Football will continue

English: 116 Clique on DWYL Tour 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Because my to-do list is not full enough of things which are neither urgent nor important I subscribe to The Guardian’s daily e-mail about football.

It’s called the Fiver because it’s meant to arrive at about five o’clock, and when I first saw it the question that came to mind was: How on earth is there enough new to provide a daily update on football? Well, a couple of weeks ago they really struck something by explaining themselves. Here’s a brief quote:

…right now only one thing seems certain: despite repeated Fiver campaigns, football will never stop. Every second of every day for the rest of your life, there will be a happening of football going on, some story, some outrage, some brouhaha. At the exact moment you die, many years from now, football will be happening somewhere. And in the moments after your death football will just keep happening, all over the place, horribly vital, fresh storms and spats and swoops and sagas brewing up even as your eyes close for the last time and light begins to fade, and the last sight or sound your senses are aware of is a sensational swoop for a 13-year-old Peruvian wonderkid, or a managerial reshuffle in Russia, or a man saying a thing about another thing solely because he was asked a question by a man whose job it is to ask questions and thereby create out of thin air some football to happen.

Now what’s really depressing about that quote is that it’s actually true. And not just true about football, but true about all sorts of things. Other things that will simply roll on into the future, with or without us, include such joys as politics and soap operas, and thinking about this reminds me that we only live once.

When my eyes are preparing to close for the last time will I be thinking about the possibility of a Peruvian wonderkid becoming a world-famous footballer, or will I be reflecting on a life well-lived and a legacy left behind me?

Don’t.

Waste.

Your.

Life.

Tebowing

Image by Jeffrey Beall via Flickr

You might have picked up that I like the NFL. Bear with me. One quarterback in the NFL keeps making the news, basically for two reasons:

1. He’s really good, but the owners of his team don’t seem to think he is (although this isn’t so true any more since they’ve actually started letting him play and he’s been winning games)
2. He’s a Christian. Mainly this one.

His name’s Tim Tebow. As a college student he won an award for being the best quarterback in his year in the US, and has done all sorts of things like painting Bible verses on his face, appearing in an ad encouraging pregnant ladies not to have abortions, risking public humiliation by boldly praising Jesus (like when he admitted to being a virgin because he was waiting until he was married), and basically praying a lot.

This ‘praying a lot’ bit seems to have caught on – a bunch of apparent fans have created a website where they basically take photos of themselves in the ‘Tebowing’ position; on one knee, clenched fist pressed against forehead. Now, I just tried accessing this on my lunch break and got a warning message so it’s probably got some horrible virus or something on it, but it’s basically a series of pictures of people Tebowing in various places: McTebowing, Coast Guard Tebowing, Wyoming Capitol Tebowing, and so on. It’s here if you’re interested.

The best bit? Tim Tebow found out and tweeted about it, together with the definition of Tebowing that appears on the site:

Tebowing: (vb) to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different.

Love it. For the record, I think Tim Tebow’s a great quarterback, but a better witness to Christians about how to be a great witness.

The best observation of sport as entertainment I’ve ever seen

Ok, so this is based on a particular NBA news story but is instantly applicable to every sports fan everywhere.

Well worth watching all the way through – laugh-out-loud hilarious while still being true and somehow quite depressing as well.

But good.

Anyone up for some local volunteering?

Christians with disabilities

Image via Wikipedia

This shook me this morning.

The encouragement given to disabled Christians is often that they can look forward in eternity to walking and running.

One disabled Christian, however, said what he was most looking forward to:

I’m most looking forward to kneeling.

Captains photos

This is pretty funny. I’m sorry if you’re not into American football and are fed up with me talking about it again, but this is pretty funny.

Aaron Rodgers is now the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. Here he is, managing to find his way into every team captains photo in his first three years at the team. At first it seems accidental:

Remember Why You Play by David Thomas

Coach Kris Hogan’s high school American football team, the Faith Christian Lions, drew national press coverage when he led their fans to cheer for the opposing team in 2008, Gainesville State prison school. This book is a detailed account of their 2007 season leading up to that game.

The author is a journalist and has a fantastic way with words. I was never bored and felt drawn in to every emotion experienced by the players and coaches.

I loved this book – it’s personal, exciting, and emotional! But It does talk quite a bit in terms of American football language so if you don’t understand the game (as many Brits don’t) I expect you’ll enjoy it less than I did.

Overwhelmingly the best thing about this book comes in the penultimate chapter. The whole book I was thinking: this guy, Kris Hogan, is amazing!’ But suddenly the book climaxes and I realised that actually the whole point is that God’s grace is amazing.

I’d thoroughly recommend this book, and the upcoming feature film, One Heart, to Christians and non-Christians, providing you can handle the football jargon.

I got this book for free from Tyndale House Publishers. I’m not required to give a positive review.

Football = frustrating

Image via Wikipedia

For a start, I’m talking here about football. That’s the sport in which 90% of the time the ball is touched by the foot.

The rules of football are that the team who scores the most goals within 90 minutes wins the game, and the other team gets nothing. Traditionally in a league you’d get 3 points for a win, and nothing for a loss.

That’s cool, but sometimes you can play exceptionally well for 89 minutes, be in complete control of the game and have scored a goal, but then there’s one bad referee decision, or one defensive mistake, and the game is drawn, or worse, lost. It’s great if you’re the team who ends up on top, but for the loser there would barely be any difference between that result and if your entire team had pulled up a set of chairs and relaxed until the final whistle. The other team would still get 3 points, and you’d still get nothing.

Not to overthink this, but has football therefore become less of a sport than an art form? The purpose of football nowadays is overwhelmingly to entertain rather than to provide a competitive arena in which to demonstrate one team’s superiority…

Maybe it doesn’t really matter.

The King of Fools

Title of a Delirious song and album from the 90s? Yes. But originally the title’s taken from the climax of a Medieval New Year celebration called the Feast of Fools.

The idea behind the Feast was for everyone in the town to get ridiculously drunk over twelve nights. They’d sing songs together, hold mock church services (in which you’d respond ‘hee-haw’ rather than ‘amen’), and cheer a young girl riding through the town on the back of a donkey, babe in arms. When she arrives in the town centre, the town would nominate the most hideously ugly person to be ‘the King of Fools’.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame we’re introduced to Quasimodo, and we see that he is blessed to wear that crown. He’s embarrassed, but as the outsider he is he’s quite honoured by the attention and the cheering crowds.

This is what it’s like to be human. We’re all so desperate to be part of the ‘in’ crowd, or simply part of any crowd, that we accept it even when it’s fake. We can’t tell the difference most of the time. We put so much effort into education, career, sports teams, hobbies, and all manner of other pursuits, but at the end of the day it’s Satan who sarcastically cheers us on, all the while mocking us for our folly.

But…

But there is one who genuinely accepts us. There is one who joyfully welcomes the outsider, honours us with a crown and cheers us on, but this is no mockery.

Jesus reached to the unclean in society like the lepers, the lady caught in adultery, and the bleeding lady. Jesus reached to the unloved in society like the tax collectors and the Samaritans, and freely welcomes us all.

How great is our God.

Kevin Keegan is leaving Newcastle. Definitely.

Oh no wait, he isn’t. Definitely.

What I mean is, no-one knows.

So why did all the papers and news shows report that he had? It just goes to show that our news media doesn’t (necessarily) tell us the truth – they run just as much on rumours and random thoughts as the rest of us, it’s just that they have bigger mouths than we do.

Nice.