| February 5, 1999 |
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Calvin College Chimes
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Super blunder leaves super task for Christians in sports From the Press Box I’m not going to tell you the reason Eugene Robinson got destroyed on an 80 yard bomb in the Super Bowl was that he was preoccupied with his dirty doings the night before. I am going to tell you his were the actions of someone with styrofoam between his ears. And that it makes a pile of work for us, Christians in the American sports scene. But spare me the non sequiturs about how The Bomb was actually planted the night before – that the reason Robinson got burned like toast set on extra dark when John Elway hit Rod Smith for the 80 yard TD score can be traced back some 20 hours. Or that his teammates, bathed in the lights, cameras, and Bronco snarls were wandering aimlessly around Underwear Field (you wanna use the name brand, go ahead) wondering why Robinson, husband and father of two children, would solicit oral sex from an undercover cop one night before the biggest game of his 14 year career and just hours after receiving the Bart Starr Award for moral character. It’s not that each time the Dirty Birds ventured into to the red zone they suddenly realized the new irony of their nickname. Their futility was due more to Chris Chandler looking less like the All-Pro he was this year and more like the mediocre backup he had always been before. No, the Falcons were focused enough to play a lot better than they did. They just flopped bigger than a Bill Cosby movie. This is not to excuse Robinson. For someone to have the absence of senses to try to land a hooker one night before the Super Bowl is dumber than an explanation of thermodynamics by the Spice Girls. Morality award aside, such gimmicks are too much to put your teammates through on game day after two weeks of prepartation (in which Robinson vocally commanded his teammates to be all business). But there’s a lot more to it if you don’t put morality aside, and that’s where we come in. Robinson received the Bart Starr Award from Athletes in Action, a Christian group that not only played at Calvin College this year, but invited women’s basketball coach Gregg Afman to coach them two summers ago. The award was no mistake. Robinson is nicknamed “The Prophet” for his outspoken Christianity. He routinely visits hospitals and is respected in the locker room despite never being drafted. His autobiography is called “It Takes Endurance,” which details the struggles of being a Christian athlete. “I know a lot of people are saying that I’m just another hypocritical Christian, and I deserve that,” Robinson said. Well, yes and no. One incident doesn’t undo a career of good will or make him a bad guy. If King David had lived in the age of MSNBC, he’d be in a lot more hot water than President Clinton has to worry about. Robinson’s first apology was to “my Lord and savior Jesus Christ,” and the day any of us stops making that apology we’re out to lunch. But the sheer magnitude of the stage on which this scene took place makes the stakes a lot higher, and renews our concern about the voice of Christian athletes, who remain, for better or worse, among our most prominent North American missionaries. There are myriad quality citizens and ambassadors among Christian athletes who carry out their careers and their faith, touching lives, without incident. And of course that won’t lead any sportscast any time soon. But that’s still no excuse for Robinson’s boneheadedness. Nor ordained minister’s Reggie White’s discourse on civil wrongs last year in front of the Wisconsin state legislature, when he did everything except say all one fourth Albanians have dandruff. Nor the misguided zealots who respond to a question about prevent defense with a testimony about how God turned a lousy spiral into a touchdown with a divine breeze. It’s not that all Christian athletes are rotten. It’s that they too often soil their best opportunities wth dimented theories like White or muttonhead moves like Robinson when the spotlight shines. All the more reason Christian non-athletes have to be seen and heard among the crowded sports landscape. We have to know the issues as well as the scores, standings, and stars, and provide some much needed common sense and Christian perspective on sports talk shows, in letters to the editor, at the water cooler, and maybe even in our careers, which is why I’m still clutching this crazy dream to enter sports media. The success of the gospel is in God’s hands, but getting it right is in ours. Tragically, the multi-faceted sports subculture has been one big barren mission field thanks to big whiffs like Robinson’s. There’s a lot of misconceptions out there about Christians in sports. I don’t know about you, but that’s not enough to keep me from approaching the mammoth task of starting to undo some of the damage. |