I’m going to shamelessly plead with you to live in a vision.
Please, please, please take 1 minute and 48 seconds of your day to watch this video of Chuck Pagano’s beyond-inspiring post game speech to the Colts. It will make all of the difference in your Monday.
“I mentioned before the game that you guys were living in a vision, and you weren’t living in circumstances. Because you know where they had us in the beginning. Every last one of them. But you refused to live in circumstances and decided consciously as a team and as a family to live in a vision.
“I’ve got circumstances. You guys understand it. I understand it. It’s already beat. It’s already beat. My vision that I’m living is to see two more daughters get married, dance at their weddings and then hoist that Lombardi (trophy) several times.”
Can he get an Amen?! What an amazing man. Let’s continue to lift Coach Pagano and his family up in prayer as he heads into his next round of cancer treatment. We wish you all the best, Coach!
I love good sports writers – those who are accurate, insightful, and respectful. But an added bonus is wit…and this comment from Mike Tanier about interim Saints head coach Joe Vitt has kept me laughing for days:
Vitt is an old-fashioned motivator, not an X’s and O’s guy; Drew Brees called him “one of those guys who just loves his players” this week, while Junior Galette said that Vitt “says everything with conviction.” “He could say, ‘Hey, the sky is black,’ and he’ll get you to believe that.” Vitt is apparently even more convincing at night.
Seriously…every time I think about it I crack up all over again. Well played, Mr. Tanier.
You may have assumed that either a) you were watching a rugby game, circa 1940, or b) something catastrophic had happened to the color resolution of your screen. Rest assured, it was just the Steelers’ version of the recently popular “throwback” jersey: a jersey from an earlier era in the team’s history worn once a season to pay homage to days gone by.
However in the Steelers case on Sunday, it was more a case of days gone awry.
Oh my land, oh my word, oh my eyes. The horror.
I originally thought that the Bucs creamsicle throwbacks were the worst in the NFL.
And yet, somehow, the Steelers eclipsed the barrier for bad. I mean, the socks are bad enough. Adding a jersey to the equation takes it to a whole new level. These were just visually scarring.
Let’s take a minute to address something that happened in the NFL yesterday, and then take some time to celebrate something good.
Matt Cassel, struggling quarterback of the struggling Kansas City Chiefs, got knocked out of the game yesterday – literally. He took a big hit and suffered a concussion as a result, lying motionless on the field for quite a few minutes.
And fans cheered.
Kansas City’s own fans.
It was truly sickening. No one summarized it better than the Chiefs Right Tackle, Eric Winston:
“We are athletes,” Winston said. “We are not gladiators. This isn’t the Roman Coliseum. People pay their hard-earned money to come in here, and I believe they can boo. They can cheer. They can do whatever they want. We’re lucky to play this game. A game. It’s hard economic times, and they still pay the money to do this, but when somebody gets hurt there are long-lasting ramifications to the game we play — long-lasting ramifications.
“I’ve already come to the understanding that I won’t live as long because I play this game, and that’s OK. That’s a choice I’ve made. That’s a choice all of us have made. But when you cheer somebody getting knocked out, I don’t care who it is, and it just so happened to be Matt Cassel, it’s sickening. It’s 100 percent sickening, and I’ve been in some rough times on some rough teams, and I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life to play football than in that moment right there.”
Gang, this is bad. It goes further than football – it speaks to the nature of our society. Lots of people are going to slay football today, saying that this is the result of a game that is no longer appropriate for our society due to it’s brutality, but I don’t think it’s football. I think it’s a culture that is, at times, uneducated, entitled, and immoral.
Personally, I believe that this is an unfortunate result of a society that no longer believes in the existence of absolute truths. The basic convictions of right and wrong seem to be lost. That has never been more evident than it was yesterday as 70,000 people cheered an injury that could have been at the very least career-threatening and at the very worst life-altering.
That was the bad and the ugly. But there was also good over the course of the football weekend, as the Colts overcame an 18-point deficit to beat the Packers in a victory that was 100% in honor of their head coach, Chuck Pagano. As a Packers fan, the loss concerns me because, good glory!, there are some glaring insufficiencies…everywhere. But even though the loss demoted the Packers to 2-3 on the season, I couldn’t have been happier for the Colts and Chuck Pagano. They truly deserved that win.
There are a lot of stories in the naked city this morning — the Brees ascension over the great Unitas, the 49ers playing like the ’66 Packers, the air being let out of the Buffalo Counterfeit Bills, Eric Winston in a rage, Wes Welker with a needle, Chicago playing piranha defense, Minnesota shocking the world, Atlanta off to the best start in its history — but there is one story that stands above them all. The story is the game of the year.
Halftime score in Indianapolis: Packers 21, Colts 3.
Final score in Indianapolis: Chuck Pagano 30, Packers 27.
A few minutes before the start of Sunday’s game at Lucas Oil Field, just before going out for introductions, interim Colts coach Bruce Arians found his cell phone and texted five words to one of his best friends in coaching, head coach Chuck Pagano. Arians actually hoped Pagano was sleeping, but he knew better. The coach was two miles down the street from the stadium, in room C23 at the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center when Arians’ text showed up.
“Don’t think you’re not here.”
This is why we love sports. This is why football matters.
Let’s be part of the intelligent fan base that refuses to celebrate violence but LOVES to celebrate true sportsmanship. Because it matters. It really, really, matters.
Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the people we see on TV are real people just like us, with real problems and real pain. Athletes and those involved in professional sports seem especially prone to this perception; their private lives, unlike those of celebrities, only occasionally play out in the public eye for all to see. We experience the high highs and the low lows they endure on the field and sometimes forget that they have lives off the field, too.
But this week, Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia. It was a sobering reminder that life is hard sometimes – for everyone. No matter who you are or what you do.
Since I’m both a fan of the NFL and a follower of Christ, I feel like it’s time to do more than just cheer for my team on Sundays. I’d like to go a bit deeper than that and start praying for the people who make up the league that I love. They play such a significant role in my day-to-day life even though we are complete strangers, so why not actively value them by lifting them up in prayer?
I’m not sure if this will become a regular blog feature or not, but for today, if you are a praying person, maybe you’d like to join me in praying for these people. (And if you or someone you know of would like to be added to the list, by all means let us know in the comment section! We’d love to pray for you, too.)
News came yesterday regarding Pagano’s condition after he had reportedly complained of fatigue and bruising dating back to the preseason. Both of these symptoms are potential signs of leukemia, a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow, and tests conducted last week, while the Colts were on a bye, confirmed the specific diagnosis of APL [acute promyelocytic leukemia].
Olsen’s wife is pregnant with twins, but one of the children has been diagnosed in utero with a heart defect known as HLHS. (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.) The child, who will be named T.J., already has been scheduled for three surgeries, including one shortly after birth. His chances for survival are up to 70 percent.
Corrente checked into the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston the day after his final game of the 2011 season — the Detroit-New Orleans Wild Card game — for treatment of a thumb-sized malignant tumor at the base of his tongue, where it connects with the back of his throat. He had 13 chemotherapy treatments and 33 zaps of radiation in a short period, to attack the tumor aggressively. Doctors told him if the tumor had been discovered as little as three weeks later the news would have been very dark for him. But they began treatment in time, and in the spring, they found that the tumor was under control. He’s had two thorough checkups since, and both have given him a clean bill of health.
If you are here, reading this post, it might be because you are a fan of the NFL and read blogs about football. But more likely than not, you are here either because you are a) a friend who came over from the main site (thanks, guys!) or b) someone who is trying to learn more about football to make life bearable for the next 4 months.
To those of you in the latter group, let me assure you of something right from the get-go: What you have witnessed in the past 3 weeks IS NOT FOOTBALL. It’s a power struggle between the NFL owners and the NFL referees over a few million dollars – which is basically pocket change for a multi-billion dollar industry – being played out publicly and to the detriment of the players, the fans, and the game itself.
That being said, let’s try to learn something from this situation, both about the game and about life.
Before we begin, a disclaimer: I am not an objective voice to speak on this issue. The Packers are one of my greatest joys in life; I’m an unrelenting and irrational fan. As such, I am biased. I do not have a valid perspective on this issue.
But I do have eyes. And this is what my eyes saw last night:
1. M.D. Jennings, the Packers player who jumped highest, intercepted the ball in the endzone.
2. General pandemonium erupted on the field.
Let’s tackle the first issue first.
From a game-play perspective, let’s review what happened:
1. Golden Tate, 81, pushes off on Sam Shields, 37, before jumping up to try and catch the ball. That’s an Offensive Pass Interference penalty which should have rendered the play null and void. That penalty was not called. Mistake #1. (And let’s not even talk about the phantom Roughing the Passer penalty that put the Seahawks in position to take that shot at the endzone in the first place, or the also-phantom Defensive Pass Interference penalty on the other Packers interception a few plays prior.)
2. When M.D. Jennings, 43, and Golden Tate, 81, came down with the ball, one ref ruled it a touchdown and one ref made the call to stop the clock. The ref who ran to the endzone, looked at the pile, and ruled the “catch” a touchdown had the power to overrule the ref who ruled to stop the clock to review the play. Therefore, he should have taken the time to conference with the other officials before making his overarching decision. Mistake #2.
3. (This is important to know!) The play was reviewed by the replay official because all scoring plays inside the final 2 minutes of the game are reviewed. But, by rule, the ruling of a touchdown call can’t be overturned and ruled as an interception. As soon as the play was called a touchdown, the only “reviewable” action was whether or not the ball hit the ground/was controlled by the receiver. The replay official cannot determine possession. Because Golden Tate/M.D. Jennings did have control of the ball, the ruling on the field stood. The replacement ref making the touchdown call was the one who made the egregious error, not the official in the booth reviewing the play.
As we break this down from a football perspective, it’s an example of a bad call at the end of an entire game’s worth of bad calls. Clearly, I’m upset as a Packers fan. When you only play 16 games a season, every game counts. The Packers should be 2-1 right now.
However, bad calls are made in every game of every season by every referee – regular or replacement. It’s part of playing sports.
So let’s move on to the second aspect of the video: general pandemonium erupting on the field. And let’s take a life lesson from that: it’s never a good idea to make a decision in the midst of indecision.
The officials are clearly indecisive about which way the call should go. When you are in over your head, when you feel unprecedented scrutiny, when the fate of hardworking players and coaches and the sanity of diehard fans rests on your call…it’s not a good time to make a snap judgement. It would have been best to take a minute to back away from the action, talk to the other refs who had a better perspective on the play, and make a well-educated decision about the situation. That’s a lesson we can all apply to our own lives in one way or another.
But let’s go even further and step outside of this play in this game. Because even though it’s the worst error of the Replacement Ref Era of 2012, it’s far from the only error. This has been going on all season. And unfortunately, I think it speaks to the uglier side of the NFL, the side in which money and power are more important than the actual game of football.
I feel disheartened as a fan of the NFL. For an organization that has been so concerned with “player safety” and the “integrity of the game,” this screams hypocrisy. If you’ll allow untrained, inexperienced referees to officiate ineffectively – not for a game, not for a week – but for 3 whole weeks during which there have been constant and glaring deficiencies, none more glaring than last night, I don’t think you are actually concerned with player safety and integrity of the game.
To make matters worse, the NFL just issued a statement concerning last night’s outcome…supporting the outcome. They are effectively telling a bold-faced lie in an effort to save any remaining credibility. I can’t talk about it rationally right now because it makes my blood boil. It makes me feel like I’m living under a dictatorship in which I’m being fed falsehoods and expected to blindly support them for the good of the country.
But here’s the thing: you can’t establish credibility by promoting dishonesty and a lack of responsibility. To restore any semblance of validity to the organization, the NFL needed to man up and admit fault. What they did, instead, was further prove their lack of respect for the game and for the intelligence of those who participate – whether as a team member or a fan.
SI’s Peter King called last night, “one of the great disgraces in NFL history.” Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel rightly observed, “The game is a sideshow. The brilliant performances are an afterthought. The credibility is in question.” And Grantland’s Bill Barnwell hit the nail right on the head:
I recently read an argument suggesting that the replacement refs don’t really matter in the big picture. The evidence is that NFL ratings are still sky-high, which suggests that the fans who complain that poor refereeing is “ruining” the game are still watching. And it’s true, maybe they are still watching. But as the season goes along, if the games continue to produce terrifyingly false endings like Packers-Seahawks, I’m pretty sure that’s going to change. The easiest way to get people to stop watching is to make them think that the games they’re watching are illegitimate and irrelevant. With the continued employment of replacement referees, that is the exact path the NFL’s games are on.
Sadly, that’s where we are right now. It’s hard to endorse a corrupt product. The outcomes of the games feel meaningless. The “just” nature of pure competition feels violated. It’s a tough pill to swallow for anyone who devotes time, money, energy, or enthusiasm to professional football. And you’d be hard-pressed to find many people in this country who don’t devote some measure of time, money, energy or enthusiasm to professional football.
After all the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty, after the headlines have been written, and after you are back in the quiet of your room and the championship ring has been placed on the dresser and after all the pomp and fanfare have faded, the enduring thing that is left is the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make the world a better place in which to live.
Let’s remember what’s truly important. Let’s not allow ourselves to become cynical, but instead use this as a catalyst to lead by example and do with our lives the very best that we can. And please, let’s choose to encourage those within the organization who are exemplifying strength of character and true class rather than harshly demean those who are caught up in corruption.
There are good people who play football, even if the business behind the sport is not currently good.
