Does God Care about Sports?

I want to start off by saying this is the kind of theological article I don’t like to write. I like to write things that have an unassailable proof from Scripture backing it up. That being said, I also like to write about  things that interest me, and this is certainly one of them. Feel free to comment if you disagree or want to discuss further.

I am a sports fan. I don’t watch or follow sports as much as I used to, but I still consider myself a fan. I grew up in southeast Missouri, where it seems the sun rises and sets on the St. Louis Cardinals. Some of my most treasured memories from my childhood involve sitting around the table with Grandpa or riding in the car with Dad listening to Jack Buck announcing the Cardinals games. Most of the time when I was a kid the Cardinals weren’t very good, but that didn’t seem to matter. It was more about sharing common bonds with family and people around you and spending time with a trusted friend. I can’t tell you how many times Jack Buck helped me with my homework, even in college, by saying just the right thing at the right time.

As a believer though, I (and all of us) have to ask myself if God cares about sports. Unfortunately in my experience this question usually arises from a well-meaning brother or sister in Christ who doesn’t like sports trying to criticize or demean those of us believers who do like sports. Most Christians I know have the idea that God does not care at all about sports. What happens in a particular game or season does not matter to God in any way. I think this thinking arose to keep people from praying for God to help their team win.

I think praying for your team to win is pretty much an exact definition of asking amiss that James warned us about in his epistIe. But I also think the idea that God never interferes in sports events is a flawed idea as well. I acknowledge that in the grand scheme of things as far as God is concerned, who wins or loses in a sporting event is very low on God’s priority list. But I want to propose to you that God can and does take an interest in sports when He can use them to build his Kingdom or bring joy to his people. I want to demonstrate this with a true story that happened 20 years ago today.

Tuesday, April 14, 1998, I was winding down my first year away at college. (I went to community college two years before.) It was a rough year for me. It was my first time being so far from home. By April I had been gone long enough that I had gotten over the raw emotions of being gone, but the feelings still nagged. April 14 happened to be a particularly rough day. I honestly don’t remember any particularly bad details - you’ll understand why in a moment - I just remember it as a bad day. I was really in a bad state of mind.

That night, I had the radio on, listening to the Cardinals game (so grateful for the massive signal of KMOX). Of course 1998 was the year that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke the record for the most home runs in a season, but that was a long way into the future in April. I wasn’t paying very close attention to the game, but I did notice Mark McGwire hit a home run early in the game. Then later he hit another home run to give the Cardinals the lead, which made me happy.

By the eighth inning the game was a blowout, and the Cardinals certainly weren’t going to bat in the bottom of the ninth. So in the bottom of the eighth, McGwire came to bat one last time. I was listening pretty intently just to see if something would happen. Sure enough, a third homer for that night.

As I was quietly celebrating - I did have roommates after all, but they were used to me listening to baseball - celebrating the three home runs I heard a voice, clear as day, in my heart tell me, “That was for you.” To this day I believe that voice was from God. And why not? Looking at the box score for that game, the Cardinals were already up by 6 runs in the eighth when that third home run was hit. Would it really matter to God if the final score was 11-5 or 15-5? No. But do I matter to God? I am humbled and thankful that the answer is yes. And if the Lord knew he could raise my spirits by having that little ball go over the fence, why not give it a little extra breeze on the way out?

We evangelicals agree that God is in control of everything, don’t we? We agree that God works in big and small ways for our good and for the good of the church. Then why do some people think that the sports arena is so sacrosanct that God never gets involved? I think the people who think that God does not care are the ones who place sports on a higher pedestal than they should be. God can work in a myriad of other ways, but what happens on the sports field is always pure athleticism? Come on. Why do you limit God?

All I’m saying is this: when you’re watching your team lose a big game, it’s OK to be disappointed. But it might make you a little happier to know that in the opposing city there may be a dear old saint watching in a hospital bed surrounded by his family, and God is giving the family one last precious memory before he goes home to be with Jesus. Or maybe there is a genuine seeker in the stands who wants to know God is real. Or maybe it’s a thousand other scenarios.Those scenarios won’t get talked about the next morning on ESPN or in next week’s hometown newspaper, but I believe they are more real than the strategy points that people discuss.

God is at work in the big things and the tiny things in life all the time. He is bringing his Kingdom to fruition in more ways than we can imagine. God's sovereign power over the affairs of this world means he controls everything, including, as Jesus said, when a sparrow falls out of a tree. If God can bring something good into the lives of his people and even people who don't yet know him, through a sporting event, whether it is the Super Bowl or the local peewee football league, why wouldn't he? When we pretend these things don’t matter to God, all we really do is limit him in our own minds.

Beauty and the Beast, Sports Illustrated and Lessons Learned

"For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light." ~ Jesus, Luke 16:8


I think it's safe to say Disney's marketing strategy promoting Beauty and the Beast was a runaway success. The movie opened with the biggest opening weekend ever for a PG-rated movie and the biggest opening weekend for any movie in March.

A big part of the that strategy was the quote a couple of weeks ago from the director about there being a “gay moment” in the movie. The article was perfectly timed so that the resulting furor would have maximum impact in social media in the week and a half prior to its release date. And a furor they got. It was impossible not to miss the impact of the quote in the week following the article's publishing.

I don't have any doubt that it was intentional. The media have learned their lesson well: get the Christians sufficiently riled up, and you're in for a bonanza. It's too bad many Christians haven't yet learned the same lesson.

One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon is the story of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. The issue is by this time an American institution for better and for worse, mostly worse. For those of us under the age of 60, it's just always been there. But its origins lie at a place where happenstance and Christian outrage met.


Sports Illustrated was not always the behemoth I remember when I was growing up. (Print magazines are so 20th century). In 1964 SI was struggling to find a focus and an audience. It was far behind the largest sports weekly of the day, The Sporting News. And it had difficulty in determining exactly what it wanted to be all the time.

When there wasn't any baseball or football to cover, the magazine looked more like an outdoors or a lifestyle magazine. There were cover stories on hunting, travel, outdoors activities, even yachting with John and Jackie Kennedy.


It was anticipated to be a slow news week in mid-January 1964 (the NFL playoffs were usually over by Christmas back then). The managing editor, Andre Laguerre, planned a Caribbean travel story and told the photographer to hire a model to pose in a bikini for the cover. It was a brazen choice at the time, but Laguerre liked to push the boundaries and had little taste for American moralism. 

The cover (see it at this link if you wish) featured the picture with the following caption: "A Skin Diver's Guide to the Caribbean - Fun in the Sun on Cozumel." There was nothing about "annual swimsuit issue" or anything like that. Inside was a travel story with one more picture of the model and some other pictures of beach scenery.

Three SI covers from the 50s
and 60s that have nothing
to do with sports.

The cover created controversy. The magazine received thousands of angry letters and cancellations. At the same time, newsstand sales of the issue exceeded all expectations for a slow news week. Whether those sales were directly related to the anger expressed I have know way of knowing, but that is what happened.

Any time there is reaction, that is gold to marketers. They really don't care if it is positive or negative, as long as there is a reaction. A single issue which generated this kind of controversy and sales made everyone take notice. In the weeks that followed it was Laguerre who came up with the idea to put another girl in a bathing suit on the cover next year and bill it as the "second annual swimsuit issue."

Thus was born one of the most influential publications in American history. By all rights it should have been another one of those early SI issues that seem so weird to us who remember the magazine's heyday in the 70s-90s. But it lives on because of a firestorm of negative reaction from well-meaning folks.

I'm not saying those folks were wrong about the particular issue. I'm sure it was a shock to many subscribers looking for stories about basketball, hockey or perhaps the upcoming Winter Olympics. But if enough of them had simply and quietly pitched the magazine into the trash can and went on with their lives, the Swimsuit Issue wouldn't be around today. 

More than 50 years later, many Christians still haven't learned this lesson while the world has. The world eagerly lays out plans, knowing many Christians will quickly share anything that irritates them on social media without ever considering if they are being manipulated by either powerful media moguls looking for free publicity or by struggling Web publishers looking for cheap clicks. Either way, the manipulation is real and, unfortunately, easy to pull off. If Christians would just once not take the manipulation bait, the people pulling the strings might think twice about it. Personally I think it'd be nice to see Christians be the manipulators for once instead of the manipulatees. 

Note: The information for this article came mostly from an interview I saw a few years ago on TV with Frank DeFord, longtime writer and editor at Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately I could not find a link with the interview, but the basics of what I remember from the interview are confirmed in this article.

A Blue and Brown World

This weekend is the first weekend of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, colloquially known as "March Madness." The first weekend is one of the most compelling events in all of sports: 48 games, all around the country, over the course of 4 days. There are upsets, near-upsets, and millions of people follow it all with their brackets predictions in hand. Great stuff.

I have to admit I don't follow it like I used to. Maybe it's just because I'm getting old and I remember all those previous years' tournaments and they all seem the same. Maybe it's because I'm married and now my definition of "must-see TV" has changed. 

One of the reasons for me that the tournament is not as interesting as it used to be is the generic floor with the giant blue NCAA logo in the middle they install in every venue. I remember when I was a kid one of my favorite parts of the tournament was to see the different floor designs in the various arenas. You could tell where the game was and who was playing just by looking at the floor and your tournament bracket. These days you can't tell where the game is until the camera pans all the way to the left baseline and you see the city's name printed. 

In addition to being boring, think of how expensive that is. Not sure exactly how much a new basketball floor costs, but I'm sure it's not cheap. And the floor can't really be used for anything else, unless you re-paint it after the games are over. 

Basketball arenas are kind of nondescript, especially on the inside. They're not like football stadiums or especially baseball parks, where individuality is part of the game. The floor is the only distinctive element in the building. Would it make any difference in the quality of play? No, of course not. But it would make it more interesting on TV, and let's face it: that's what the tournament is all about anyway. Plenty of arenas across the country have unique floors, and I think the NCAA should showcase them rather than keeping them in pieces in a closet while they roll out a boring brown and blue thing.