The Pride And Vanity Of The NFL And Its Fans

What Has The NFL Truly Become?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Let’s just talk about this slavish adulation of the pro football player, pro basketball player, pro baseball player.  Few pro athletes, before they will accept any accolades for what they do — they won’t even take them.  The first thing they will say is: I just want to thank God.  I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus and God for blessing me with this talent.  Bingo!  Humility right there.  That’s admirable.  The rest of it, they didn’t do anything.  [Remember] the great Mark Bavaro of the New York Giants, Notre Dame graduate and Catholic boy till the end?  Bavaro always genuflected in that end zone, even during the Super Bowl when he scored a touchdown.” Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  This is where I really wanted to concentrate this segment of the show on, this segment of Zurawik’s column.

[reading]

But the way in which the media contribute to our slavish worship and adolescent emulation of the men who play and run professional football is my concern as a media critic. So is the role media can play in public shaming.

I think members of the local media need to all look in the mirror today and do a gut check on how they reported and analyzed the Rice story. Really, if you have any integrity, you need to do it — especially if your station or you are somehow financially connected to the Ravens.

I can’t wait to see how CBS will report the video and reaction to it Thursday night to a TV audience expected to be 20 million strong. Like all sports networks that carry games, CBS has billions of reasons to be nice to the NFL given its lucrative TV contracts. But CBS Sports also needs viewers to believe it has some integrity when it comes to reporting and commenting on an act as ugly as Rice’s.

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And what about Rice’s one-time mentor, Ray Lewis, now an analyst on ESPN? I can’t wait to see what “Big Ray” has to say about “Little Ray” now that TMZ has shown us the truth about what the Ravens running back did to the woman who is now his wife in that elevator.

[end reading]

Mike:  Let’s just talk about this slavish adulation of the pro football player, pro basketball player, pro baseball player.  I don’t think it happens so much for the hockey player, but we’ll throw them in there anyway.  I heard a lot of chatter in the last couple days about how Rice shouldn’t have done what he did because “he’s a pro athlete and a role model.”  Okay.  Why are men and women that are athletes role models?  What have they done?  By the bye, I was neglectful in my comments yesterday.  I did not mention the great Mark Bavaro of the New York Giants, Notre Dame graduate and Catholic boy till the end.  Bavaro always genuflected in that end zone, even during the Super Bowl when he scored a touchdown.  I forgot to acknowledge Bavaro when the Tebow conversation came up.  I did not mean to slight Giants fans and Bavaro himself.  I just had completely forgotten about him, but I’m glad I was reminded.

What actually elevates the professional athlete to role model?  We’ll give Bavaro as an example, Tebow as an example, pro golfers like David Toms as an example.  Few pro athletes, before they will accept any accolades for what they do — they won’t even take them.  The first thing they will say is: I just want to thank God.  I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus and God for blessing me with this talent.  Bingo!  Humility right there.  That’s admirable.  The rest of it, they didn’t do anything.  They were born with this gift.  It is a gift from above and they don’t acknowledge it.  We don’t even acknowledge it.  We believe that they’re the ones that are in control of it.  Have you ever heard of the will of God?  His will will be done.  It’s in the Lord’s Prayer, for heaven’s sake.

For the humble, like Bavaro, like Tebow, like Toms — I know there are others.  I’m not trying to exclude them.  I’m just trying to keep this succinct here.  Those men expressing humility in front of, in the face of being given an opportunity to sin, to commit mortal sin, to exercise on the sin of
vanity, exercise on the sin of pride, they forego it.  They don’t want it.  Why?  Why don’t they want it?  Because they know it is not in their nature in being sons and daughters of God.  This is important.  You people that complain about politicians, [mocking] “I’m glad you got that bill passed.”  Again: If I had any role in this, I’d just like to thank God for blessing me with the talents and skills to get it done.

You may think that that’s corny and cheesy and stupid.  [mocking] “I can’t see God so he can’t be out there,” or whatever it is that you think about that.  It does have, even if we just boil it down, and even if I were to concede that it’s just those men and women saying things they think people want to hear.  I will accept a non-sincere act of humility over a sincere act of arrogance and hubris and conceit every day.  Do you teach your children to be arrogant or do you teach them to be humble?  So what then is to be admired about the pro athlete?  The pro athlete that asks for no credit but shows up at soup kitchens, doesn’t put it on his Facebook page, doesn’t tweet it, just goes.  He shows up at a high school for a practice.  Doesn’t tell anyone he’s going to do it — and I know some that do this — and just shows up and helps the kids out.  Why?  Because he cares.  Because it’s his duty.  He’s giving back.  He’s not asking for any credit; he’s genuinely trying to give back.  We don’t know these men because they don’t seek recognition for it.  Instead, we reward the vain.  We reward the prideful.

I got into this discussion with a friend of mine the other day.  We were on our way to mass at St. Patrick’s.  I said: Not all musicians are bad.  I’m not going to make it out to be that U2 and Bono are great guys and going straight to heaven because I don’t know that.  They may be the worst.  That’s not the point.  The big debut song that U2 had is “Pride.”  Bono makes his big debut single, the song called “Pride.”  It’s about committing a mortal sin.  It’s Bono singing about the mortal sin of pride.  If you own it, listen to it.  It’s an admonition; it’s not an elevation.  We don’t teach our children to be prideful.  We don’t teach them to be arrogant, unless you’re on that television show Housewives of [insert decrepit city name here].  We try to teach humility.  Then why do we reward arrogance, vanity, and pride?  Why?  I think I know the answer to that.  I’d rather hear it from some of you.

I wanted to bring that up because I think there’s not enough discussion about it.  I know it’s important to get back to bashing Obama.  I already did that for an hour.  I already got my week’s worth of bashing Obama in.  It’s not really about bashing Obama, because that’s not a very Christian thing to do.  It’s about pointing out that he does not have the authority to wage acts of war.  We talked about legitimacy and illegitimacy in government yesterday.  This is an illegitimate act.  If Congress doesn’t act to stop him, they’re then acting in an illegitimate manner.  This is why I go through the trouble of staying up late and only sleeping five hours a night to try and sort through and find instances in history that I can share with you to try and flesh out that [mocking] “Mike’s not just making it up and screaming and yelling at people so he can have his way.”  I’m trying to actually demonstrate that there’s some history to this.

What is Obama exhibiting in this expression about what he’s going to do and that he doesn’t need Congress?  Come on, decepticons.  What of Dante’s mortal sins — there are probably more than one — which principal mortal sin, deadly sin, is Obama exhibiting?  Pride.  Let’s just pretend for a moment he didn’t need Congress.  What would be the humble thing to do?  [mocking] “I’m a servant of the people.  Those men and women represent the people.  I’m gonna ask for their opinion.  I don’t want to do anything without the blessing of the people’s representatives.”  Every angle and every way that we look at today’s national, pathetic excuse for a federation, no matter how you look at it and what you look at or whom you look at – there are very few exceptions — it is corrupt.  It is filled with prideful men and women.  They’re all so smart.  They’re all going to fix all of our lives because they’re smarter than us.  They went to East Coast schools and got fancy schmancy degrees with little gold seals on them.  That makes them smarter than you.  That makes them smarter and wiser and in a better position to judge what you should do with your life.  The time to say no to these people has long since expired.  It’s over.  The time to start doing no is here.  Don’t just say no, do no.  No, I am not going to let you conscript me in the commission of that sin.

I brought up yesterday in the television commentary that I submitted to WGNO ABC TV.  I’ll post the audio of that for you Founders Pass members so you can listen to it.  The rest of you can read the transcript.  What has the National Football League given us over the last decade?  Strippers, Janet Jackson being de-robed by Justin Timberlake on a halftime show, abortionist Susan G. Komen foundation.  By the bye, I looked this up yesterday.  The Komen Foundation only pulled its funding from Planned Parenthood for a week.  As soon as the baby killers began whining about it and began threatening that they weren’t going to help women survive if Susan G. Komen didn’t pledge some of its money to kill future women, Komen backed off.

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They still fund.  [mocking] “Mike, that’s for breast screening.”  It’s fungible money.  Don’t buy that for a moment.  Those eugenicists at Planned Parenthood don’t deserve a nickel of a Christian man and woman’s wealth.  So they’ve given us suspected murderers, Ray Lewis, suspected murderers, Aaron Hernandez.  Now we have confirmed wife beaters.  The slavish, sycophant NFL media was willing to go along with this, and would have gone along with it, had it not been for TMZ.  I don’t know what TMZ’s motivations were, other than maybe pride.  They’re the ones that exposed this for what it is.

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Why is this sacred?  Why is it held in such high esteem?  I’ll tell you why, because the pursuit of consuming things trumps everything else.  The NFL helps people to consume things, and it helps people sell things to people that consume things.  They’re consuming cars, credit cards, beer, chicken wings, telephones, chips, you name it.  We’re not going to upset that apple cart now are we?

End Mike Church Show Transcript