some spiritual reflections on yesterday's Super Bow XLIX

After the conclusion of arguably the greatest football game ever played yesterday I was struck by the first interview with Rob Gronkowski, the New England Patriots tight end.  The NBC interviewer asked him how it felt to be a champion again.  “Again?” I said to myself?  Gronkowski has never known what it is like to win a championship.  Most Patriots, until yesterday, have never been on top of the football world.  In fact, for many of them, all they have experienced is one bitterly disappointing end to a season after another.

Fans follow their team through a period of many years, many decades for some.  Because of this, we tend to view the team as one continuous entity.  We wonder whether devastating losses are a result of bad football karma from previous years?  This may not be rational, but it is how many fans think.

I am a Cowboys fan because although my father was from Massachusetts, when I was very young, he was stationed in Florida.  He was in the Air Force.  All I saw were Cowboys and Dolphins games and being young, I did not know the Patriots existed.  So I went for the Cowboys.  As I grew older, I followed all the New England teams except for football.  Nevertheless, the Patriots are my second team and since the Cowboys have been mostly awful in the past two decades, they might as well be my first team, especially come playoff time.

In 1995 when the Cowboys played the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, the Steelers were charging hard at the Cowboys.  They scored 10 unanswered points and when they forced Dallas to punt late in the game with only a three point lead, I became desperate.  Not again.  Why can’t we ever beat the Steelers I anguished to myself?  Watching the game with me was a much younger Cowboys fan who had never known the agony of the two Super Bowl losses to Pittsburgh we experienced in the 70’s.  He was freaking out at the prospect of seeing his Cowboys lose but he had no idea how freaked out older Cowboys fans were.  We hated Pittsburgh more than every other team and the prospect of losing to them a third time was just too much.  So in desperation, I turned to prayer.  I prayed aloud, “Oh football gods, please let Neil O’Donnell revert to his normal awful self and have mercy on us.”  The guy watching with me, a pastor in training, was in shock.  “What are you doing?” he asked.  He was even more shocked when my prayer was answered on the very next play, for it was then that O’Donnell, who was experiencing an unusually good run of quality play, threw the ball straight to the Cowboys Larry Brown.  I couldn’t believe my prayers had been answered.  Then, when rationality was restored to me, I realized my prayer to nonexistent gods had nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome.  But when a fan is caught up in the team, it is sometimes easy to imagine a higher power rules the destiny of a sports league.

On sleepless nights I wonder sometimes whether the Cowboys run of awful seasons and heart wrenching losses which snatch hope from its fans are a result of bad karma built up from the hubris of the glory days in the 90’s when the Cowboys were South America’s Team and swaggered their way from strength to strength.  After their 12-4 year this year I have wondered whether Jerry Jones finally repented and decided to build a team properly and whether that repentance has appeased the football gods.

Now imagine you are a patriots fan yesterday and you see that ridiculous catch at the end of the game which gives Seattle first and goal on the five.  I think all Patriots fans just went dead inside.  I remember thinking, “what sins have the Patriots committed to suffer yet another Super Bowl loss on a play so freakish as to defy belief?”  With all their success over the years, and their beat down of team after team after team, was it part of a grant plan to make the Patriots suffer with three gut wrenching losses?  But of course, as I said, most Patriots players have never known ultimate success so such questions do not apply to them.  But for fans?

I know this is completely irrational, but when Jermaine Kearse made that ridiculously improbable catch, a Bible text came to mind.

Comfort, O comfort my people,

says your God.

² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her

that she has served her term,

that her penalty is paid,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

Isaiah 40:1-2 (New Revised Standard Version)

Everything was saying to me the Patriots were done.  Seattle would hammer Lynch into the line and it would be game over.  But this text made me wonder.  Have the Patriots paid for all their hubris?  Maybe that was the last punishment and maybe this time, the Patriots will hang on.  I have always believed they are innocent of Deflategate and with all the accusations, and that freakish Kearse catch maybe the torment price has finally been paid.  And so it came to pass.  The Patriots got a miracle interception, one that will be remembered by football fans forever, and the Brady Belichick Dynasty was made complete.

It is inevitable that when success comes to a team, some hubris will develop.  Some bragging will occur, and some insensitivity.  Hence it is easy to build up bad karma during times of prosperity.  So it is easy to imagine the bad times resulting from that hubris.  Most fans realize that eventually players get old and success gets you low draft picks which means the chances are the talent level will drop.  This means good teams eventually slide into being bad, and bad teams become good, unless you are the Cleveland Browns which are for some reason an exception to the natural order of things.  We understand this rationally, but many of us cannot help but feel there is a grand design for our teams which spans the decades.  It’s crazy, but it’s true.

I am sure one day Brady and Belichick will retire and the Patriots will have a few 5-11 years, and maybe even a 4-12 year or two.  Heck they had only one win for a season long, long ago.  And when that day comes, Patriot haters will rejoice because their enemy will have fallen.  I rejoiced when Bradshaw finally retired and the Steelers became irrelevant.  But after a while, I missed having someone evil to hate, though I suppose I did have the 49ers after the Catch game.  But here again, karma comes into play.  During the 70’s, the Cowboys knocked the 49ers out of the playoffs for three straight years, including one all time 49er choke job.  I lived near San Francisco and watched the Catch game with a 49ers crowd and the released euphoria when Dwight Clark made that catch was amazing to see.  All those years of pent up hatred were released in a moment for the ages.

And then Danny White hit Drew Pearson at midfield and the Cowboys were one play away from a winning field goal.  You could have heard cotton drop on a thick carpet.  And then, a few moans of “Oh God, not again.”  I was young in those days and I remember thinking, “yeah, the Cowboys will win like they always do and the 49ers will be where they belong during the Super Bowl, watching it on TV.  Thus has it always been.”  Yes I was proud and arrogant.  And I was wrong.  White fumbled on the next play and the 49ers started their 15 year period of greatness while the Cowboys started their long decline.

So yes, from a fan’s point of view, karma really does make sense, as irrational as that seems.  The football gods do seem to meet out justice and lift the downtrodden while humbling the lofty. . .unless you are the Cleveland Browns of course.  Perhaps sports theologians can figure out what Cleveland’s grand purpose is, but otherwise, there does seem to be a spiritual order and majesty to football and crazy idiot fans like me will continue to be drawn to it even though rationality says otherwise.

From a karmic point of view, Patriot haters may have longer to wait before they can rejoice because how can you not feel that any bad karma the Patriots accumulated over the years was paid, and the football gods have once again smiled on the Patriots?  I mean, if hollywood wrote that ending for a football movie, we would dismiss it as being too unrealistic.  I have watched football since 1971 and I have never seen anything like the last three minutes of that Super Bowl.  Whether sports karma exists or not, we sure witnessed one of the greatest football games of all time yesterday.  Both teams deserve applause.  There were mistakes yes, but it was well played and brilliantly coached on both sides and just when you thought the script had been written, random chance, fate, or the football gods, take your pick, stepped in and gave us one last shocking twist.  Whatever you believe, every football fan won yesterday, and won big.