August 1st arrives and I find myself drawn to coverage of football. I’m not really into baseball. With 164 regular season games I struggle to care between April and September. The NBA playoffs last almost as long as the regular season so that has never interested me. March Madness is fantastic, but it only lasts a month. And I can’t get into watching hockey on TV so that is out. College football is, by far, my favorite sport to get into.
The Pre-Season polls are starting to come out. This is the one thing that truly irks me about college football. So much is determined about the outcome of the football season before the ball is kicked off in September. It simply makes no sense to me that you pre-rank teams before they’ve played a game knowing that the polls will eventually determine who gets ot play in the national championship game. The same 25 teams are in the top 25 each fall. It’s as though the script for college football has already been written. Tim Tebow, back for his senior season, will play either Texas or Oklahoma for a national championship… depending on who wins the conference championship game. A playoff is the only thing that will fix this. And even that will be effected by pre-season polls.
A few years back I was hanging out with some friends and we were discussing setting up a fantasy church league. You know, put out church rankings based on attendence, power of sermon, quality of worship service. Add to the mix some Church Center replays and postgame talk… we could probably get enough interest to put out weekly rankings. “Late in the sermon it looked like Craig Groeschell was losing his audience. Heads dipped and the internet interaction started to slow. But then he threw in an unexpected hail mary altar call and brought it down! What a pro finish!” or “John Piper’s delivery was flawless on Sunday. His precision in slicing and dicing that passage, tying in the joy application, that was a thing of beauty. Church Center play of the week nominee, for sure.” But then we thought it’d make the whole thing just weird if it blew up and pastors started spiking Bibles and dudes started getting endorsement deals. Can you imagine a postgame interview from Perry Noble? “First off, I need to give all the glory to Jesus Christ. Second of all, I couldn’t have done it without my Pepsi Worship Team and the Tommy Nelson Gospel Choir. Without them, we wouldn’t have won today.”
Thankfully, we came to our senses on that one. The last thing anyone wants is for megachurches to start lobbying supporters for all-star votes!
Football wouldn’t be the same without rankings. Church wouldn’t either.
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