Moral Perversion and College Athletics

I am reading a book called Not the Way It's Supposed to Be by Cornelius Plantinga.  I must say that this book paints a picture of sin that is more thorough and detailed than any resource I have encountered on the subject.  We typically think of sin as a single act of one individual that begins and ends with that individual.  Plantinga's biblically grounded treatise, however, describes it more as a vine with many relational branches, that attach, infect, and even steal the life out of other living things, throughout long periods of time.

In one chapter, Platinga describes the horrible nature of perversion.  "To pervert something", he states, "is to twist it so that it serves an unworthy end instead of a worthy one or so that it serves an entirely wrong end."  He goes on to say that one of the greatest examples of perversion of judgment in our day can be found in college athletics.

He writes: University athletic programs, especially men's football and basketball, often develop a life of their own that has little to do with higher education.  Some of these programs might just as naturally be attached to meat-packing plants as to universities.  Ordinarily the celebrity coaches of major sports programs claim to be teaching teamwork and building the kind of character that will prepare their proteges for careers as good citizens.  Still, wise educators ask, How often in good society do you become a hero for knocking some other good citizen's helmet off?  How often is blind obedience taught in place of the courage of conviction?  How often is intimidation taught under the guise of tenacity?  How often is manipulation and deliberate rule violation taught as strategy?  How often is composure and sportsmanship mistaken for lack of effort?

I often struggle to find out what exactly I love so much about college football.  I'd love to say it's the good competition, strategy and sportsmanship; but I am not so sure that I have kept my heart from loving the perversion of good things.  When the height of human experience (let's get real, football games are the height of human experience in America right now) is to watch one human pridefully triumph over another; when we exalt that victor's physical strength over his moral responsibility to the point where we lose sight of the greater need for moral strength altogether; and when our commitment to these image bearers lasts only as long as their athletic career, we must approach the subject with far more caution and with our spiritual eyes wide open.

I do find it somewhat ironic that we praise a kid for knocking another kid's helmet off in a game, while we call him a complete idiot when he takes that same behavior and commits the same act after the game is over.  I know that the context and the rules change after the game; but I am not oblivious to the fact that the contextual lines might be blurred a bit in a 19 year old's mind who has just felt the praise of 90,000 people.  That much praise, given to a person that age, is more likely to become a breeding ground perverting judgment than a platform for judicial citizenship.

Am I saying we should abandon college athletics completely?  I don't know.  Something must have a good purpose before it can be perverted.  Therefore, college athletics may not need removal, but redemption.