Maranatha Baptist University ends football program

Jim, I think your second sentence answers your first :-).

bulletin from MBU, the school already has solid basketball, soccer, baseball\soft ball, volleyball and cross country programs. And then there is the ROTC Ranger competition, which MBU has taken honors in over the last few years.

[Jim Barnes]

What is the big deal about MBU closing its football program? How many other fundamental baptist colleges have football programs? Building a solid basketball program is the way to go.

[Andrew K]

GregH wrote:

I gotta say I would be with the students who don’t even realize the significance of “the football game.” Football is not significant. It just is not. No sports are.

I am sure that you can learn life lessons from sports. I am also sure that sports are a poor replacement for what kids did before sports: work. I am not one to pine for the old days but I have to believe that evening chores and work on the farm taught a lot better life lessons. As civilization became more urbanized and the need for children working lessened, along came sports to fill the void. They replaced something that was significant with games that emulate significance but are not in themselves significant at all. I don’t think that was really a step in the right direction.

You sound like a terrible curmudgeon. And I totally agree with you.

Those who might disagree, try to think of some reason why your justifications wouldn’t apply just as well to video games, like MMPORGs if you want teamwork and strategy (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games), or just classic board games. I mean aside from the lack of cultural cache in our sports-obsessed society. Yet we’re not subsidizing them.

You can’t create the literal pain and sacrifice for one another that goes with the teamwork in a video game. There is a brotherhood that develops that a roleplaying video game cannot emulate. You are not bringing your body to the brink with a roleplaying video game. Football brought my son out of his shell (he is quite introverted) to become the leader of 35 other young high school men. Through football he’s also learned there are no shortcuts, to be selfless, to finish something you start, to be disciplined, how to push others, to be a follower, how to compete, and etc….reinforcing many of the character traits that we’ve been teaching him throughout his life.

[Joel Shaffer]

Andrew K wrote:

GregH wrote:

I gotta say I would be with the students who don’t even realize the significance of “the football game.” Football is not significant. It just is not. No sports are.

I am sure that you can learn life lessons from sports. I am also sure that sports are a poor replacement for what kids did before sports: work. I am not one to pine for the old days but I have to believe that evening chores and work on the farm taught a lot better life lessons. As civilization became more urbanized and the need for children working lessened, along came sports to fill the void. They replaced something that was significant with games that emulate significance but are not in themselves significant at all. I don’t think that was really a step in the right direction.

You sound like a terrible curmudgeon. And I totally agree with you.

Those who might disagree, try to think of some reason why your justifications wouldn’t apply just as well to video games, like MMPORGs if you want teamwork and strategy (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games), or just classic board games. I mean aside from the lack of cultural cache in our sports-obsessed society. Yet we’re not subsidizing them.

You can’t create the literal pain and sacrifice for one another that goes with the teamwork in a video game. There is a brotherhood that develops that a roleplaying video game cannot emulate. You are not bringing your body to the brink with a roleplaying video game. Football brought my son out of his shell (he is quite introverted) to become the leader of 35 other young high school men. Through football he’s also learned there are no shortcuts, to be selfless, to finish something you start, to be disciplined, how to push others, to be a follower, how to compete, and etc….reinforcing many of the character traits that we’ve been teaching him throughout his life.

Sorry, but while I think american football can teach life lessons, “like no other sport” is stretching it a bit. Nah, it’s stretching it a lot. If it were true, you’d see gridiron greats dominating in business, politics, and the like. Apart from guys like Roger Staubach, John Elway, and Jack Kemp, that simply isn’t true. What you see, rather, is that those who play the game at the D1 or NFL level have a median age of death of 56 due to various factors, and NFL players are, by and large, broke by their early 40s.

You can see the signs of what’s going wrong back in college—when I was lurking in Jenison Fieldhouse back in my college days, I got to see who was, and who was not, on the athletic department’s academic honor roll. Track and field and cross country were well represented, as were gymnastics and hockey— but the football team was not, despite counting 4x as many members as most other teams. They did rank highly, however, in the portion of athletes with iffy degree programs, in the portion of athletes who would not graduate at all, and among arrestees at the East Lansing police department. You’ll see about the same at most any D1 school, and quite frankly at most high schools where administration treats football players with kid gloves, and as a result a lot of them get quite a bit of an entitlement mentality, one that hurts them a LOT in life.

And really, if you want to see consequences to messing up in athletics, think of relay handoffs in track or swimming, hurdle or pole vault setup in track, missing a pick or check in basketball, real football (a.k.a. “soccer”) , or hockey, missing a pass in basketball, real football or hockey, saddle mounting in equestrian events, equipment setup in just about any sport, rule compliance in any sport (e.g. Usain Bolt’s loss of a gold medal because his relay teammate was doping) ….let’s get real here; the big difference between the consequences of american football and other activities is that american football players are a lot more likely to have lifelong injuries.

Call me weird, but I consider that a bad thing. It’s awfully nice at almost 48 years old to have two intact knees and an intact brain, and it’s a shame that too many football players can’t say that.

I spent nearly 20 years playing, coaching, and officiating football and I learned a lot. I learned that participation is limited by physical attributes. I learned that, in order to be really good, you have to have an aggressive mentality that is willing to possibly physically injure another person, within the rules of course. I learned that it’s a sport that few men play beyond high school and far fewer beyond college.

I’m a strong proponent of competitive sports and believe that the best sports are the ones you can participate in the rest of your life. A number of years ago I was the athletic director of a very small Christian school. We tried basketball but got tired of being slaughtered. Then someone suggested cross country running. We participated in large public school meets and also ran in weekend 5K races. The sportsmanship and camaraderie was wonderful. I made my youngest son participate so that we could have the 5 necessary for a team. In our first public school race (400+ runners) he came in dead last but smiling at the cheers and the fact that he’d run the entire race without stopping and had passed runners who quit. That was about 15 years ago. He’s currently competing in triathlons, and half and full marathons.

And let’s face it, running is a sport that promoted in the Scripture.

My oldest son who is currently a Navy officer and still running, wrote this article for SI a while ago. It’s still worth reading:

http://sharperiron.org/article/curious-fellowship-of-distance-athlete

[Bert Perry]

Sorry, but while I think american football can teach life lessons, “like no other sport” is stretching it a bit. Nah, it’s stretching it a lot. If it were true, you’d see gridiron greats dominating in business, politics, and the like. Apart from guys like Roger Staubach, John Elway, and Jack Kemp, that simply isn’t true. What you see, rather, is that those who play the game at the D1 or NFL level have a median age of death of 56 due to various factors, and NFL players are, by and large, broke by their early 40s.

You can see the signs of what’s going wrong back in college—when I was lurking in Jenison Fieldhouse back in my college days, I got to see who was, and who was not, on the athletic department’s academic honor roll. Track and field and cross country were well represented, as were gymnastics and hockey— but the football team was not, despite counting 4x as many members as most other teams. They did rank highly, however, in the portion of athletes with iffy degree programs, in the portion of athletes who would not graduate at all, and among arrestees at the East Lansing police department. You’ll see about the same at most any D1 school, and quite frankly at most high schools where administration treats football players with kid gloves, and as a result a lot of them get quite a bit of an entitlement mentality, one that hurts them a LOT in life.

And really, if you want to see consequences to messing up in athletics, think of relay handoffs in track or swimming, hurdle or pole vault setup in track, missing a pick or check in basketball, real football (a.k.a. “soccer”) , or hockey, missing a pass in basketball, real football or hockey, saddle mounting in equestrian events, equipment setup in just about any sport, rule compliance in any sport (e.g. Usain Bolt’s loss of a gold medal because his relay teammate was doping) ….let’s get real here; the big difference between the consequences of american football and other activities is that american football players are a lot more likely to have lifelong injuries.

Call me weird, but I consider that a bad thing. It’s awfully nice at almost 48 years old to have two intact knees and an intact brain, and it’s a shame that too many football players can’t say that.

First of all, the comparison I was making was not with NFL or division 1 players. We are talking small college football (which is what Maranatha was part of) and high school football. The overwhelming majority of football players will not get to the level that you are making comparisons with. As for concussions, I think you are using data that is very old. The past 10 years, youth football, most high schools and now even NAIA, division II and III colleges play “heads up” football. The change has helped create a significant drop in concussions in Michigan. At my son’s high school, we teach more rugby style tackling (Pete Carroll of the Seahawks has pioneered it in the NFL) because it is safer, not only with helping prevent concussions, but also helping prevent knee or ankle injuries.

Of course there is an entitlement mentality in division 1 schools. The football players are the “ATM machines” for the universities. But to say that football players aren’t really the leaders of our world simply is not true either. When I did research, I found that the CEOs of 95% of fortune 500 companies had played competitive college sports, including a number of them in football. Most of them weren’t going to the power 5 football teams where they would be coddled, but rather places known for their academics like Dartmouth, Harvard, John Hopkins, but there was even a few from Michigan as well.

There are probably some schools in high school that treat football players with kid gloves, but there are many who don’t. The atmosphere for whether this happens is directly correlated with the coaching staff. If the coaches are primarily attempting to use football as a means to mentor teen boys into young men with strong character and where winning is more of a byproduct, then the players will not be coddled. The school that my son plays football for expelled one of its star players from school and football when he got drunk and attacked and beat up a basketball player. This guy was a DII prospect whose older brother plays for Michigan St. That decision probably cost my son’s team to miss the playoffs, but it had to be done. The decision was a coordination between the principal, guidance counselor, and football coaches. All of them were on the same page, realizing that it had to be done and the student body and football players respected it.

As for why I hold to why football is like no other sport comes from talking to many multi-sport athletes throughout the years. Nearly all of them said this. That they had never really experienced brotherhood and really understood teamwork at a deeper level until they played football.

Our family is quite invested into football because my son not only has played competitive football since he was 3rd grade, but is a 2018 football prospect that will probably get a scholarship from a college or university to play football. He has received interest from schools from all levels including lower division 1, division 2, division 3, and NAIA (such as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Oberlin, Wayne St., Ferris St., Hope, Mount Union, Wheaton, Trinity, and Olivet Nazarene) A few of these schools don’t give the athletic scholarships but rather give scholarships for academics and leadership in which he has also excelled. Let me also say that Jalen has never had a concussion or had “his bell rung,” or had a knee or leg injury playing football even though he plays Running Back and Linebacker where the most contact takes place. In fact, any injury that he has had growing up came from basketball, not football. Now we realize that injuries and concussions could happen and if somehow he received a bad injury or concussion that would end his football career, he’d miss it, but he’d be fine with it because his identity is not football but rather Jesus.

[Andrew K]

GregH wrote:

I gotta say I would be with the students who don’t even realize the significance of “the football game.” Football is not significant. It just is not. No sports are.

I am sure that you can learn life lessons from sports. I am also sure that sports are a poor replacement for what kids did before sports: work. I am not one to pine for the old days but I have to believe that evening chores and work on the farm taught a lot better life lessons. As civilization became more urbanized and the need for children working lessened, along came sports to fill the void. They replaced something that was significant with games that emulate significance but are not in themselves significant at all. I don’t think that was really a step in the right direction.

You sound like a terrible curmudgeon. And I totally agree with you.

Those who might disagree, try to think of some reason why your justifications wouldn’t apply just as well to video games, like MMPORGs if you want teamwork and strategy (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games), or just classic board games. I mean aside from the lack of cultural cache in our sports-obsessed society. Yet we’re not subsidizing them.

I don’t think I am as curmudgeonly as you guys. However, we do need to recognize that sports on the high school and college level seems fairly unique to the US. I can’t speak for all countries but I am thinking of what we saw in Europe. Students go to high school and university, well, for school, to study. Sports were organized in local communities (mostly soccer or real football as they call it). The point is that schools there generally do not build sports facilities - no fields, no stadium, no pools. When we lived in the Philly suburbs our school district built a new high school north of 100 million. Why so much? Pools, fields, stadium, etc. Most which doesn’t benefit the average student except as spectator. And of course higher property taxes. I think I prefer the European model. Go to school for school.

I don’t know how to play football. I don’t even know how score is kept. No joke.

[Steve Davis]

Andrew K wrote:

GregH wrote:

I gotta say I would be with the students who don’t even realize the significance of “the football game.” Football is not significant. It just is not. No sports are.

I am sure that you can learn life lessons from sports. I am also sure that sports are a poor replacement for what kids did before sports: work. I am not one to pine for the old days but I have to believe that evening chores and work on the farm taught a lot better life lessons. As civilization became more urbanized and the need for children working lessened, along came sports to fill the void. They replaced something that was significant with games that emulate significance but are not in themselves significant at all. I don’t think that was really a step in the right direction.

You sound like a terrible curmudgeon. And I totally agree with you.

Those who might disagree, try to think of some reason why your justifications wouldn’t apply just as well to video games, like MMPORGs if you want teamwork and strategy (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games), or just classic board games. I mean aside from the lack of cultural cache in our sports-obsessed society. Yet we’re not subsidizing them.

I don’t think I am as curmudgeonly as you guys. However, we do need to recognize that sports on the high school and college level seems fairly unique to the US. I can’t speak for all countries but I am thinking of what we saw in Europe. Students go to high school and university, well, for school, to study. Sports were organized in local communities (mostly soccer or real football as they call it). The point is that schools there generally do not build sports facilities - no fields, no stadium, no pools. When we lived in the Philly suburbs our school district built a new high school north of 100 million. Why so much? Pools, fields, stadium, etc. Most which doesn’t benefit the average student except as spectator. And of course higher property taxes. I think I prefer the European model. Go to school for school.

[Jim]

Speaking of my non-Christian HS experience:

The “jocks” were by and large giant fornicating jerks! One of my peers later became a Dentist and murdered his wife.

in terms of character building: the handful of men whom I know that served with my son in combat are some of the finest young men I’ve ever met