March Madness

Let’s just face it, office production is measurably down today. Shipments will be a few minutes late. Invoices are on hold. The staff will be a few minutes late for today’s lunch meetings. After processing all of the conference tournament championships from yesterday (my Buckeyes won, in case you missed it!), considering the match ups, perusing conference strengths, deciding which mascot they like better, and listening to the experts’ take on things . . . millions of men, women, and children are busy filling out their college basketball brackets right now. It is the creme de creme of American sports: 68 teams make the initial cut, but only one will be left standing. It’s sudden death. It’s elimination. It is survival of the fittest. It epitomizes the American ethos: for better or worse. And somewhere John Calipari is prepping for the NIT.

I have been filling out an NCAA tournament bracket ever since I can remember. I’ve probably lost a hundred dollars or so over the years (I’m guessing $5 a year over 20 years . . . pretty big stakes). Once I’m done typing out this blog entry, I’ll fill out my 2013 attempt. It always takes awhile to decide whether to pick with your mind . . . or your heart (Buckeyes all the way!)

This year, I find myself knee-deep in studying sports and religion and it’s just got my head all screwed up when it comes to my love of sports. This bracket is no different. This morning I started wondering how Jesus would fill out his brackets (I mean, if you Calvinist are right, it wouldn’t be much fun to be in his pool – but, alas, as an Arminian, I do hold onto some hope I could beat his bracket). This all got me wondering, What if Jesus set out to pick with his heart – who would he want to win?

Messiah without a beard?

We all know Jesus would be a basketball fan, right? I mean James Naismith was a freaking chaplain for Kansas! The game was invented at a YMCA (Young Men’s CHRISTIAN Association!) With his flowing locks, Jesus was born to be a point guard. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to play Jesus one-on-one, but we’ll save that discussion for another day.

Today, I’m wondering what his bracket would look like. It seems to me, obviously, it’s going to have a lot to with how you understand Jesus. If you espouse an “everyone-for-themselves” Jesus who promotes a dog-eat-dog system where the cream will rise to the top, you probably think Jesus is really hoping Duke and Ohio State come through one side and Kansas and Indiana through the other (and obviously Duke and Indiana would be playing for the title!) If you see Jesus as more of a social activist beckoning the ghost of Walter Rauschenbusch, this is the year the 16 seeds bring home the title, taking down The Man! [Here‘s a documentary of what it may look like if Jesus happened to follow soccer’s World Cup this way.] Or maybe Jesus would seek to reward the most godly schools for their commitment to ministry and the “higher call” setting up a Final Four made up of Liberty University, Notre Dame (or would it be Belmont – the Catholics taking on the Baptists, intriguing!), Georgetown and Villanova. Or . . . maybe he wouldn’t care at all about the Big Dance, and instead obsess with the lower divisions of college basketball – scoping out D2 and D3 action. Maybe he’d make a good Victorian and not “weary himself with such lusts of the flesh.”

Apparently if Jesus played, it would have been in the 70’s

Here’s one church’s idea for using the NCAA tournament to do some good (digging wells in Africa). Seems like a good use of what the culture has given us – maybe he’d do that: going church to church setting up brackets to raise money and awareness to the world’s problems.

Maybe he’d protest. I posted last week about the ills of youth sports and it’s nowhere more heinous than in basketball. Would Jesus stand for that? Would Jesus occupy March Madness?

You can tell alot about how you think God wants you to live and interact in this world as a Christian (the old “in the world, but not of the world” paradox) by how you engage this hypothetical conversation. Richard Niebuhr calls this the “enduring problem” of Christianity in his famous Christ and Culture. How does the world of sacraments, spirituality, and morality intersect the world of college basketball tournaments, shopping malls, and I pads? In the end, it’s impossible to know how or if Jesus would care at all about college basketball. However, as the obsession with this tournament envelopes our culture in the coming weeks, there can be little doubt that the tournament matters to our culture. Because it matters, we should be looking for ways to celebrate the best it has to offer . . . while at the same time, being aware that all that it has to offer it not the best.

It’s that one time of year when men start talking about dancing – but it’s not that kind of dance. I’m not exactly sure where it originated, but somewhere along the line the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has come to be known as “The Big Dance” making every college basketball team out there excited about “going dancing” in March!

If you’re not familiar with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, it makes for a pretty interesting case study in American values and philosophy. The tournament has gradually expanded over the past several decades to where it most recently added a “First Four” teams who play in Dayton, OH, during the week, the same week the tournament of 64 begins – bringing the total team count to 68. Several conference tournament winners earn an “automatic bid” into the Big Dance, bringing schools that you’ve never heard of invaluable PR. The remainder of the teams are selected at-large by a selection committee. Essentially, these automatic qualifying conferences guarantee that smaller, less powerful schools get the national platform the NCAA tournament provides (even my alma mater, Lipscomb University, has a tie in through the Atlantic Sun Conference . . . though we are still awaiting our first bid).

I was on my way home yesterday and caught an interesting conversation on the local sports radio station regarding the merits of Liberty University who earned their way to the Dance over the weekend with a un-inspiring record of 15-20. That’s right, they lost five more games than they won, but will be among the 68 who get to play in the NCAA’s post-season tournament. They lost their first 8 games and boast losses to the juggernauts Presbyterian College, Iona, and Howard. They went a measly 6 – 10 in their conference play – a conference that bids schools named Longwood, Highpoint, and Coastal Carolina. And yet they won the final few games of the season . . . at just the right time . . . and viola – they will find themselves with a post-season game, a national spotlight, and at least a little extra attention.

And that is exactly why they field a basketball team. Somewhere Jerrry Falwell is smiling. The fact of the matter is that big time college sports and higher education make strange bedfellows. Big time college sports make an even stranger bedfellow for Christian higher education. Falwell followed the lead of fellow evangelist Oral Roberts and his university (a lead that subsequently has been followed by scores more) all viewing big time sports as the ticket to publicity. While I was at Lipscomb, there was no doubt that that was the biggest thing to be gained in leaving the rich tradition of winning the school had in the NAIA. (In another story for another day, the move from NAIA to NCAA would end up costing the school one of the greatest coaches to ever coach college basketball, Don Meyer).

The relationship between Christian colleges and big time athletics serves as a good example of the dualism that has plagued the church in its appraisal of sports. Sports, it seems, are often viewed as simply a means to an end. If the goal is lofty enough (promoting the purpose of the university, say) then we can hedge here or there in order to do what is necessary to get the team to the national level. If you ever have a chance, read the history of Oral Roberts University and their basketball program which made a major push for the success of their basketball team back in the 1970’s, immediately finding success on the national level . . . and also scandal on the national level.

I find little distinction in approaches taken to athletics by most Christians. It seems in most Christian sports circles that to be a good Christian and participate in sports has little more impact than making one promote good sportsmanship. Just look at the kinds of athletes who write books – those who are successful. The titles of their books read like they were plucked off the self-help aisle at Barnes and Noble: The Winner’s Manual (Jim Tressel), The Score Takes Care of itself (Bill Walsh), Bo’s Lasting Lessons (Bo Schembechler), Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success (John Wooden), Win Forever (Pete Carroll), What it Takes to be Number One (Vince Lombardi) . . . and you could go on and on with these books. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, but what should make us pause is to note how difficult it is to know where the distinctly Christian message ends and where the more general promotion of sportsmanship begins. They just kind of melt together providing a message that reads more like a promotion of civic religion than anything distinctly Christian. I’m all for sportsmanship . . . “but don’t even the pagans do that?”

In many ways, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is the spectacle of the Power of sports displayed for all to see. It is beautiful and there are few things as exciting to watch as buzzer-beater endings and majestic slam dunks. But beneath the veneer of these games is a system that is deeply flawed and Fallen alongside all of the other Powers. Coming to terms with our participation in these Powers is something Christians should take more seriously.

I was excited to end my week of research last week by finding no more than Karl Barth to have spoken to the power of sports:

“Who are the principalities and powers today in our world? I will mention only some of them. Everywhere that an ideology is ruling, there is such a power; a communist or anticommunist ideology; money is such a power. No need to give a description. Sport is such a power. Traditions of all kinds are such angelic powers. Fashion for men and women is also a power. . . . I think that all these powers represent certain human possibilities that are given as a part, as an appearance of God’s good creation in man. None of these things is bad, necessarily; but now we have to deal with the man who has separated himself from God and from his neighbor.”
Meeting at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, the University of Chicago, April 25 – 26, 1962. Quoted in A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow. Edited by Bill Wylie Kellerman. P. 190 – 191