When our exterminator, Ervin Humes, showed up at the house back in September 2023, he and I did what Alabamians do: We talked football and Jesus, the two forms of Alabamian religion. Ervin enthused over Paul’s hymn to Christ in his epistle to the Colossians, we lamented the state of the world, and . . . . Continue Reading »
When my wife and I moved away from the Midwest some fifteen years ago, we began an age of perpetual homesickness. I’d tear up at the sight of Notre Dame’s stadium on Saturday football broadcasts, recalling our years in South Bend where I did my graduate studies, only just ended. I watched every . . . . Continue Reading »
At Alabama, Saban has created a culture that ultimately reflects his Catholic convictions. Continue Reading »
Games played under Friday night lights are the preseason for the greater joys of marriage, fatherhood, and vocation. Continue Reading »
NFL player Gino Marchetti, who died April 29, was an inspiration in many ways. Continue Reading »
Outside sports, where can you see fine-tuned teamwork in action, where hard work, skill, and grit are rewarded in real time? Continue Reading »
Why does our culture allot special importance to the political views of NFL players? It is a sign of modern society's absurdity. Continue Reading »
The First Things Podcast, Episode 19. Featuring: Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the 2016 season in college football. Continue Reading »
Recently I got quite caught up in a football game on television. It was a close match right to the very end. And in a dramatic finish the college team I was rooting for pulled off the victory. Watching it was a good way of spending a few hours. I did not experience any self-transcendence, however. . . . . Continue Reading »
He scored forty times in an eight-year NFL career, best known, now, for the touchdown he didn’t score, as the sun set over Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, 1958. His wife of fifty-nine years, Joan, said that Jim Mutscheller, who died on April 10, wanted to be known as a man “who had led a good life,” for he was “quiet, humble, and so conservative that he’d eat crabs with a suit and tie on.”And therein lies a tale—and a yardstick by which to measure pro sports then and now. Continue Reading »
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