Football Counter-Programming 2025: Championship Game Edition

No doubt about it. I've got my work cut out for me this week.

How do I successfully counter-program against the college football championship game? Especially when I'm living smack dab in the middle of ground zero for one of the teams participating in said game?

The best way that I can think?

Let's talk about God.

What other person/concept/animus/motivational force/cultural sports trope can impact as many (more, I would suggest) people as a college football fanbase?

Here is a clip from tOSU's last minute touchdown that sealed the University of Texas's loss. (Sorry that I could not embed the video into this blog post as I originally wished. Take it up with Meta.) 

If you paid any attention to college football in the wake of last week's semi-final game, you have seen this clip. But you might not have seen it from this angle. At the end, you see a Buckeye player get down on his knees in the endzone and (I presume) briefly thank God while he watches the play unfold down the field in front of him.

Here is a properly embedded YouTube video of a segment of the High School football movie Friday Night Lights.

To state the obvious . . . this clip shows both teams in their respective locker rooms praying the Lord's Prayer as they prepare for the second half of their football game.

What are we to make of these things?

Anything at all?

God and religion are regularly invoked for many American sporting contests every week. He/She/It will definitely be called upon before, during, and after the Championship game this Monday.

I'm not here to tell you if you are right or wrong to do this.

Personally, I don't think that God spends much time at all considering the outcome of sporting contests. 

But since I DO happen to believe God is omniscient and all-powerful, He/She/It most certainly can get involved. 

(Yet . . . if that were true, then why did the Atlanta Braves lose so many World Series in the 1990s?)

Religion and football have a strong connection with both of the teams playing in this year's College Football Championship. One--more obvious than the other, perhaps? But let's begin with my hometown team--of which I am an incomplete alumnus. (But I know that my participation in their games matters not to the outcome.)

ANYWAY . . . the Ohio State University is one of the most well-funded and most successful and most talented (which attribute matters most?) football teams in forever. But beyond the on-field exploits, THE knows how to galvanize and incentivize the fan base. And they will use what they have at hand. 

And what do they have at hand?

• Lots of Midwestern values
• Lots of committed people with camera phones, and 
• A handy-dandy multistory religious icon in for form of the Solid Rock Church's "Touchdown Jesus."

Please tell me that you've heard of Touchdown Jesus. A massive effigy of a resurrecting Jesus coming out of the earth that towered over the highways north of Cincinnati, Ohio. (It's gone now--spectacularly destroyed by a lightning strike. It's eventual replacement didn't nearly have the in your God-fearing face as the original.)

What made Touchdown Jesus so great for Ohio State is that Our Lord Savior's pose of glory fit so well with one of tOSU best meme's: the O-H-I-O camera pose with your favorite football friends. Just get of your friends--obviously the H to take over camera duty. And bam . . . you've got the Son of God weighing in with his sacred approval of the Buckeyes!

But wait . . . who are the Buckeye's playing in this game?

checks notes

Oh!

Notre Dame, you say?

The most Catholic and religious school in the history of college football?

Yikes! How are the Buckeyes gonna defeat that? But let's not jump to immediate conclusions. What attributes does Notre Dame have?

• Lots of Midwestern values
• Lots of committed people with camera phones, and 
• A handy-dandy multistory religious icon in the form of the original? "Touchdown Jesus."

Um . . . hmm. Well . . . shoot.

Who wins?

Football loving Christians?

Who loses?

Satan and people who don't care about sports?

In football terms it might be a coin toss needed to decide the winner. But I happen to think that the O-H-I-O camera pose is a better visual than ND's TD Jesus mural. You can't get the people as clearly involved in the Notre Dame version.

You can pray to whomever you want on Monday. And maybe He/She/It will take pity on your prayer. But I'm here also. And I'm praying my own prayer. That you will listen to me just this one more time for this season and maybe NOT watch the game.

Read a book. Take a walk. Chop some wood for your fireplace. Give a David Lynch movie a try. Or just go into a small room and sit quietly for a few hours. 

Call it meditation. 

Call it prayer. 

Call it whatever you want. 

Because no matter what you choose to do, you can't affect the outcome of the game itself.

Thanks for hanging in there with me for another season of FC-P. Get a new hobby until it all comes back around again next year.