We awoke besotted by riches yesterday morning after a college football banquet that kept this sporting man on a couch that doubles for a bed and breakfast nook, remote control in hand, watching a Far East-made flat screen for a whole half of a three-hundred-and sixty-fifth of a twirl around the star that rises in the east. You’ve seen the son of a gun, it has something to do with chlorophyll and Vitamin D.
The love handles expanded, but so did a love for a game meant for the teenager and the man child. The pro game consumes the sporting public, but the student-athletes inspire awe. After a tough day of calculus, pre-med and Shakespeare, they take to the gridiron to win one for ….
Forgive us, but when a Nazarene invests a game -- a game, mind you -- with biblical significance emblazoned under eyes that are misting over, we have to chuckle (a character flaw of ours that has others chuckling at us).
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). Oh yeah?
Perhaps Tim Tebow, the formidable Florida quarterback, should have had Matthew 5:45 on his coal black strips: “For He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.”
The just being the proud Nebraska squad with a coach in a collarless sweatshirt who would have been forgiven if he ranted at the blatant rigging of the Bowl Championship Series. Time had run out on the evil empire from Austin as the wide-eyed McCoy inexplicably rolled right and threw the ball out of bounds. Any other game and the refs are jogging off the field, letting the underdogs celebrate.
But no! From out of nowhere! An extra second is allowed for a BCS scenario that was pre-ordained. OK, call us conspiracy theorists, but, hey, any other game?
Wait, there’s more.
Fresno State, attempting a game-ending two-point conversion to defeat the Fighting Illini, appeared foiled by a brilliant deflection of a pass at the goal line, but a large man captured the flying pigskin in a gut that we are approaching and trundled into the end zone for the winning points as time waned. So he’s got that going for him, which is more than we can say, having slept through the calculus final.
And then there was the holder for Pitt’s extra point. He couldn’t get the ball down and twirl the laces, giving Cincinnati a chance to come back and win a pick’em game.
God bless all the gallant young men -- and the ladies and old sporting fellows who cheered them -- for 12 hours of sedentary bliss (well, not the ladies; they were jumping and shaking pom-poms)
He maketh his sun to rise…
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