SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE GAME OF PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

I have always loved the game of football. I was never more than an amateur athlete but I loved sports, the  thrill of competing, and the game itself. I tried track, but found I lacked the drive and the physical endurance to run the Mile and I lacked the speed for the shorter distances. I liked baseball and softball, but my one summer of softball competition on the Gospel Trumpet Company team in the 1945 Anderson Summer League quickly proved to me that I lacked the eye coordination to hit fast pitching.

I played football throughout hi-school. My one moment of glory came during my Junior Year when I won a quarterback position on the Junior Varsity during my Junior Year. It was a thrill for me to ride the team bus to Kalamazoo and play on the turf inside of Western University's Waldo Stadium--a real university stadium and the home of Western's State Hi-School Bronco's. We lost that game but I was at least playing the game. 

Later that year we rode our bus the forty-some miles south to Niles, on the Indiana state line. This game proved hilariously disastrous as Niles stomped us 44-0. My one moment of potential redemption came when I was able to hurl one of those Hail Mary passes as far down the field as I could throw it. It arced high in the sky and pointed downward toward Bob Tortenson and a sure touchdown. He saw it coming his direction, and keeping his eyes skyward, he scurried toward the goal line - only for the ball to drop through his arms and on the ground--one big fizzle as a quarterback. I won a Football Letter during my senior year but I did it playing a substitute blocking Guard on a state championship team. So much for my athletic abilities.

There was never any doubt that I was a rabid football fanatic during my younger adult days as a young pastor. Pastoring a church in an area where the Dallas Cowboys reigned supreme, we all joined the Dandy Don club and became devotees of Don Meredith, then the hottest thing in professional football, and Coach Tom Landry who was both a Coach and a Christian who practiced what he preached. So, it is with some surprise when I view my present disillusionment and disdain with professional football.

WHY DO I LACK ANY INTEREST IN A GAME I HAVE GREATLY LOVED ALL MY LIFE. I think it is this: Professional Football has come to be ALL about competing between network commentators and very little about the competitition and thrill of the game itself. I want to tell the Network Wisemen to SHUT UP  and let me listen to the game. I am not interested in being entertained by their wisdom. I do not want my time as a football fan gobbled up with regurgitated commentary wisdom. I want to watch the game and be allowed to be a football fan instead of another notch in the rating of a Network Commentator.

It will never happen, so good bye footfall. You were once a pleasant past time but you have become an over-ripe banana, mostly mush and no longer edible.

I find E. Stanley Jones life story most challenging and inspiring. Jones was an early lifelong American Missionary to India. During his inspired lifetime, Jones became a close friend of Prime Minister Gandhi, a best selling author, and a successful Missionary-Statesman. 

Typical of Jones' life was the occasion that he was chosen "The Methodist of the Year." Jones later recalled that event in his classic autobiography as a time in which  he was so busily engaged in evangelistic meetings, "I couldn't stop to go to the function to receive the honor, so my daughter graciously received it on my behalf."

He was twice nominated in the Norwegian Parliament for the Nobel Peace Prize, but he felt deeply gratified that the honor eventually went to Dr. Martin Luther King, for as Jones remarked, "he had earned it much more than I," and Jones had already received "The Gandhi Peace Prize; several of his books had sold over a million copies each--The Christ of the Indian Road and Abundant Living; and he had met emperors, kings, presidents, and prime ministers.

And yet, as I look back, recalled Jones, "all these combined do not weigh in appreciation as much as the one single fact of the honor bestowed upon me when I was set apart as the bearer of good news, an evangelist (Italics added). Something was washed from my soul when I went through the twenty-four hours of being immersed in the honors of being a bishop. I came through  it all with no regrets, no conflicts, and no divided loyalties. My sins and mistakes he has forgiven and buried in his love; my vision he has clarified--I now have the single eye.

"A woman seeing me pushed from engagement to engagement said to me recently: 'Don't you ever do what you want to do?' I laughed and said, 'But this is what I want to do.' So I can make Paul's words my own: 'For myself, I set no store by life; I only want to finish the race, and complete the task which the Lord Jesus assigned to me, of bearing my testimony ... of God's grace'" (Acts 20:24).

So Jesus is Lord, concluded Jones. Jesus is Lord of the past, the present and the future. Jesus is Lord of everything. Jesus is Lord, "unqualified." We can only examine Jones inspired life and add, what a conclusion! A conclusion which is a beginning!

From Warner's World, it is my single focus more and more: to fulfill the conclusion--the long life God has given me, with that conclusion which is the beginning of the rest of my life--life with the Lord of Life. walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Americans learned about Fascism from Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolph Hitler of Germany during the WWII era. Fascists are small and weak people who use mind and muscle to subject people to their political power. Fascists control through anarchy and political domination of women and children and any else they can.

Donald Trump is a classic anarchist. He demands total obedience and discards, ignores anyone differing from him. He tried to subject American political life to his domination but Americans have a long tradition of freedom of choice and rejected his anti-democratic governing.