Blue Devils. Demon Deacons. Crusaders.

Everywhere you turn in the world of sports, you are confronted by religious imagery, and religious identifications. Teams pray together before every game, most have chaplains to lead them in religious services.

Teams names are the most immediately visible. Many teams are mascotted by religious characters or ideals, like the Duke Blue Devils, or the Wake Forest Demon Deacons (confusion there). Some attach a holy element to a purely earthly pursuit, like the Holy Cross Crusaders. Interestingly, some proudly parochial schools, like Boston College, go with Eagles.

Oddly, few are named after angels or the like. The Mississippi Tech Cherubim have never made the BCS, and the Fighting Seraphs of Illinois Northwest did not qualify for an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament this year.

Even more oddly, the school that couples athletic success and religious identification most successfully – Notre Dame – is known as a belligerent ethnicity, the Fighting Irish.

The reasons for this identification are many. Many of these schools have a history or current affiliation with a particular denomination or religion, like Notre Dame.

Others were charged with a sacred mission at their start, and that explains their imagery.

Also, perhaps because college sports are a unique feature of American society, most schools that have these association are Christian. Think about it. There are no Fighting Giborim, Haranguing Mullahs, or Marauding Buddhas that regularly succeed in major college sports.

One interesting note is that there are few professional teams, at least at the highest level, sport such spiritual imagery. Perhaps they are concerned about offending people, but of course that hasn’t stopped them from angering the entire Native American population by naming teams Blackhawks and Redskins.

But in college sports, historic Christian missions have long since been replaced by the need to win national championships. The desire to defeat enemies and win converts far afield has been replaced by the passion to defeat adversaries on the sports field.

But why?

The Apostle Paul, writing in the First Letter to the Corinthians, exhorted his readers to run the race so that they would win the prize. This exhortation is repeated or alluded to several other times in the letters of Paul, as well as in the book of  Hebrews.

Perhaps the New Testament authors were speaking metaphorically, but if sports analogies are going to come from the first missionary, the father of the Gentile church, the one who opposed Peter to his face in the great BCS versus Playoff debate, then it is understandable why people found it appropriate to apply such images to sports.

Paul is not the only biblical writer to have made a sports allusion. The writer of Ecclesiastes penned the words: “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong.” Obviously, he never coached in the SEC.

With such an extensive biblical foundation, sports and Christianity are perhaps not such a strange marriage.

On the sporting field, athletes compete in contests of speed, strength, and will. The games are metaphors for battle, and the foxhole is the best place to evangelize, as it is well known. Nothing like imminent annihilation to focus a man on the afterlife.

Sports are often viewed this way.

A few years ago, University of Miami football player Kellen Winslow, Jr. angrily asserted to the media after a loss that he was a soldier, fighting for the Hurricanes. Players and coaches routinely talk of “going to war” and of the field, pitch, or court as the “battlefield.” That attitude is prevalent in college (and pro) athletics, and perhaps helps to explain the link between the sports and religion.

Another factor is the capriciousness of a sports career. Literally in the blink of an eye, one’s career can be ended through a random set of circumstances. Many scientists are atheists, but one wonders if that would be the case if while carefully applying a toothbrush to the fossil of a 100-million-year-old kerblackosaur, a scientific career could come to its end as the scientist was plowed into from his blind side by a 260-pound defensive end.

When faced with the ever-present possibility that their livelihood could end at any moment, athletes must find some higher power in which to put their trust.

The second most common place where one finds religion in sports is the words of the players themselves.

Shout-outs to Jesus after games are as ubiquitous as taunts during the game. The list of players who have answered the post-game question “What was the key for you guys tonight?” with “First I wanna thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave me the talent to dominate and crush my opponent tonight” is as long as the list of college coaches who have failed in the NFL.

Little thought is ever given to the dominated opponent, who more than likely worships the same god. Those players are never interviewed, they never get the chance to say “I worked and worked and worked, and went to church every Sunday, and gave you a shout-out after every win, and this is how you repay me? Thanks for nothing, supreme being!”

In fact, when players lose, they are often reluctant to blame the Almighty. But if God is responsible when they win, why is he not responsible when they lose?

It worked for the Israelites after all.  Entire sections of the book of Psalms are dedicated to blaming God for losses.

And sometimes when they lost, they let God show them whose fault it was.When they lost a big battle, they gathered round and drew lots. When Achan was chosen by the lots (God’s will, you know), a chasm opened up in the ground and swallowed him and his family whole. There must be some members of the Bears who have wished the same fate on Rex Grossman over the years.

Regardless, it seems that religion, especially Christianity, and sports, are a marriage whose divorce is not foreseeable. That’s why this series will attempt to examine some aspects of that marriage, to see whether the magic is still in it or whether it has grown stale and dead, and whether one of the spouses is sneaking around, like Ted Haggard at a gay porn convention.

After a long dormant period, a la grass in the arctic or the horror that lives under the sand in Hamunaptra, this blog is revived.

For any who care, the reason for the long dormant status has more to do with the rigors of employment/fatherhood/pure laziness than anything else. Nonetheless, some of those circumstances have recently changed, which hopefully will leave me with more time for writing. So look for the first in a special off-season (and somewhat off-topic) post later this morning.

ESPN is reporting that former LSU WR Demetrius Byrd is in intensive care following a car wreck in Miami, where Byrd was prepping for this weekend’s NFL Draft.

College football is a dirty business, no more so than in the first week of February. Coaches and kids display their disloyalty in ever-shocking ways, as coaches pull offers at the last minute and kids dis hats with the wrong logo.

I follow recruiting a little bit. I am not Tom Luginbill – I can’t discuss whether a kid projects as more of an ‘athlete’ at the next level, or whether he’s got enough ‘burst’ to be an edge rusher.

But when it gets close, I eagerly read commitment lists, check out Youtubery and try to figure out how a kid fits into a college’s depth chart. I read about the type of offense he ran in high school, his test scores, and whether he might need a year at Hargrave.

But loving this aspect is like loving a girl addicted to crack. The more time I spend with it, the worse I feel, and the more I get scared that I might catch something.

David Logan Schroeder has provided a nice summary of this year’s SEC recruiting hijinks in this article on Bleacher Report, and it illustrates nicely how ridiculous the whole business has become.

This year featured a kid talking trash to a hat, one coach pulling a scholarship offer at the eleventh hour, another coach ominously saying that “kids should honor their commitments,” and kids stringing colleges along until the bitter end.

The whole thing is putrid and needs to be fixed. While that fix may be an early signing period, or just greater restrictions on recruiting, or the abolition of recruiting altogether, I don’t know.

But I do know that the current system stinks, and I am glad that it’s over and I don’t have to think about it for another year.

A few weeks ago, Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno signed a three-year extension to his contract, ensuring that he will roam–or perhaps roll on–the Nittany Lion sideline until at least 2011.

Paterno’s extension brought to an end speculation about who his successor would be, since his current deal expired this year.

Paterno’s quote in the announcement was “There’s no reason for me not to think that I can go for a while.”

In case you are unaware, Paterno is 82 years old.  He was born in 1926, slightly less than three years before the really big stock market crash of 1929.  In other words, when people say that we could be entering another Great Depression, it resonates with Joe Paterno.  He lived it.

He has been the head coach at Penn State for 43 years, and has been on the football staff for 58 years.  He joined the staff during the Truman administration.

Paterno, along with Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, is the dean of coaches.  He is the elder statesman, the winningest Division IA coach of all time.  

And there is no doubt that he has been great for the University.

But Paterno’s extension is bad for Penn State University.

It’s true, the Nittany Lions enjoyed a bit of a renaissance this year, rolling up an 11-1 record and earning a trip to the Rose Bowl to face USC.

But speaking as one who is not close to the situation, and has no inside information, there is no way that I can believe that having Joe Paterno on the sideline, or in the press box, for the next three years can be good for the Penn State football program.

Does Paterno do all of the things that other top-notch head coaches, such as Nick Saban, Bog Stoops, Urban Meyer or Pete Carroll do? Can he maintain a workaholic schedule, sleeping only in snippets, and breaking down film for 15 hours a day?

Of course not.

I can already here the arguments that Paterno can accomplish the same things those guys can in limited duty because he is a legend, but I don’t buy it.

Does Paterno call plays, or even wear a headset?  Nope.  

Can JoePa endure a hot two-hour practice in early August?  I doubt it.

In fact, problems with his leg and hip forced him into the press box for several games this year.  Before the season, JoePa admitted he thought about being up there full time, saying, “I enjoyed being upstairs, I really did.  I sat down, had a nice time, had a cup of coffee…I was even able to watch television.”

Seriously?

Joe Paterno’s extension is not about Penn State winning more games.  The amount of coaching that Joe Paterno actually does nowadays must be very little.

No, Joe Paterno’s contract is about Joe Paterno, and choke-hold he has on Penn State. If Paterno really did care about the University as much as he cares about himself, he would step aside gracefully, and admit what all must face: Father Time is an opponent that cannot be defeated. 

It is apparent that the Nittany Lions need to promote one of their own assistants or hire someone now, or they will risk falling off when Joe Paterno is no longer around to figurehead the program.

Perhaps they keep Paterno in a little office on the ground floor of the athletic building and when they are showing around the fat-cat donors, they take them into that little office and say “Look, here’s Joe Paterno, coaching legend.  We have to ask you to keep your voices down now, Joe is easily startled when he is sleeping.”

Eighty-two years old. Time to hang it up, Joe, and let Penn State, an organization bigger than yourself, move on.

Miles versus Saban.  Les versus Nick.  The Hat versus the Nicktator.  Crazy fourth down calls versus volcanic eruption on the sidelines during 45-10 blowouts.

When Alabama hired Saban, Tide fans crowed.

“We have got us a great coach now,” they said.  “Your coach is an idiot, and we have the man who made LSU what it is!”

“Oh yeah?” LSU fans replied. “Les has lost fewer games in his first three years than Saban did in any of his three years, and we did get another national title under Les, including the AP title!  So there!”

One can only picture the two fan constituencies on opposite sides of a gym in the 1950s, one side chanting “We’ve got Saban, yes we do, we’ve got Saban, how about you!” and the other replying “We’ve got Lester, yes we do, we’ve got Lester, how about you!”

But who is really a better coach?

I asked six high school coaches from the state of Louisiana this question.  All were happy to talk about it, but all asked that I not use their names.  I had extended conversations with two of them about it, and much shorter conversations with the other four.  Three are head coaches; three are assistants.

My first question:  Better coach, Miles or Saban?

The responses:

“Saban.”

“Saban, no question.”

“Saban.”

“Saban, without a doubt.”

“Saban, easily.”

One coach begged off, saying that he didn’t watch a lot of college football due to concentrating on his own team.

The coaches who answered the question were unanimous in their appraisal.  Saban is the better coach, hands down.

Here are some of the comments that the coaches made on the subject:

“X’s and O’s, Saban is the best in the country.  He’s so far ahead of everybody else it’s scary.”

“Saban is the best planner in the country.  He has his days planned out to the minute, he knows what they need to be doing every single minute of the day.”

“I went to a talk by Saban a few years ago, and it was incredible.  The stuff he was talking about was just unbelievable.”

“He’s always going to find good assistants, though because of what you will learn, the contacts you will make, and what it looks like to have him on your resume.  He demands perfection, not just from his coaches, but from players, trainers, staff, everybody.”

But two of the coaches added caveats.

“He’s an (euphemism for jerk). Everybody knows it.  He’s incredibly difficult to work for. He works his assistants like slaves.”

“If you work for him, you are not going to like him.  He has fired GA’s on the field for forgetting headsets.”

One of the coaches, who has heard Saban speak, had a question for the Saban, but chose not to ask it when Saban sarcastically responded to another coach’s question.

Those same qualities that made Saban such a success at LSU wore thin in his five years in Baton Rouge.  By the time he left, according to more than one of the coaches, nobody in the football or athletic departments was sad to see him go.

And the man they brought in to replace Saban at LSU is vastly different in personality.

“He’s more of a CEO-type coach.  He hires his coaches and lets them do their jobs,” another said.

“Which guy do I like better?  Miles, by a long way,” one coach said.

That same coach pointed out that Saban’s arrogance had harmed relationships with coaches in the state.  He pointed as one example to coach at a school in southeast Louisiana (to whom I did not talk) who had grown so sick of Saban that he wouldn’t send his prized recruit to LSU.

When Saban left and Miles was hired, the coach did a one-eighty and encouraged the player to reconsider the Tigers.  The player eventually committed to LSU.

Some of the difficulty with this question comes in the definition of what the coach is.

College coaches must be master organizers, arranging practice schedules, recruiting trips, professional development and so on for the more than 100 people including players under them.

They must be master salespeople, capable of convincing more than 20 seventeen-year-olds every year, along with parent(s) and other interested parties, that the school and program that the coach represents is the perfect place for them.

They must monitor and assist in the academic development of nearly 100 18-22 year-olds.

On top of all that, they have to be masters of the zone blitz, zone blocking, zone coverage, and zone reads.  They must know how to call their own offense, run the defense, and talk in-depth about the benefits of the rugby punt versus the traditional punt, tackle twists and chipping on ends,  play-action and shotgun, and be able to do it all under pressure.

And speaking of pressure, they have 12 three-hour periods on Saturdays in the fall to prove that the rest of the year has not been wasted.  And if they fail the test, there are 90,000 people sitting their watching it happen and all to eager to let them know about it.

Viewed in this light, Saban has to be viewed as the better “football-man.”  But Miles appears to excel in other, less visible but perhaps just as important parts of the job.  However, it would be pure folly to accuse either of being a failure in the area that is not their respective strengths.

Suffice it to say that the two are near the top of the college coaching heap at the moment, and the challenge for both is just to stay there.

And have been doing a lot of thinking about this blog.  I am trying to work on a non-blog project at the moment, but will probably use this space as a testing space for some of  the material.  In addition, I will be posting occasional posts on other topics, like what I am going to do in a few minutes.

Anyway, I hope the legions (if legion=2) of readers will check back from time to time and enjoy.

No, I don’t have one that was sent to the Downtown Athletic Club.  But I was contacted by Shotgun Spratling, who runs a blog called The Blue Workhorse, and they were polling sports bloggers to name the Blog Heisman.

So, I dutifully sent in my ballot earlier this week.  Click here for the results. 

And here is my ballot:

1. Colt McCoy – The junior completed nearly 80% of his throws in addition to being the leading rusher of the team that beat both Big 12 title game contestants.
2. Tim Tebow – He made an outrageous claim after the loss at Ole Miss, then he backed it up the rest of the season, landing the Gators in the NCG.
3. Michael Crabtree – the award is supposed to go the ‘best’ player in college football, and he is a better player than everybody except for the two guys above him.

Here are some randome, poorly thought-out rationalizations:

•  McCoy is the only all-Big 12 player on that offense, Bradford has 7.
• Some of my pro-McCoy feeling is my personal distaste for Stoops this year, and my impression that the Sooners have been less than impressive in bowls over the last few years.  But Texas did beat OU, and McCoy completed almost 80% and led the ‘Horns in rushing.  I just can’t get past that right there.
• Tebow just absolutely carries that team, all the time.  And they are in the NCG.
• Crabtree is just a man. 

This week, I am ranking on resume, and so Alabama, by virtue of being the only undefeated team in conference, gets the top slot.  Like everyone else, though, I think Florida is a team that could end the Tide’s magical run through the season.  The game should be a great contrast in styles, power Bama vs. track meet Florida. I like the rest of SEC fandom, am eagerly anticipating it.

As for the rest of the ballot, Ole Miss ascends due to the fast finish.  Georgia must drop after laying that egg against Ga Tech, but then there are all kinds of head to head result issues.  So without apology, here is the ranking:

1. Alabama -  Not the kind of football that makes you giddy, but the kind that wins
2. Florida – The kind that makes you giddy, when Harvin, Demps, and Tebow are all firing
3. Ole Miss – What a finish for the Rebs.  Nutt is the anti-Orgeron
4. Georgia – ACC punk #1.  I did NOT see that coming
5. Vanderbilt – Good year, solid team, is this the ceiling for Vandy, or can they go even highter?
6. LSU – Do I hear a YAW YAW YAW in LSU’s future?  Or will a rejected Volunteer join the Tigers?  Or will Les do nothing, which will certainly anger the fans?
7. South Carolina – ACC punk #2.
8. Tennessee – Good finish as they carry Fulmer out.  Kiffin a good hire, methinks.  Team needs some juvenation.
9. Arkansas Got upset win against crumbling Tigers, but still a bad year.
10. Kentucky – Started strong, faded fast.  Welcome to Wildcat football.
11. Auburn – Tubby swears he doesn’t force assistants on people.  Right, and you don’t coach the illegal chop block, either.
12. Mississippi State – Croom doomed after loss at La Tech in opening week.

As you may have noticed if you read this blog regularly, and you are a very select group, I have not been posting much lately.

First, I apologize.

When I took a job in sports journalism I thought that I would have plenty of time and inclination to write on the side about LSU and other important sports points.  But I haven’t.  Truth is, most of the time when I get home from sitting in front of my mac at work all day, the last thing I want to do is sit in front of another one and do more work.

One major frustrating thing about that is that I feel like I have things to say.  Some ideas that have been floating in my brain to do, but that I haven’t gotten around to are:

1) My survey of high school coaches on the Miles vs. Saban debate.
2) Why I hate Bob Stoops.
3) The inane history of the BCS, and why what we have now is exactly what we had before.
4) What LSU needs to do in the offseason
5) Why several Louisiana schools should seriously consider FCS.

Plus, the whole thing about trying to spend time with the family, when I am gone 2-3 nights per week with work has been tough.

So what should I do, then?  Am I to continue in passivity that stagnation may increase?  By no means!

But I am not sure what exactly to do.  I would love it a couple of people were willing to do this thing with me, and thus would provide a (slightly) more collaborative feel to the site, which would ease up the pressure of posting every day, and allow us to feed off of one another’s posts.  But so far, my attempts to find individuals to do this has failed.

I could just shut it down, but I don’t really want to do that, because I enjoy it.

Plus, this LSU season has been disappointing, but I have also been traveling a good bit, and it is not easy to blog when one is spending quality time with family.

So again, I am at a loss.

I have really enjoyed being a part of the SEC Power Poll – that has been great.  There are a lot of great, and very well-written blogs in that left hand sidebar, so go check some of them out.

On that note, I will put my final ballot up today or tomorrow, and we will be coming out with an All-SEC team in a few weeks, so be sure to look for that.

So, then the great question: Whither go we hence?

I don’t know.  Suggestions welcome.