Editor’s Note: A version of the following article appears in the September/October 2024 issue of Nurturing Faith Journal.

In case you aren’t aware, a little-known fact about Texans is that we are prone to hyperbole and grandiosity.

If you can believe it, our propensity for exaggeration extends to our feelings about football. We have Wikipedia like the rest of the world (and, theoretically, access to books), so if there were any doubts about the origins of American football, we could easily discover it wasn’t invented anywhere near Texas. 

But like the bumper stickers proclaiming, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could,” we presume the sport was (Eric and Tammy) tailor-made for the Lone Star State.

And it’s not just the game. If it were, the sport would likely have languished in the upper crust of the New England Ivies. The spectacle and pageantry of it all, and its eventual intermingling with communities through high schools, found a place to thrive in Texas. This created a strong emotional connection to the sport for many of us.

My earliest memories of football have nothing to do with anything that happened on the field of play but rather long trips through the backwoods of East Texas with my dad, going to and from games. In those days, long before GPS took us mindlessly to where we needed to be, once we drove into town, all we needed to do was look up and be guided by the Friday night lights from which the famous book and series got their names. 

As a child, I loved everything about the game–the band, cheerleaders, the grand entrances, seeing and visiting with neighbors in the stands, and the game itself.

Interestingly, my passion for the sport decreased when I began playing it in middle school. I didn’t like physical pain, and, as a large kid, they placed me in positions that guaranteed I would be in pain most of the time.

But once I returned to the stands after my Freshman year, it was all over. I was a fanatic. Since then, I have proudly worn the colors of my favorite teams and ordered my calendar around football season.

So, you can imagine my shock when, a few years ago, while sitting in a stadium watching a game, I told myself, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” It wasn’t one thing that brought me to that moment but a series of events decades in the making.

Studies were released about the long-term physical damage done by playing the game. My favorite college team was found to have covered up abuse by its players in what felt like, in retrospect, an inevitable byproduct of a culture that permeates most successful programs.

In Texas and elsewhere in the country, elements of the high school game began to feel like loyalty tests: Would we bow our heads for the prayer? Would we assume the appropriate posture for the national anthem? Are we in or are we out? 

All this came to a head almost simultaneously, and I began to seriously question my support of the game. Had I been complicit in all the damage it has wrought on individuals and society? 

Spoiler alert– This story doesn’t end with me abandoning football and beginning to crusade for its demise. 

When writing about various loyalties, Sara Miles said it is possible to fall in love with them, “then doubt it, fight with it, lose faith in it, and return with a sense of humor and a harder, lasting love.”

I have found this to be true about my love for football. But I’ve also found it possible to do all these things and return to it with a love marked by ambivalence and hesitation. 

Questioning and critiquing things we love are complex endeavors. They are made more challenging when those things we love are part of our identity because, in questioning them, we question our own lives and loyalties. 

This is especially true when it comes to matters of faith.

Whenever I am most honest with myself, I realize that many things I hold to be true are less about belief and more about identity. This is why we are more likely to change our beliefs when we are younger: We don’t have as many years invested in an identity we have built around those beliefs. 

Because of this, it takes far more courage to reevaluate our beliefs about eternal things than those about a game. But there are no penalties assessed for doing so, so may we all find that courage before the clock runs out.