemed like serendipity that so many missed and plain outright bad calls were all made on the same weekend, was it in order to ensure that a Colts appearance in Detroit would become a reality? Imagine the ratings pull and phenomenal tie ins, crossovers and TV movie potential were an evangelical black head coach who has just tragically lost his eldest son to a pre-Christmas suicide were to overcome adversity in order to win the ultimate game leading a team quarterbacked by the eldest son in an NFL dynasty….there you go again, conspiracy theorist…moi?

It would be the greatest fucking human interest/football story since another evangelical Christian Kurt Warner led the NFL’s formerly woeful St. Louis Rams and their miracle high powered arenaball offense to the title a scant year or so after he was stocking cans of cream corn and green beans in a grocery store. Ironically Tony Dungy was the opposing coach when another bogus overturn of a legitimate call in the closing minutes allowed the Ram defense to hold and go on to eke out an 11-6 win advancing to Atlanta to play the Tennessee Titans instead of a network nightmare matchup of Titans-Bucs that would have been so boring that viewers were at the risk of falling asleep or simply flipping the channel to something more exciting than the inevitable low scoring defensive struggle.

I lost a lot of respect for the NFL over the weekend and not only over the horribly botched interception reversal or the equally terrible phantom pass interference in Denver nor the missed mugging in Indy, nor the blown clusterfuck offsides call late in the fourth quarter that resembled a drunken Chinese fire drill, nor any of the other pieces of mounting evidence that pointed to a suspicion that it sure as hell seemed like somebody somewhere wanted the Colts to advamce and was stacking of the deck against the Pats and Steelers in order to ensure that it would happen. It was just the gross tastelessness of the whole goddamned thing and the taint of the evil influence of too much money that is so corrosive to our social fabric today in free market obsessed America

I hate to be overly conspiratorial in regards to the NFL’s insatiable hunger for merchandising and marketing tie in dollars but when a notorious pitchman the likes of former fatso Jared Fogel of the Subway sandwich fast food empire is featured on the CBS postgame show instead of the straight analysis that fans have become used to something is seriously wrong. The NFL has officially jumped the shark and is now as much a laughingstock as the NBA and WWF in my opinion. Outrage over the interception reversal was rampant on Monday, and reached the point where the NFL itself even had to admit that it was a ‘bad call’ and blamed it on an error in judgement by referee Pete Morelli. The NFL can throw Morelli under the bus but judging from the amount of comments that I heard and read today the damage may already have been done with the integrity of the league being questioned. Hey, I have nothing wrong with entertainment but if the outcomes are going to be rigged to ensure profitability then at least have the decency to call it entertainment and don’t foist it off as an actual sporting contest. Just one thing to think about on the NFL from now on when spending those big bucks on official team clothing that may or may not have been a product of sweatshop labor, ask yourself if you would pay top dollar for shirts with logos for Walmart, Burger King, Haliburton, McDonalds, Pepsi or any other giant corporation to wear around as free advertising for their products. At this rate it’s only a matter of fucking time until the corporations start naming the teams themselves instead of the stadiums that the public is screwed into financing.

At least for that mutinous loser Peyton Manning the ending was appropriate, now he can blame his offensive line and idiot kicker for blowing the game as is his style. Poor little Archie, it’s always everyone’s fault but his…how absolutely Dan Marino like and he can go down as a similar loser more interested in personal stats and glory than a title. Coach Peyton is now 3-6 in the playoffs after totally abandoning the run and a red hot Edgerrin James and when combined with the fact that he never could close the deal during his college career at the University of Tennessee he is going to wear the mantle of ‘choker’ until he actually manages to win a came in crunch time and the next one will be the first. Like Marino before him he will pile up record numbers, Hall of Fame numbers but always be remembered as the guy who couldn’t win the big one. Listening to his coach instead of embarrassing a man coming off of the tragic loss of his son to a suicide four days prior to Christmas on national television and creating a huge future rift in the locker room would help but when it comes down right down to the bottom line it is always about Peyton. With all of the tutelage that he received from his father apparently he missed the one most valuable lesson on the concept that there is no I in team. The Colts all made a big show of turning out for James Dungy’s funeral in Tampa in a show of support and togetherness and Peyton was the leader, but this was before he found it necessary to shank Dungy in the back during Sunday’s loss. Now Manning and the rest can always blame their failures on the distraction from the tragic events, the crutch is already there and if all else fails the idiot kicker can take the fall. Peyton Marino’s waving off of the punt team was as dismissive of his coach as it was disrespectful and will forever cement his image as the spoiled, selfish ass that he is.

Shed no tears for Dungy’s aborted quest for Super Bowl glory, in actuality he should already have at least one ring and most likely two from his tenure in Tampa Bay where his defense set standards for dominance. The first time out he was robbed by that aforementioned other bogus replay that overturned an obvious catch by WR Bert Emanuel that would have brought the Bucs dangerously close to ending the great storyline of the Kurt Warner led Rams and his butt ugly wife who viewers had to watch ad nauseum wearing a hideous, feathered blue dress that looked like it was dug out of a dumpster behind an East St. Louis Salvation Army store. The second botched title season died at the hand of Dungy himself whose decision to make a political statement by anointing the extremely mediocre Shaun ‘Burger’ King as his starting quarterback and as a result laid waste to what could have been a dream season with Super Bowl XXXV being in Tampa in what would have been essentially a home game for the Bucs. King predictably (to everyone with the exception of Tony D.) underachieved spectacularly by failing to produce a much needed first round bye and home field advantage and Tampa Bay was eventually routed in the wild card game by the Eagles in the dank Philly shit pit known as the Vet. The team quit on Dungy the next year and his ticket was punched to Indy when he was fired by the Bucs. Incidentally his replacement won the Super Bowl once he left and with King relegated to the scout team where he belonged.

It is however a damned shame when a man who despite his overt piety is as decent a human as Tony Dungy who to his credit is perhaps the most respected man in the NFL (other than by Peyton Manning) is latched onto by religious right and corporate bloodsuckers whose tendency to flock in parasitic manner like scabies to a host is as exploitative as it is stomach turning. Despite the weekend losses for Gibbs and Dungy there will still be those who insist that God is somehow invested in the outcome on their teams behalf, here is something for those people to ponder:

Maybe it actually was God who caused the idiot kicker Vanderjagt’s field goal attempt to miss, maybe he was sending a message that he really couldn’t give a goddamn about who wins a stupid goddamned football game.