The Weekly Screed (#602)

The Football Prayer
by David Benjamin

BROOKLYN — It always happens in Texas, and it happens every year. Some well-meaning coach, or his devout quarterback, or the student Bible society, or a meddling Baptist preacher, gets caught by the local atheist trying to insert Touchdown Jesus into the starting lineup of a public high school football team in some tiny, dusty outpost smack-dab in the heart of nowhere.

This time, it’s the cheerleading squad in Kountze, Texas, painting Bible verses on those 30-foot paper banners that the football team smashes through as they come onto the field. Everybody in Kountze, except one or two litigious secularists, is sympathetic to the cheerleaders — even though the climax of their Scriptural exertions requires the word of God to be ripped to shreds by a mob of linebackers and noseguards.

Whenever the annual Lone Star football holy war pops up, my first thought is why in God’s name would God give a damn about football, especially at the Division 6 high school level. Moreover, why would God, who allegedly created all football players, take the side of kids from Kountze — no matter how much they pray — over the boys from nearby Sour Lake, or Jasper. And I agree that imposing Christian dogma on just one unwilling listener flouts the Constitutional separation of church and state — even if it’s only in the form of a single verse from the oft-neglected Book of Hebrews. But still, what’s the big deal here? Can’t people just sit down and talk this out?

By the way, I just did a scan of Hebrews and found at least one phrase that Vince Lombardi would’ve loved to paint on a 30-foot banner: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”

The crisis in Kountze suggests a simple solution that allows every Christian football fan to pray his heart out, safe from intrusion by the ACLU. America, after all, has spawned countless deities of the pigskin, many with impeccable Christian credentials. St. Knute, St. Ara and St. Paul of Notre Dame, for example, Holy Doak of Southern Methodist, Bishop Bud of the Sooner Mission. Blessed by this wealth of prophets ready to come off the bench for Jesus, all we need is a proper prayer — universal, nonsectarian and Gentile — to recite  Friday night before the Big Game. I actually wrote this baby years ago, but I’m still waiting for some enterprising coach to gather his team in a big circle and egg them on to victory with these inspirational words:

In the name of Pop Warner, the Bear and the Galloping Ghost, we pray.

St. Vincent de Lambeau, we beseech thee that thou visit upon our football foes the Seven Plagues of the Gridiron. Afflict their vile host with fickle fans, with a tone-deaf pep band, with skanky cheerleaders, with a dorky mascot whose head doesn't fit, with a pestilence of blown knees, with a rain of career-ending concussions and with forty days and forty nights of yellow flags.

Our Berwanger, who art patron saint of the Holy Heisman, hallowed be thy Seven Blocks of Granite, squishing our foes like worms beneath our cleats. Attack these Philistines with seven thousand rabid Bubbas. Destroy them with Ditkas. Ravage them with Robustellis. Stun them with Stonebreakers. Maul them with Modzelewskis. Crush them ‘neath Refrigerators. Sack them with Reggies and pillage them with Deacons.

O, saintly Shula, fisher of Dolphins, send down upon our enemies a numberless multitude of Killer Bees, Buonicontis, Biakabutukas, Bleiers and Butkuses. Drop down upon them a Steel Curtain. Smother them ‘neath a Golden Dome. Let Monsters of the Midway tear their flesh and feast on their entrails. Send blind zebras to penalize them ruthlessly. Pulp them in the Orange Bowl and freeze them in the Ice Bowl. Clothesline their flankers. Cut-block their linemen. Headslap their blockers. Earhole their passers. Pancake their tailbacks. Split their lips. Bust their cups and ring their chimes.

Hear our prayer, Blessed Brian del Piccolo, patron saint of the Coffin Corner, and send across the line of scrimmage a grievous affliction of wasting disease, festering wounds, ghastly deformities, spinal injuries, male-pattern baldness, manly tears and untimely death. Smite them, Lord, lest they smite us first.

Hail Mary, fly on the wings of a dove from the hand of our Otto, our Dan, our Brett, our Peyton, a hundred yards from goal to goal, to fall gently, like manna from Heaven, into the hands of our soaring receivers, while defenders stumble and tumble and sunder their ACLs, while angels sing and the gun goes off, while the crowd goes wild and the enemy coach — a fat slob with pig eyes and a bad comb-over — chokes on his Dubble Bubble and perishes on the fifty-yard line.

We ask these blessings in the name of Nitschke and Bednarik, Davis and Blanchard, Payton and Sayers, Nagurski and Motley, Rice and Montana, Unitas and Thorpe, Mean Joe and Too Tall and Crazy Legs. We beg thy complicity in our venial sins — the holding and the clipping, the encroachment and the interference, the late hits and the piling-on — that make it easier to win, for winning is not everything, but the only thing. We pray that we may hold that line, turn that corner, throw that block, snag that pass, block that punt, spike that ball, kick that point, run that ball clear 'round Chicago and make ourselves worthy to enter Paradise (Canton, Ohio), to live forever in thy loving Grace.

For thine is the Superbowl
and the power sweep
and the Gipper,
forever.
Amen.