Sports Saturday Professional football is a super violent sport and its 16-game season is a war of attrition. One never knows, from one week to the next, what team will have its Super Bowl hopes derailed by critical injuries. For a while this year, everyone was certain that the NFC would send either the New […]
Tag Archives: Football
Washing Away Michael Vick’s Sins
Spiritual Sunday In a follow-up to yesterday’s post on football quarterback Michael Vick, I want to elaborate further on Coleridge’s argument for penance. Penance is not only the right thing to do. It also can make you feel very, very good. Coleridge gives us images in Rime of the Ancient Mariner that drive this point […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Michael Vick, Redemption, Religion, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sin, Sports, T. S. Eliot, Wasteland Comments closed
Michael Vick, Escape Artist Extraordinaire
Why do I find myself rooting for someone guilty of an abominable crime? And yet this Sunday, when the Philadelphia Eagles play the Jacksonville Jaguars, I will find myself cheering for Michael Vick. The stories of the dog fighting ring run by Vick will turn any stomach. He went to jail for it and now […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beggar's Opera, Br'er Rabbit, Homer, Joel Chandler Harris, John Gay, Michael Vick, Odyssey, Sports Comments closed
The NFL as Chicago Slaughterhouse
Sports Saturday Football season has begun, with a full slate of games scheduled for tomorrow. The good news is that the seven-month drought known as offseason ends for fans of America’s most popular game. The bad news is that, once again, young men will go back to permanently damaging themselves as they fling their […]
Never Favre from the Madding Crowd
Sports Saturday He’s baaaak! The fabled quarterback who has played more consecutive games than anyone in the history of football, the prima donna who each offseason plays maddening games with the football world about whether or not he’s retiring, the holder of virtually every scoring record who last year had his best season ever, the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Bull", Archy and Mehitabel, Brett Favre, Don Marquis, Peyton Manning, Ralph Hodgson, Sports Comments closed
Hoops for Madness, Baseball for Lit
Sports Saturday March Madness—the American college basketball play-offs—is officially underway. As is the tradition, the first round has witnessed a host of upsets, including Georgetown, a favorite in my area. (Another favorite, Maryland, won late last night.) As I scan the scores, I find myself wondering why there isn’t more good literature about basketball. In fact, […]
Bread (Pretzels) and (Super Bowl) Circuses
Bread and circuses. That was the accusation of the Roman satirist Juvenal, directed against those politicians who used free bread and gladiatorial contests to divert the populace’s mind from their political responsibilities. Today our diversions continue to occur in coliseums and arenas. I plead guilty to having been so diverted. These past […]
Quarterback Poems for Inspiration
When I was a child, my father used to read us poems from a wonderful poetry anthology called Some Haystacks Don’t Even Have Any Needle, edited by Stephen Dunning. Two of the poems were about quarterbacks, which seems appropriate for this Super Bowl week given that the top two quarterbacks in football will be playing. […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "The Passer", "Ties", Dabney Stuart, George Abbe, Sports Comments closed
Coach James Caldwell, English Major
Colts Coach James Caldwell It appears that football will continue to occupy this website until the actual playing of the Super Bowl ends our annual week of collective hysteria and allows us to move on to other subjects. (Of course, as a Colts fan I am more hysterical this year than others.) Today I’m going […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Invictus", Authenticity, Death and the Compass, Ernest Henley, Indianapolis Colts, James Caldwell, Jorge Luis Borges, Sports Comments closed
