Give it All Up

So I go down to parent's house this evening with my wife, to celebrate her birthday.  We are sitting around the table on the screened in back porch as a gentle rain pelted the calm surface of the lake that resides behind their home.  The conversation turned to the talk of town, at least until the college football season starts, the docu-drama about the 2005 Hoover High School football season on MTV called Two-A-Days.

We made the usual comments that have been hashed out on the talk radio scene:

• There was nothing new in it- High School is high school, Coaches cuss, cheerleaders act like, well, cheerleaders, and the reminder that high school kids are really kids.
• What's the deal with parent's letting their 17 year daughter get on national television wearing a bikini and having slow, full body camera shots of her air so that other hormonally crazed 17 years can lust after her.  Won't be long before that vidcap is broadcast into every pervert's PC.
• Do teens get breast augmentation for the 16th birthday's these days?

Finally, my sister asked me about something that really bothered me when I saw it, but I haven't commented on it yet.  It was a scene in the 42nd minute of the premeire of, I assume, the team chaplain "preaching" to the team before they play on ESPN against a school from Florida. 

The guy is a prominent youth minister in the area and he stands before the team, bible tucked under his arm and his tone suitable for a 30 minute TBN special.  It is 6 AM, according to the screen title and he begins speaking the stereotypical cliche's of having a gameplan for life and all that jazz.  No big deal, I guess.  These guys still have eye boogers and cobwebs in their head from the early wake up time, so I doubt they really care what this guy is saying.  But here is what he says first:

"Every person is born with a game plan.  And the reason I stand here today and the reason I have the faith and the fortitude for what ever I do is all the because of one thing; I’ve got God’s game plan in my life and I want you as players to understand, to have something to hang on to,  and the Lord’s that person."

Then, I assume there is some editing, but it moves further into his gameday homily.  His voice raised in evangelical fervor, where he proclaims the following:

"There will be people in those stands today that want you beat.  They want to see you fall.  They want to see you take a misstep. They want to see you embarrass yourself.  Don't you dare, embarrass this program by the way you play.  Let them know that they have come to the state of Alabama where football is king, where football is football, where we play like it is supposed to be played.  And you make sure, if you play in this game today, that you can't walk off, that you have to crawl off.  Give it all up, give it all up!"

Nice!  This exactly what needed to be reinforced for these guys.  Essentially, that all that matters is football.  Now I don't ever remember sitting at a high school wishing harm on the other team.  I have never wanted any high school athlete to embarass themselves.  Never! Not once.  And I have never desired that a high school athlete crawl off the field.

I haven't heard anybody comment on this yet, but I was embarassed.  It is one thing to try to bring some spiritual perspective, but to use religion as a means to propogate coach speak, to talk about the program as if God Himself was watching to see if the mighty Hoover program was going to be embarassed was infuriariting.

 

That youth minister ought to be ashamed of himself.  To denigrate faith to nothing more that a pregame pep talk reeked of his own agenda. What would that agenda be?  To stay in the good graces of the coach, so he can hang around the program and get those guys and hopefully their parents who have money to show up to church.  It made me want to puke.

I do think I will take his advice however.  I will give it all up.  Watching Two-A-Days, that is.

Comments

[Ken Haynes]

I was reminded of Neil Postman's "disapearance of childhood"......thesis being that "free market western capitalism" would rather our children be consumers(older consumers) rather than children....I guess for that matter they would rather our adults be adolescents than adults since that is target demo for consumer spending. Do doubt we are all worse for what "the media machine" does to us. Guess I am sounding pretty Wendell Berryish....but I am pretty cynical.