College Football is not only a huge sport; it is a colossal cultural phenomenon too. Even with its many flaws, it may have evolved into a virtue pedagogue of sorts. Its generational transmission of values may emulate an ancient method, with several top thinkers viewing the inculcation of sports loyalties as similar to catechesis. For easy proof, one only need notice how most college programs undeniably instill multi-generational loyalties and legacies. Moreover, football could sit atop the intersection of presidential politics, which may be on a lot of believing minds this month.

For example, as far as Chief Executive involvement, did you know:

• Teddy Roosevelt thought that football’s popularity was rooted in “the belief that the game built men.”¹
• Woodrow Wilson in an 1892 debate in Philadelphia made a positive case for the sport. “I believe it develops more moral qualities than any other game of athletics,” he said. “Ordinary athletics produce valuable qualities—precision, decision, presence of mind, and endurance. No man can be a successful athlete without these four qualities.”² The Princeton professor who married a Southern Presbyterian pastor’s daughter added that football also taught cooperation and self-subordination. “These are things to be encouraged, and they unquestionably come from the game of football.”³ Wilson also thought that the proliferation of college electives (as at Harvard) mitigated against the discipline to be a winning football team.
• The last US presidents to play D-1 football were Dwight Eisenhower (West Point) and Gerald Ford (Michigan), but not Joe Biden as Darryl Hart humorously thinks might be claimed.
• None of the US presidential candidates in this century came near a college football field, except to wave from the stands as a performative act.

I am continuing to review one of the finest books I have read on the subject, John Miller’s The Big Scrum, which I earlier introduced.⁴ That work reports a few newsy items for Reformed believers who seek to engage culture or pass on the faith. I remain impressed with some analogies to transmitting the faith as the story of sport is broadcast.

• Most of us assume as normal the presence of sports sections in major newspapers. Prior to radio and TV, however, print media could only serve as advertisers for interested readers. It was in 1883 that “Joseph Pulitzer introduced journalism’s first separate sports department, to take advantage of the growing interest in football and other athletics.”⁵
• Most of us are also accustomed to college football games being played in massive stadiums. By way of contrast, the earliest college football games drew hundreds, with clashes of earlier titans like the Harvard-Yale game drawing a few thousand. A massive attendance of 15,000 watched a Princeton-Yale match at the turn of the twentieth century, while a barn burner attendance of 23,000 crowded to watch the Harvard-Yale championship a century ago.⁶

Compared to today’s figures, those slow advances are surprising. The rise of a sports-industrial complex, with some sportscasters doubling as political columnists, is fairly recent.⁷ In light of these data points, telling the story can become telling.

Sports journalists, along with other journalists, have a story to market. Those stories may be about virtue, they may be about vice, or they may be about one’s own partisanship.

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing John Miller and his fellow Hillsdale faculty member, Darryl Hart (see below).

John Miller, a baseball fan, has not given up on football as a virtue incubator of sorts. Football teaches us the virtues of perseverance, overcoming difficulties, teamwork, mental decision making, and it seems to catechize generations better than many ecclesiastical communities. College football proclaims a type of news that it thinks is good—do not believe otherwise. And like it or not, it is transmitting loyalty and inculcating commitment for generations.

Darryl Hart observes that churches should strive to have a multi-generational effect approximating that of football loyalties. Dr. Hart, unsurprisingly, also informs us that J. Gresham Machen was a Penn season ticket holder. Neither of us could name a top Reformed seminary faculty member who is a season pass guy today. What a difference a century makes, and surely this underscores the conquest by liberalism as Machen analyzed in 1923.

John Miller, a regular contributor to the National Review and other publications, teaches journalism at Hillsdale College in Michigan and is seeking to train the next generation of news writers. Darryl Hart (occasional Heidelblog contributor) is training the next generation of historians. Both share many common Christian commitments, and both emphasize the value of history as a teacher. Here they both agree with Calvin’s observation from his commentary on Romans 4:23–24: Historiam esse vitae magistrum, vere dixerunt ethnici . . .

Miller’s history has particularly alerted us to Roosevelt’s embrace of a game, even with its violence. “The sports especially dear to a vigorous and manly nation are always those in which there is a certain slight element of risk,”⁸ wrote the first president of the twentieth century. Furthermore, Roosevelt echoed the concerns of the original generation of Muscular Christians, warning against “the evil consequences of a merely sedentary occupation.”⁹ But he updated their recommendations, taking note of the way sports had spread through American culture. He approved of all exercise, but applauded certain kinds of it—“sports which call for the greatest exercise of fine moral qualities, such as resolution, courage, endurance, and capacity to hold one’s own and stand up under punishment.”¹⁰ Boys who engaged in these activities would make better men. “The true sports for a manly race are sports like running, rowing, playing football and baseball, boxing, and wrestling, shooting, riding, and mountain climbing,”¹¹ he wrote. Then he singled out one of them in particular: “Of all these sports there is no better sport than football.”¹²

So as the month of November hopefully brings a conclusion to a presidential election and will certainly reveal the contestants for football conference championships, it might be time to surrender the agnosticism or denial that football is a values-conductor of our life and culture. Like the game of polling, it has its place as long as both (sport and politics) are remembered to be creatures, not the Creator. And all of these aspects can either, on balance, promote virtue or vice.

One takeaway is that sports journos like other reporters have a worldview. What they choose to report (or not) affects the story. Selectivity is always at work in all columns, as is personal interest.

Moreover, another lesson learned is this: Telling the story may or may not focus on virtues. I am betting that the love of team sports—developed only after about 1875 in America—is inseparable from things like love of underdogs, loyalties to institutions, cheering for kin, even nostalgia over seasons, and to be sure, hatred of other programs.

Gridirons, as diamonds and courts, may be the small re-enactments of the war of the beast and his followers versus the Lamb. We love “more than conquerors.” It is indisputable that major football traditions are passed on with such high retention rates among devotees.

Here is to our churches telling our story better and with an enthusiasm and commitment that surpass athletic-catechizing, brand loyalty, and investments of time. While far from endorsing a worldly transmission of values, it may be that college football provides an instructive clinic on how some institutions tradition the faith better than some churches. At the same time, we will need to test all things and be wary of some stories.

Notes

1. John Miller, The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 136.
2. Miller, The Big Scrum, 154.
3. Miller, 154.
4. David Hall, “Football On Trial—Earlier Progressivism And John Miller’s How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.”
5. Miller, The Big Scrum, 135.
6. Miller, 133–34.
7. The rise of the likes of Outkick’s Clay Travis, Tomi Lahren and Tyrus did not surprise John Miller, who noted that, by far, most sports journalists tilt toward the left. See ESPN.
8. John Miller, The Big Scrum, 146.
9. John Miller, The Big Scrum, 133.
10. John Miller, The Big Scrum, 135.
11. John Miller, The Big Scrum, 152.
12. Miller, 133.

©David Hall. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• David Hall

  

  Reverend David W. Hall is married to Ann, and they are parents of three grown children and grandparents of eight grandchildren. He has served as the Senior Pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA) since 2003. Previously, he served as Pastor of the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (1984–2003) and as Associate Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Rome, Georgia (1980–1984). He was ordained to pastoral ministry in 1980. He was educated at Covenant Theological Seminary and is the editor and author of several volumes.

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