The Church of Football
The great Bob Lipsyte, former New York Times columnist, and young adult novelist extraordinaire, has a terrific essay about the Super Bowl on The Nation's Web site. It begins:
Given the chance, I'd watch the Super Bowl with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who knows about Baal and ball. Twenty years ago, in Lynchburg, Virginia, at a Liberty University Flames game, Dr. Falwell told me: "Jesus was no sissy. He was tough, he was a he-man. If he played football, you'd be slow getting up after he tackled you."
He had me at "sissy." The rest was revelation. The muscularity of Dr. Falwell's evangelical Christianity was a perfect fit with football, another win-or-lose game. For Americans, war hasn't produced a real winner for more than 60 years. That's why we need football. But let's get back to Dr. Falwell. "My respect for Catholicism and Mormonism goes straight up watching Notre Dame and Brigham Young play," he told me. He hoped that, someday, Notre Dame and Liberty, his evangelical college, would meet for the national championship, thus informing the nation that "the Christians are here, we're not meek and we're not going to fall down in front of you. We're here to stay."
Read it all.
Full disclosure: I have been a fan of Bob's since I read The Contender in the seventh grade. He helped me get my first book published, and I am forever in his debt.
But it would still be a terrific essay, even if we'd never met.
