In early October, a dinner conversation with an old friend turned to why we both find the National Football League virtually unwatchable these days: the constant penalties (often elongated into absurdly lengthy reviews); incessant injuries to key players; TV ads for in-game betting; and above all, the adolescent, suggestive post-touchdown “celebrations” that remind one why, when Elvis Presley first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, he was only shown from the waist up.
As a University of Alabama undergraduate, my friend (now a distinguished infectious-disease doctor, researcher, and professor) played football for the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant, Crimson Tide coach from 1958-1982, and recalled Coach Bryant’s instructions to his players: “If you get into the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”
Which put me in mind of a story told by Alex Hawkins, a running back for the BALTIMORE Colts in the 1960s, about his quarterback, the great John Unitas:
The Bears were in front 20-17, and the Colts had the ball inside the 40-yard line, with just seconds remaining in the game. On third down, Unitas called a deep pattern to Lenny Moore … The Bears were blitzing, and Bill George managed to get hold of one of John’s legs. George held him long enough for Doug Atkins to get free and finish him off…
John was slow getting up; we knew he was hurt. The trainers and doctors were running onto the field as Doug stood towering over John’s limp body. Doug just stared down at him for a second, and then he spoke: “Well, kid, that’s about it for you today.”
John propped himself up on one hand and replied, “Not just yet, it ain’t.” When I saw John’s face, I almost threw up. His nose was slashed and mangled, and his face was covered with blood, as if he had been hit with an ax.
…. After packing his nose full of cotton, [Unitas] trotted back onto the field. When he reached the huddle, his nose had already swollen to twice its normal size, and both eyes were almost swollen shut. On fourth down, with no time-outs and only 19 seconds left on the clock, John called the identical deep pattern to Moore. Lenny beat his defender as Unitas uncorked a perfect 39-yard scoring strike to win, 24-20.
It was the most dramatic finish and the damnedest spectacle I had ever seen. Things like that just don’t happen; they’re caused. The man who caused this one, John Unitas, just walked off the field as if it were an everyday occurrence. No high fives, no dancing or celebrating, no fingers pointed upward designating “We’re Number 1.” Here was the greatest quarterback who ever played the game, walking casually off the field, having just finished a day of work. This was what he was paid to do. How often do you see that kind of dignity anywhere?
The Hawkins sidebar in Sports Illustrated’s September 23, 2002, cover story on Unitas was entitled, “How Tough Was He?”
But that rather missed the crucial point that Alex Hawkins was making. Yes, John Unitas was tough—the son of a hardscrabble Lithuanian American family in Depression-era Pittsburgh and veteran of semi-pro sandlot football had to be. More to the point, he was a man with an innate sense of dignity who treated his work as a craft and took legitimate pride in doing that work well.
I very much doubt that lifelong Catholic John Unitas (parts of whose funeral homily I had the honor of drafting for the late Cardinal William Keeler) ever read Pope Leo XIII’s foundational social encyclical, Rerum Novarum. He didn’t have to, though. He knew all about the dignity of workers and work.
And he knew that the dignity of his work was diminished when it was treated as some sort of performance art: a vulgar saturnalia devoted to the false god “Me, Myself, and I.” Moreover, he knew that the dignity of his work, and indeed his own dignity, would be debased by his taking an in-your-face attitude toward those he had just bested. An honest appreciation of his own skills bred in him a sportsmanlike appreciation for the hard work of others.
The deterioration of our games is part and parcel of the deterioration of our culture. And as politics is downstream from culture, end-zone ridiculousness and similar self-aggrandizing debaucheries in other forms of entertainment have inevitably leaked into politics like a poison. Remember that linkage the next time you hit the mute on either an NFL game or on any number of prominent public officials.
(George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)
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I vividly remember the game to which Weigel is referring, and I think that he should have stated that he, as a native of Baltimore, was, like me, a BALTIMORE Colts fan. I would opine that he, like me, jumped out of his seat when Unitas threw that pass to #24, Lenny Moore. I watched the game on a small B&W TV, and that made it that much more dramatic. (I doubt that Nancy D’Alesandro saw the contest).
I enjoy hot dogs when they are taken from boiling hot water and inserted into a warm, lightly buttered bun, at which point the future consumer is free to add mustard, onions, perhaps some garlic, or whatever suits his fancy. Ketchup is allowed in most places, but if used in Chicago the user is subject to arrest followed by a fine.
Other than that I don’t care for them, especially when they dance.
Sauerkraut on hot dogs, too please.
It is not the important point, but Johnny Unitas was the greatest quarterback in the history of football.
Our culture…in shambles. Why? Because man surrendered his birthright i.e. human dignity as a creature made in God’s image. Man refashioned his image so that it appears as if he were made instead in Satan’s image. Eventually, man will be chastened enough to return to his patrimony.
I met Johnny Unitas. He had dignity. Something players to day seem to lack. Walter Payton also had dignify. When he scored a touchdown, and he scored many, he would toss the ball to an official, jog to the sideline,shake a few hands, and act with dignity. He did not have a seizure in the end zone.
The excessive celebrating is part of a culture of hype and BS. Every game is the game of the century. The current players don’t seem to understand that if everything is life or death importance, then nothing is.
Unitas was tough,but was not a big guy. Maybe 190 lbs. this makes his accomplishments on the football field even more amazing.
When a first-century christian slave rolled out of bed in the morning to fix his cruel Roman masters’ breakfast, Paul admonished him to… “render service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.” (Ephesians) It’s certainly admirable to perform on the biggest stage with fidelity and humility. However, I would posit that EVERY SINGLE CHRISTIAN is called to a higher purpose than Johnny Unitas’ very exemplary performance. Unknown, unseen, unappreciated, UNACKNOWLEDGED by any human observer, inside our inner self, we are to let God help us “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world”…(Phillipians)
Thanks George: it’s all about integrity-a scarce commodity today.
Weigel also misses the point. The term “professional football” is an oxymoron – adults being paid to play a game that kids play for free, because other adults will pay to watch them. And where’s the dignity in that? It’s all performance art.
The real reason the NFL should be unwatchable is that it is unconscionable. Much of its publicity shenanigans are dedicated to maintaining the ability of old billionaire owners to go to the bank together on Monday, after young millionaire players go to war on Sunday.
There is no rule, no equipment, nothing that can stop the cumulative effects of collisions between exceptionally athletic men (size, strength and the real killer -speed) when the human brain displaces the thin layer of fluid that suspends it in the skull and slams against bone). I recently saw Christian Okoye, the “Nigerian Nightmare” whose combination of size and speed drained the vocabulary of superlatives speak about his son playing against his wishes but in accord with the young man’s mother’s and his fears for his own health.
The late Merlin Olsen claimed what distinguished Unitas was courage; but one wonders if willingness to endure pain and risk debilitating injury (that may not manifest itself until long after the cheers have stopped) for a game is courage or stupidity.
Indeed Unitas’ litany of post career injuries is horrendous, both of his knees were replaced and his one hand became useless. By 60, he was a battered old man, and despite being one of the major reasons the NFL became the preeminent sport, the NFL rejected his disability application because he filed in after age 55 and was a pensioner. While he’s not listed as a player with CTE, he died at 69, so it may have been present but subclinical. The players of the 1960’s were exceptional athletes, but without the training regimens that produces the “freaks” of today. In more recent times a few players are showing CTE as early as their 20’s, even without long careers. (Jovan Belcher). Dave Duerson and Junior Seau are among those who took their own lives.
But of course, the body is subject to infirmity and death. What should concern us is the soul. Unitas married at 21, perhaps too young and to a woman entranced with the quarterback hero-still the marriage produced five children until it ended in divorce and the lifelong Catholic “remarried”.
The author is a little too prone to hero worship. I live in Cardinal Keeler’s former Diocese before Baltimore and it suffered the public humiliation of a bankruptcy filing a few years ago, in no small part due to (in)actions taken by Keeler. A successor had many of his predecessors’ names stricken from diocesan memorials-including Keeler’s-due to episcopal incompetence in dealing with sexually incontinent priests.
Perhaps if Keeler had been more attentive to the good order and discipline of his priests instead of memorializing sports heroes, then AG Josh Shapiro’s detractionary inquisition masquerading as justice would have been slightly less lurid.
I await the Bishop who has the courage to say no Catholic school in his diocese can sponsor football, the evidence is overwhelming that it is presents not risks of injury, but virtual certainties, offering immediate and conspicuous glories for delayed and insidious indignities incurred when players are too young to realize they aren’t invulnerable. I am also sure I will die before that ever happens.
Was Unitas a “quarterback-hero” when he married in 1954, two years before the start of his pro career? Are you suggesting that he was a hero in college? When he played at Louisville football was progressively deemphasized throughout his seasons. It is hard to imagine that he was really a big man on campus.
Whatever was the story of his first marriage, perhaps the rest of us should refrain from being too judgmental.
Unitas met his wife while in high school, where he was a “big man on campus” as a star quarterback. So yes, he was a quarterback-hero LONG before turning pro.
As for “judgmental”, tell me what allows a divorced Catholic to remarry. Unless his first wife was dead or he successfully obtained an annulment (after five children) he was not free to enter into another marriage-and his biography states that he remained “married” to the second wife until death. We used to understand that this was wrong, now hero worshippers ignore or excuse serial monogamy.
So Unitas was divorced and remarried. Why do you think that you can pass judgement on him for that? Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone. More sanctimonious, self righteous nonsense. This is typical for you.
“So Unitas was divorced and remarried.”
Perhaps you are unaware that this is a Catholic website and a doctrine of the Church is that marriage is indissoluble and a civil divorce does not free one to enter a second union. Shouldn’t you be on an Anglican website with that idea? Of course, they have limits, as Edward III found out.
“Why do you think that you can pass judgement on him for that?”
I’m passing judgment on the act, not the man’s soul. He’s dead and I presume received the particular judgment we will all receive. In any case, what I think doesn’t matter except to illustrate the irony of elevating somebody to a position of exemplar, ignoring a serious failure.
Now of course, if you are aware of any subjective circumstances which lessen the gravity of remarriage by somebody who presumably had an informed conscience, then by all means share your novel theological musings.
“Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”
Ah yes, the all purpose and abused used verse offered by all moral relativists. Awesome.
You write that and then launch into your own judgmental tirade?
This sin I am free of and my first and I remain wed to my first and only wife. Are you so sensitive because you are divorced and remarried? You seem to have a dog in the fight.
Did you question how the author can judge post score dances as suggestive (a matter of interpretation) and objectionable? Or just how I can judge a divorced Catholic celebrity violating marriage vows (a factual matter of record) as potentially scandalous and objectionable.
If you are going to be contentious for its own sake, do try to be more logical and less obvious in your retorts. Your personal antipathy is showing.
William: Have you ever had any desire to take a timeout from liberal reflexes long enough to grasp that calling someone sanctimonious, self-righteous, or judgmental constitutes actions of being sanctimonious, self-righteous, or judgmental? Especially ironic when directed towards a man who makes clear distinctions between judging actions as distinct from judging souls.
Unitas met his wife while in high school, where he was a “big man on campus” as a star quarterback. So yes, he was a quarterback-hero LONG before turning pro.
As for “judgmental”, tell me what allows a divorced Catholic to remarry. Unless his first wife was dead or he successfully obtained an annulment (after five children) he was not free to enter into another marriage-and his biography states that he remained “married” to the second wife until death. We used to understand that this was wrong, now hero worshippers ignore or excuse serial monogamy.
Was it “judgmental” for the author to complain about “adolescent, suggestive post-touchdown “celebrations”?-hint: he’s right about the wrong thing.
I tried to post a reply and wasn’t able to do so. Hoping for better luck now.
Unitas may have met his first wife in high school, but they did not get married until three years after they graduated. Was she still mooning over the quarterback then? Got any evidence of that?
I know what the Catholic Church teaches about marriage, but I believe talking about those teachings in reference to specific individuals is judgmental. A lot more than criticizing exuberant celebrations on a playing field.
You raise a very valid question about whether Catholic schools should have football teams. Fortunately, there is a greater awareness of questions about player safety than in Unitas’ era. Players who get concussions are no longer told to shake it off and get back in the game. Still, it may be that no matter what is done, football can never be made sufficiently safe. That is why your question will always be valid. Perhaps most of all because, as you acknowledge, Catholic schools are not going to stop playing football.
“Unitas may have met his first wife in high school, but they did not get married until three years after they graduated. Was she still mooning over the quarterback then? Got any evidence of that?”
Other than she didn’t eventually marry the tuba player, chess champion or valedictorian, no.
We can also assume she was pretty confident he has decent prospects as a provider, marrying two years before he went pro.
But you don’t have any counter-evidence that the attraction wasn’t motivated in spite of sports status or completely without regard to it either, do you?
Of course I also attended high school and the star quarterback did get the pick of the litter-stereotypically the head cheerleader (to their credit still married, last I heard). So did the star quarterback at every high school of every friend and acquaintance I ever had or have in my life. Ever since high school football became a significant part of the school, the quarterback has typically been the pack alpha, slicing through the female student body like a hot knife through butter.
In short my presumption is reasonable, if not attested by facts sufficient for a court of law.
Whatever the basis of their attraction, what is important is they made a vow on the order of forsaking all others until death do us part. Maybe she pulled the pin and created the temptation and maybe she remarried as well. I don’t know if either or both are true. She’s not the topic here, he is, because the author elevated him to a pedestal. I imagine playing major league anything provides endless temptation. The point is, let’s not pretend that the players of the past were faultless paragons of virtue.
And as for the concussion protocol, it’s a fig leaf. Not only are some concussions subclinical-but the evidence is that it is the routine impacts that don’t cause concussions play a significant (in part why it’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy and not acute traumatic encephalopathy) if not a major role in the the development of tau protein lesions and the atrophy that is thought to produce the debilitating behavioral, cognitive and mood disorders associated with CTE.
I am an aging gym rat, frequently thought to be a former linebacker. Every time the question is asked, I thank the long dead family doctor who talked me out of playing football due to my adolescent onset epilepsy. I am now completely past that problem (last “grand mal” age 29) and am not worrying that I might be tempted to shoot myself in the heart and leave a suicide not entrusting my brain to forensic neurologists.
It’s ironic. Of all of the on and off field violence associated with football (OJ Simpson and Ray Rice come to mind); the player subjected to the most temporal justice was Michael Vick for dog fighting. OJ almost certainly opened up two people like pez dispensers and never served a day.
There’s always a pitchfork man that has to be negative.
Impossible to ignore that most of the players are black, and all of the vulgar showboating is black players. Not a racist comment. Just very sad that they don’t seem interested in the societal norm of dignity and good sportsmanship. Why? I don’t watch anymore, but I hated to see the intentional late hits.
This guy never misses an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Name-dropping and self-promotion in every column he has ever written.
twerking in the end zone freed me from the circus of “bread and circuses”. Saves a lot of time and disappointment when the favorite team doesn’t win the Stupor Bowl. I was a Colts fan as a kid – now it is all dross. Wish those thousands of rabid fans were in Church on Sundays instead. My Mom said it for years ‘sports idolatry is paganism’.
Anytime we think Panem Et Circenses is a relic of the past, we just need to remember SNAP (food stamps) and municipal stadium finance.
of course Juvenal had no way to imagine “food stamp haul” videos being uploaded to antisocial media.
Replying to The Pitchfork Rebel’s reply to my reply:
You admit that you have no knowledge about the Unitases’ decision to marry, except generalizations from your experience. (How many high schools did you attend?)
If you know anything about Unitas’ career, or about football salaries in era when almost all players found it necessary to have offseason jobs, you would know how preposterous it is to suggest that the first Mrs. Unitas could have had any particular confidence in his financial prospects when she married him.
I’m unsure why anyone would feel the need to even try to have an opinion about their divorce at this point.
Whatever one wants to say about any particular action taken regarding player safety today, are you going to try to suggest that in terms of concern for player safety, nothing has changed since Unitas played?
Did George Weigel put Unitas on a pedestal? He held him up as a counterpoint to players who go overboard — in the opinion of many — celebrating on the field today? That’s a pedestal? Maybe, but how high is it really? And he did refer to Unitas as a lifelong Catholic. Is that the problem?
“I’m unsure why anyone would feel the need to even try to have an opinion about their divorce at this point.”
Wow, you are a special kind of obtuse. Red herring. I offered no opinion on his divorce or any other, because there’s always his side, her side and the truth. He’s dead.
What I have an opinion on is it is a fact that he remarried invalidly and Weigel presents him as a paragon of virtue-a counter example to contemporary players-ignoring this serious failure. I’m pretty sure that a overexuberant post score dances are less offensive to God than scoring with a fake wife.
“know how preposterous it is to suggest that the first Mrs. Unitas could have had any particular confidence in his financial prospects when she married him.”
First you tell us that we can’t make any inference about the basis of their relationship, but you tell us that you can infer her particular judgments about his earnings ability. So is your thought really that (in the early 50’s) this woman thought “I’ll marry this guy, who I can have no confidence in being a good provider” or are you accusing her of merely failing to consider that ability before accepting his proposal. Do tell us, in your expert opinion which of the two possibilities apply.
My guess is that Weigel is immersed in nostalgia for a past that was never what it seemed and he idealizes the unrestrained cartoon violence of football because he has never been knocked on his keister wondering if somebody bothered to get the plate of the truck that just leveled him and left him gasping for air.
As for your comment about how many high schools i attended, in your rush to argumentum ad hominem, you failed to read what I wrote. Try reading it slowly, it might allow better comprehension.
You seem to have an obsession with Unitas having been divorced and remarried. Otherwise why would you have carried on this discussion? As for me, I would leave whatever judgments should be made about that to the Lord. he is better at His job than any of us would be.
Generalizations can have and bring and impose very serious weight of responsibility with them.
Take a case where a marriage was declared null but the process was known by the man to be flawed. He would have the duty to remain single until the situation could get rectified and corrected. It would be an absolute duty.
Note to Pitchfork Rebel: I do not “have a dog in this fight.” I am not divorced. I have been married to the same woman for almost 50 years. But I do not sit in judgement of people who are divorced. Our current President has been divorced twice and I could care less.
So then Pitchfork is judgmental and sanctimonious and you’re not?
Because as far as you’re concerned you can only have “a dog in the fight” if you’re divorced?
You don’t care if people’s souls are endangered by divorce and subsequent adulteries?
Or the tragedy of the real marriage being truncated?
You’d have all discourse censored because their own finding out about it whichever way it would come out, would be wrong?
It’s their business not anyone else’s? But then didn’t our Lord tell the adulteress she had been an adulteress and she was to go and sin no more.
Wasn’t our Lord showing us it remains our business too, in a right way?
So you advocate minding other people’s business and sitting in judgement of them? I rest my case.
Will you always be backing away and making your dog back away too, not good.
Do you normally worry about other people’s sins? That’s God’s job.not yours.
As Catholics we pray and do penance for others when they are good, when they are bad, when they are indifferent and when they are shuffling.
William, your comments “minding other people’s business” and “sitting in judgment” merely run the same course as telling Pitchfork he is sanctimonious and judgmental. Circle back Psaki. You tie down your dog and you keep your skin out of the game and yet you want to rule how others may and may not get involved; then scuttle to go offstage to maintain stasis and remain onstage.
William, you ask: “Do you normally worry about other people’s sins?”
Why do you presume to judge people guilty of “sins?” Very ironic in the course of a retort that falsely judges those making abstract judgments of right and wrong behavior are guilty of having judged others for their sins when they clearly do no such thing? Are you really so oblivious to your reversals?
And What do you say to Jesus in your prayers regarding human culture? Did He not ask us to care about personal morality not only for the culpability of our behavior but how it affects a social ethos?
Visualizing a contrast simmering in the title: Sportsmanship not in the discontented marriage, or, Sportsmanship not for discontent in marriage.
It is my impression that today, some people including Catholics have an attitude that circumstances yielding nullity for a non-sacramental marriage with 5 children, would automatically or typically translate to sacramental marriage; and that nullity for a non-sacramental marriage with 5 children would not be a difficult decision, besides.
Unitas a Catholic went on to have 3 more children by another woman, creating layers of “family life”, consanguinity and imposed affinities. This is very common among non-Catholics and the strain and effects of unnaturalness and forced relationship normalization it puts on those involved, is mostly overlooked after nearly 700 years of legalized divorce; now additionally lately being eclipsed in the post-Sexual Revolution gender collapse avalanche.
Amoris Laetitia failed to grasp real and truly compelling matters of concern. AL seems designed to stamp into a future epoch, a fully matured epoch of human failure.