Chateau Lloyd

As part of a wide-ranging discussion of prayer, the other day I saw someone express an opinion that praying over sports, especially its outcomes, was a waste of time.  Sports were not something worth prayers.

My answer at the time was that anything that draws people into prayer is a good thing, because it brings them closer to God.  Maybe the outcome of a sportsball game will open their heart even more, and prayer will become a daily thing.

Upon further contemplation, I feel even more strongly that prayer in sports is a good thing because sports themselves are good, and necessary.

As much as one can condemn the wealth and vulgarity of professional sports, the fact is that lower-tier sports are essential to a functional society.  Indeed, one of the hallmarks of our civilizational decay are declining male participation and men pushing themselves onto women's teams under the guise of being transgender.

Only in a decadent, flabby and (non-coincidentally) secular society can such nonsense be even discussed, let alone put into practice.  Young men in particular need an outlet for their competitive energy, a way to express physical prowess in a controlled and reasonably safe manner.  At all levels sports require rules, a sense of fair play and the acceptance of the outcome.

The comparatively recent advent of school schooters has now escalated to the point where social media sites like Blue Sky are filled with death threats and assassination fantasies from people who have never learned how to take a loss.

Sports bring people together and in general, everyone benefits.  The participants gain the benefit of exercise and development, tenacity and discipline.  They will forge relationships that can last a lifetime.  The spectators also gain more than just mere entertainment.  They become part of a larger community, and of course the venue itself becomes for a time a temporary community.

Until recently, prayers were recited before these events, and unofficially still are.  The Covid lockdown showed how vital these gatherings are to maintaining a healthy mental state.

Many teams still have chaplains, and the are countless athletes who credit their success to God.  Indeed, the knowledge that even the greatest must find comfort and recourse to prayer is humbling.

Team prayers do still exist, and so that also brings people closer to God.  Seeing a team at prayer can also inspire others to embrace it.

Like all human institutions, sports can be turned to evil, but I think it offers great opportunities for spiritual growth.  If praying for victory is what inspires someone to speak to God, who am I to object?

When Marxism failed to sway the proletarian masses, Communist leaders had to explain why.   They hit upon the notion of a "false consciousness," that is that the workers had been duped.  Religion was a major part of this, the "opiate of the masses" and had to be destroyed for the revolution to succeed.

Only once they saw the world as it was (that is, according to Marxists) would the Communist dream come to be.

Of course, Marxism itself is a religion, a form of heresy, which is why it persists despite a record of complete failure wherever it has been tried.

The concept of false consciousness has also endured, and in recent years, has actually appeared.  Thanks to corrupt news outlets and social media, a fully realized alternative universe now exists for many people.

Imagine being a fan of a sportsball team, and visiting a "news" site specific to that team that actually published false scores of the games, turning a close loss into a blowout win.  As the season progresses, the faithful fans happily anticipate playing in the championship game and tune in filled with expectations of glory only to learn that they never made the playoffs.

(This will be the mental state of Michigan fans when their victories and titles from 2021-3 are vacated next month.)

It remains to be seen how these people will react to the revelation that the real world is different from the one on their screens.  Many are threatening suicide and some have already carried it out - sometimes murdering others as well in their rage and despair.

There is no easy way back to reality for these people, and the ones who broke them have much to answer for.  It remains to be seen how many will make the transition or what their new delusion will be.  Happily, with God anything is possible, and I wonder how many will in time be drawn back to Him.  We can only hope.

As is my wont, yesterday I once again attended the annual reunion of the Michigan State Alumni Band.  I'm quite sore today and have a mild sunburn, but it was a great experience.

I think events like this are vastly underappreciated.  Even people who aren't a part of them, and for whom they are just background noise can take comfort that someone else is still into it.  That was my experience on campus.  The faces change, the buildings move around or are renovated, but the atmosphere is the same.

Tradition and respect for one's elders are cardinal virtues which is why the Great Enemy wants to destroy them.  This is why classic works must be disparaged and the respectful relationship between professor and student must be replaced with accusatory activism.

And yet despite all that, there are deeper bonds that remain.  When 74,000 people clap in unison to the fight song or sway back and forth as the Alma Mater is played, something profound is happening: a collective spirit is being renewed.

To put it another way, the sight of 575 graying people gamely trying to march down a street using moves they learned from 1 to 60 years ago might in some respects seem absurd if not pathetic.  Why would these people still to their late teens and early 20s?

The answer is that they are part of something larger than themselves, and wish to see it preserved, and far from reacting with ridicule at their efforts, the bystanders watch them pass shout praise and encouragement because many of them also treasure that time.

I know that when I watched the Alumni Band form and march as a student, I was somewhat in awe of them.  Back then, the "senior" members were from graduating classes in the 1930s, and I recall a sprightly drum major who could still gamely twirl his baton.  During a pause in play, he was allowed onto the field and did his routine to the roaring approval of the student section.

Time remorselessly advances, and perhaps that's another element in all of this.  The graduating classes are continually dying off, and the current "seniors" were born in the 1940s, graduating in the early 1960s.  My generation is now longer newly-graduated but instead settling into middle age and moving from parent to grandparent.  I marched with the son of one of my contemporaries who followed his father's path into the "student band."

I think this unspoken understanding that all traditions are under attack is why attendance is so high, particularly among younger people, which was not the case when I first participated.

Five years ago I first felt this profound sense of continuity, and it only getting stronger as the years have passed.  Particularly in a contentious election cycle, it was nice to leave all of that behind and focus on family updates, withering commentary on the current student band's defects (a venerable alumni tradition), and of course reminiscing.

Having the team win was merely icing on the cake.

In Michigan, August of weather is something of a paradox.  It is often the hottest time of the year, when temperatures test the 100 degree mark and humidity becomes next to unbearable.

Yet it is also the time when evening temperatures touch in to the mid-50s, a hint of the change of the seasons to come.

Such shifts can be deceiving.  I recall heat waves in late September that overwhelmed our air conditioner and running the a/c into October.

At the same time, there have been years where September is remarkably moderate and October sees the first snowfall.

Such are the joy of living in the Great Lakes State.

Tomorrow night college football will open its season in my leafy university town.  I frankly dislike this business of Friday night season openers, preferring the warm afternoons of the late summer.  For one thing, the climate isn't very favorable to it.  I can recall more than one Friday night game delayed by lightning or marred by Biblical deluges.  Definitely not my thing, and it's a choice forced on the sport by the soulless demands of television marketing.

That being said, I am looking forward to football starting up again, with its silly traditions and semi-corrupt economics.  I've booked my slot in the Alumni Band and am making halting efforts to practice the songs and steps I learned three decades ago.  Indeed, one of the most powerful aspects of the experience is slipping back through time.

The most resilient aspects of the human experience are those that resonate, and I think this is why the college football game day continues to have such a strong hold on us.  It is a thoroughly modern tradition, one that hearkens back to earlier rituals and while it has a secular gloss, there is unquestionably a spiritual component to it.

Modernity has emphasized youth over maturity, recoils from the mere mention of mortality, and yet is there anything more representative of momento mori than gathering with the most aged members of one's fellow graduates to look back on what has been?

Like everything else, the sports world is in something of a strange place.  The elites in society have decided that a person's sex is now unknowable, hence the spectacle of men dominating Olympic women's boxing.

The Olympic authorities confess that they are at a loss to find a reliable "scientific" way to tell men and women apart.  This is nonsense, but that's the official lie.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote how honesty is in short supply, and this is a great example of it.

Another example also emerged this week as the NCAA finally released the report of its earlier investigation into the University of Michigan's football program.  For those not following the story closely, there are two scandals at the university, the first involving impermissible recruiting during the Covid period, the second involving on-field cheating via prohibited in-person scouting.

The report for the former offenses is finally available and it is quite telling.  To many commentators, recruiting rules are an annoyance and violations regularly occur.  The NCAA digging into this is therefore a "nothingburger," unworthy of much attention.

However, the antics of now-former Michigan Head Coach Jim Harbaugh elevated it to one of national importance, in part because Harbaugh claimed the whole affair was the result of him buying a hungry kid a cheeseburger.

As the report makes clear, this was a bald-faced lie.  In the first place, Harbaugh bought two recruits (and their fathers) meals one two different occasions.  The only cheesburger consumed was the one Harbaugh himself ordered for breakfast.  Far more significant was the fact that this was during a national "dead period" for recruiting which was imposed to try to limit Covid exposure imposed in 2020.  Harbaugh violated this, brought recruits on campus, worked out with them, and in the end was rewarded with one of them joining his team.

Two other schools (Arizona State University and the Air Force Academy) also violated these rules, but what set Harbaugh apart was how he not only lied to investigators, his program as a whole did as much as possible to obstruct the investigation.  Indeed, Harbaugh (a self-identified Catholic) out did St. Peter by lying four times rather than three.

Moreover, they were stupid, easily disprovable lies.

The significance of this is the reaction to the University of Michigan and its fanbase: they are 100% behind Harbaugh, so much so that he has been invited to be an honorary team captain for their season opener in three weeks.

This is a truly remarkable development.  Not long ago, someone this publicly dishonest would be shunned by society.  

Instead, he is venerated and the reason is that in his final three years as Michigan's head coach, he defeated their hated rival Ohio State, and won three conference titles and a national championship.

These achievements are tainted by allegations of cheating, and the initial report into that is due shortly, but apparently cheating no longer matters.  Winning is what matters.

In fact, media reports indicate that while the university is willing to admit wrongdoing and accept various penalties, vacating the games is not among them.  They desperately want to cling to a tainted record which absolutely no one else will respect.

I am curious as to how the academic side of the university feels about this, especially their schools of medicine and law, which are widely respected.  Surely the faculty and alumni would not want to be associated with a school that believes cheating is okay so long as it works, but these are strange times.

For many years I've used the same response whenever people around me are discussing professional football:

"I'm a Detroit Lions fan.  I don't watch professional football."

It never fails to get a chuckle because the Lions have been a terrible team for decades.

However, in the early 1990s, there was hope that things would turn around.  Detroit drafted Oklahoma State University running back Barry Sanders, and his arrival electrified the team.

Yet despite a promising start, the Lions regressed, and the only bright spot was Sanders' performance.  Devoid of playoff hopes the fan base instead focused on Sanders becoming the greatest running back in pro football history. 

It was not to be.  On the eve of what would have been his record-breaking season Sanders quit, faxing his retirement to a hometown newspaper before going on vacation in London.

Bye, Bye, Barry is a well-done documentary that outlines Sanders' career, the critical part his father played in his life, and why he quit the way he did.

The film is peppered with highlights demonstrating what a phenomenal athlete Sanders was.  Even now, having watched many of those games, my wife and I were amazed with his evasiveness and skill.  Trying to describe his feline grace and reflexes is all but impossible.

Perhaps even more remarkable is Sanders' personality.  He was - and is - a deeply humble man, the antithesis of a typical NFL superstar.  He famously did not show up in person to accept the Heisman Award, college football's greatest honor.  He refused to take extra carries when games were decided in order to boost his statistics because he had no interest in personal glory.

In an age when touchdown celebrations became obligatory, Sanders simply tossed the to the referee after crossing the goal line.  "Act like you've been there before," was how it was described, though Sanders apparently never said it.

When he quit, Detroit and the sports world in general was thrown into turmoil.  How could the preeminent athlete in America's most popular sport just quit?  If he must quit, could he not hold a press conference?

Bye, Bye Barry answers these questions and I took a bit of pleasure in reading the situation correctly.  At the time, I figured he was tired of losing, tired of the spotlight, and wanted to do something else.

And when he quit, so did I.  I haven't watched an NFL game since.

I greatly enjoyed the film, which evoked the time period and used Motown-style music to conjure up the Spirit of Detroit.

The University of Michigan's football program is making a lot of news these days, and none of it is good.  In October, an elaborate scheme for in-person scouting was revealed, and the school is under intense scrutiny both by the NCAA and the Big Ten Conference.  In addition, the FBI is already investigating other crimes which may or may not be related.

For those who don't follow sports, the core of the issue is that a yet unknown number of Michigan staff participated in a what was effectively a spying operation designed to capture the signals and plays of opposing teams.  The goal was to allow Michigan coaches to know exactly what plays were being called and have the perfect response ready at hand. 

Depending on who one asks, this is either only marginally useful, or decisive.  I'm in the latter camp.  From a military perspective, knowing exactly where, when and how an opponent is going to strike is a huge advantage.  Yes, one must still execute, but that's a lot easier if you know what is supposed to happen.

Sending individuals to observe or record these signals has been prohibited since 1994, and for good reason.  At that time, an arms race was breaking out across college football, and everyone was losing.  The wealthy programs chafed at the expense of paying people to go and obtain intelligence; the poor schools lamented their inability to compete, which compounded their competitive disadvantages.

As a result, the practice was banned, and all teams were provided with game film to review.  Some coaches continued to try to monitor play signals during the game, but this was far more difficult.

I mention this because three years ago I talked about All or Nothing, an Amazon documentary about the University of Michigan football program in 2017.   That year Michigan was expected to contend for the national title, but ended up losing to both rivals, and the sense of disappointment was crushing.  By 2020, the situation was even worse, with Head Coach Jim Harbaugh now winless against traditional rival Ohio State and having a losing record against arch-rival Michigan State.  Indeed, Harbaugh chose to hide behind Covid protocols to avoid a sixth consecutive defeat by the Buckeyes.

He was forced to take a major pay cut in order to keep his job.

What I did not know was that one of Harbaugh's responses was turn to a former Marine captain (and Annapolis graduate) for strategic insight - which included the illegal practice of scouting mentioned above.

As noted in the previous post, Harbaugh regularly spoke of "dark side energy," and using anger and aggression to get ahead.  This is clearly what happened, and the scandal is likely to bring long-term damage to both his reputation and that of the university.

There are also criminal implications.  Sports gambling is a billion-dollar industry, and vast sums change hands based on point spreads.  Over the past two and a half year, Michigan consistently defied this, leading to a considerable swing in who got what.  It is not unlikely that someone affiliated with the program knew and profited from this scheme, which stands next to the 1919 World Series in terms of corruption.

How it will play out is anyone's guess, but for those who paid attention, the roots of it were visible as far back as 2017.

I'm once again binge-watching the early seasons of Miami Vice and I'm thinking it would be fun to set the next installment in the World Series Championship year of 1984.  It's an interesting year for a variety of reasons.  Obviously there is the George Orwell angle, but 1984 marked a rare moment of unity in American politics.  The notion of a a presidential candidate carrying 49 states is inconceivable today.

Whether looking at Cold War politics, cultural differences and of course the far superior music and entertainment, I think it would be fun.

As to the plot...well, that's yet to be determined.  I've got a couple of ideas and I'm sure some of the same characters will be represented. 

Of course, nothing may come of it, but that's the fun of being a novelist - not just the ideas that are completed, but the ones that are tossed around for fun.

After a three-year hiatus, tomorrow I will join the remaining alumni and once more take the field in Spartan Stadium.

The reunion of 2019, so soon after my near-death experience, brought me profound spiritual healing.  I do not know how tomorrow will go, but I look forward to see the old sights and play the old songs once more.

Tradition is a powerful force in culture.  As Americans, we are less rooted than other societies, but we still feel its pull.  That is why we have our own unique rituals - largely secular, but mystical in their power to comfort us and create a sense of continuity.

The 2019 gathering marked the 150th anniversary of Michigan State Bands, and 900 seasoned musicians took the field in a major show of strength.  Tomorrow less than half of that will show up, no doubt in part because so many older people have succumbed to illness.

And yet the tradition continues, and another link is added to the chain because it was ever so.

Last night Michigan State opened its football season to a packed house.  The "tradition" of a Friday night game before Labor Day weekend is a new one, only going back a decade or so.  It was not particularly popular, but it seems to be catching on.

East Lansing was hopping last night, and that's a good thing.

I took a few moments to wander outside and listen to the echoes of the game through my quiet neighborhood.  Traffic was light as everyone paused to see whether the Spartans could hold off a second-half rally by Western Michigan.  They did, and I'm sure the local lockup has plenty of overzealous revelers as a result.

If I could describe the mood it would be one of desperately wanted to get back to normal, to forget everything outside of having a good time.  For a few hours, politics fades away and the only question that divides people is what team they're rooting for - a tribalism of the best sort.

We need more of this, and while it's inevitable that election commercials will intrude upon my football watching today, I'll have a quick trigger on the remote to keep them at bay.

I'm also relieved that public schools are finally maskless and places of teenage drama rather than temples of fear and anxiety.  Kids can be resilient, but they need a break from constant warnings of doom for that to kick in. 

It's easy to overlook these things, but when we lost them, we learned how important they are.  Hopefully the lesson will stick around.