I quit playing organized tackle football in the eighth grade, because I weighed 70 something pounds and they did not even have a uniform to fit me. Every time I got hit, I was looking out of the ear hole in my helmet! Plus, my knee pads hit me around the ankles, so whatever quickness I had was nullified. I decided it was not suitable for my giftedness at that time. But, I love the game of football and I am a student of the game. In fact, when watching a game with my wife, I will often make an observation and the T. V. announcers will say what I just said. She has suggested I should quit preaching and go into sports casting! She is not serious.
But over the years there has been an increasingly disturbing pattern to me at all levels of the sport. Recently I went to a local high school game and there was a player on the other team who continued to engage in chippy, unnecessary, and downright unsportsmanlike antics! I haven’t, but I may yet, email the coach and tell him I think this player should be an embarrassment to the coaches, his teammates, and the whole student body. As Coach Darrell Royal used to say, “When you get into the end zone, act like you have been there before.” I think the same idea should apply to whenever you make a good play. Act like you have done it a time or two before! But he irony is, the P.A. announcer even admonished the fans to not yell or disparage the officials or the players out of respect for how hard they have all worked, yet they did not enforce it on the players themselves.
Listen, I am all for passionately promoting your team, but there should not be a time when we disrespect the other team! That behavior should be beneath honorable people but especially that is true of people who claim to be followers of Christ, because the Apostle Peter admonishes us ,”Show proper respect to everyone…” I Peter 2: 17 (NIV) All right, I will get off my soap box now, until next time!
