Osler's Razor

I love watching college football, but don't like college football. It hurts too many young people and warps the values of universities that pay a single coach more than an entire academic department and pretend that the players are students like any other.

One of the compelling things about college football is that things are so finite. On any given play, with some exceptions, very little actually happens-- one team advances a few yards, then everyone stops to talk about it for a while. The goal for the offense is to gain just ten yards for a first down-- ten yards!

But I think it is the fact that the scope is so small that makes it so compelling.

And why does that appeal to us?

Perhaps it draws us away, gratefully, from a world that is so large, in a universe that is unimaginably huge; that we are one of billions of people in a universe with billions of stars and planets.

But for a minute, 100,000 people care intensely about an ultimately insignificant thing that happens between kids on a few yards of turf.  We create this thing we understand, and build it up.

But we are built that way, I suppose. Though, importantly, we choose what it is that holds that importance for us-- what three yards of the world we choose to care about intensely. And for Christians, Jesus was pretty clear what should be important, what we should construct our little world around: those in need, and our relationship with our God. It might be that the faith and football are in tension with one another... but don't tell Baylor (or pretty much anyone in Texas). It's another thing about faith that they probably will not want to hear or discuss.