Your Coach, Your God

It's still July and American football is out camping. Two-a-day practices! stifling heat! Wind sprints! Screaming coaches! Hit! Hit! Hit!

Football is the most powerful source of religion in the United States, with the COACH as the reigning deity. The coach is the animistic deity par excellence in America. When the team does well, the coaches screaming intensity, his ability to get into the face of players, and his non-stop workaholism are the most revered images of our towns, cities, and states.

Think Bill Parcells and the famous picture of him yelling at Phil Simms. That's what we love about Parcells and other coaches. Coaches have a freedom to abuse and intimidate that people have given up for themselves. That's why they serve as the chief totems of our villages, cities, and states when they're winning. That's also why coaches are reviled, disowned, and abused when they lose. Like a failing fetish, they are not using their precious freedom for the good of the community. When coach fails, he and his family are often treated like they're worse than murderers.

Although football is a more powerful source of religion than Christianity; football and Christianity do not conflict. Indeed, football is the animistic foundation on which the practice of evangelical Protestantism gains a lot of its current legitimacy. Of course, evangelical Protestants have their own preaching traditions, but the current legitimacy of the intense evangelical styles grows out of the deification of the intimidating coach.

The hyper-aggressive, authoritarian religion of right-wing Christianity stands on the shoulders of the hyper-aggressive, authoritarian coach of your favorite team.