Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by Dr. Jeffrey Scholes, Director at the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Together they discuss Dr. Scholes’ work exploring the intersection of religion and sports in North America. Scholes discusses the cultural significance of sports, especially in the South, and how figures like Tim Tebow exemplify the blending of faith and athletics. They also explore the professionalization of sports including NIL and the transfer portal for college athletes, as well as travel teams for youth sports. They delve into the implications of sports on family life, and the rise in sports betting in today’s culture.
Episode Resources:
Against the Rules with Michael Lewis: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/against-the-rules-with-michael-lewis/id1455379351
Religion and Sports in American Culture by Jeffrey Scholes & Raphael Sassower: https://www.amazon.com/dp/041564531X
The Center for the Study of Evangelicalism: https://center.uccs.edu/cse/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://wecolabor.com/
Get to know Case: https://wecolabor.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
In an increasingly polarized world, the public square has become a contested space, a place where diverse voices and beliefs collide, converge and sometimes clash. At the heart of this dynamic landscape is an ever-present influence of religion, shaping how individuals and communities navigate questions of identity, ethics, belonging, politics and more. And so today we’re exploring this intersection with Dr. Jeffrey Scholes, Director at the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. This center is a space for developing cutting edge research on religious movements and using scholarship to guide the needs of our community. I am thrilled to have Jeff here. Jeff, thanks for being with us.
Jeff Scholes
Thank you, Case, for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Case Thorp
So Jeff and I go back to Princeton Seminary, and we had a lot of fun.
Jeff Scholes
We did. Too much fun. I think when I say seminary, in particular in the role I’m in, all these ideas are conjured up by people and I have to correct like no it’s not quite what you thought it was. It was three years of just so much fun and growth and everything but it was an instrumental three years of my life. No question about it. Yeah it was fun.
Case Thorp
So you and I did a couple of journeys into New York City and you introduced me to jazz. You more than introduced me to it, you helped me to, I think, create an appreciation for it that still lasts.
Jeff Scholes
I’m glad to hear that. I remember it was Smalls, that little club in Greenwich Village, that basement club. And I mean, I have to say, to me, I was not necessarily some expert in it at the time. I had an appreciation for it, but it really was heading into New York, which of course is what people have to do if they want to know what jazz is. Yeah, it’s just, it’s not only the music, but just the culture, the space. It’s New York. It’s everything. Anyway, I’m glad to hear that. Yeah, we had some fun in New York. And I remember a trip to Montreal that we took kind of late in our seminary that was epic as well. Yeah. For whatever reason, I remember there was a jar of mayonnaise or something that I brought and left in the back of the car and you were freaking out about it and because it was cold, so I thought it would be fine.
I don’t know why a jar of mayonnaise, which I still love, but mayonnaise and Montreal are somehow connected in my mind.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, in our great wisdom, we went Martin Luther King weekend, right? You know, why would you not go to Montreal on Martin Luther King weekend and freeze your tuchas off?
Jeff Scholes
Right, that’s right. Right, stay out of the United States, go to Canada for Martin Luther King Jr. Right, the coldest maybe month of the time in Canada, but whatever.
Case Thorp
So this podcast isn’t about us, but it just might be. So we’re coming back over the US border, friends, in my SUV and we come to the little booth where the US agent is. And let me tell you, it’s like zero degrees. The wind is 50 miles an hour. We rolled on our window and in blows all this…and at this time, you didn’t need passports. I handed our driver’s license to the guard, and he’s looking through, and he’s like, where have you been? What did you do? And he said, where are you all from different states? Well, my stomach dropped because I thought, no, this is it. We’re going to get arrested and we’ve done nothing wrong, but you know. And then finally I told him, we’re graduate students and we come from different places. And then finally he says, are you all US citizens? And do you remember what you said, Jeff? You hollered out from the back.
Jeff Scholes
No.
Case Thorp
Si, señor.
Case Thorp
And I knew this was it. We’re going down. Thank you. Either he didn’t hear it or had a great appreciation for youthful indiscretions.
Jeff Scholes
That is right, Case. Can we at least say there was maybe an immigration crisis 25 years ago that was undiscovered at that point? I helped, I did not help, maybe you’ve heard a crisis there, but that is right. You shot me a look, I’m sure that it’s like, what are you doing? Why are you gonna get me arrested?
Case Thorp
One more thing I know the listeners need to know is you helped originate a nickname for me that lasts to this day. It does. I’m in a guy’s group that we meet every morning at 10 o’clock for a 10 minute devotional on the phone and everybody has to have a nickname. And so I use that same nickname to this day.
Jeff Scholes
Does it really? My gosh, I’m so proud and happy. You never know with nicknames, if they’re gonna stick, if they’re gonna last, I’m so happy. Yeah, do you want me to tell the origin story briefly?
Case Thorp
You can tell the origin. I don’t know that perhaps we go into where it went.
Jeff Scholes
I won’t get into all the permutations of it because it went in different directions, but I just started calling you Chili con Queso. Like I’m from Texas and Queso dip is big there. And it just kind of morphed into, for Queso, Case, and then it just morphed into Chili and just, that was it. We called you Chili for years.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. Well, there was a Chili con step in…
Jeff Scholes
Chili con that’s right. There’s an intermediate step chili con.
Case Thorp
And then con got pulled into the word thong and so it’s chili thong for awhile.
Jeff Scholes
Well, okay. Well, and I will say this too, just one day at lunch, we’re talking about chili thong, and we’ve been talking about it for a while, and I just went around the table and asked everyone, what do you think a chili thong is? And there were like eight different, no one had talked about it, eight different ideas of what a chili thong is. I thought that was fascinating.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah. You have brilliant people in seminaries discussing deep philosophical things and they’ll come up with…
Jeff Scholes
Yes, I know, but anyway, Chili Thong was that for a while and then Chili and so it’s still Chili. I’m really, I’m so happy to hear that it stuck.
Case Thorp
Well, that did not stick and anybody listening to this may not call me that, but chili is socially acceptable. Well, to you, our viewers and friends, welcome to Nuance, where we seek to be faithful. I’m Case Thorp, otherwise known as Chili, and I want to encourage you please to like, subscribe, and share.
Well, let me tell you about the serious side of Dr. Jeffrey Scholes. He’s a respected scholar and professor of religious studies with a specialization in the intersection of religion, sports, and culture, which I think is a cool intersection. As I mentioned, he serves as the director for the Center of the Study of Evangelicalism and also a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Jeff’s work examines how religion and theology shape and are shaped by broader cultural phenomena, the focus in American Christianity and particularly sports. He’s the co-author of Religion and Sports, an Introduction and Case Studies, and has published extensively on topics such as the theological implications of sports culture, the commodification of religious practices, and the role of religion in public and civic life. And that’s why I’m having him here today.
He’s working on a book dealing with theology and American political discourse. How’s that book going?
Jeff Scholes
That’s not totally accurate. That’s certainly a project that’s been in the pipeline for a long time. I mean, I’m actually currently working on a book on religion and sport fandom, which has to do with certain public discourse. But yeah, that theology and kind of political theology book is still back there somehow. It’ll be published at some point down the line. But my focus is much more on the religion and sport fandom as we speak.
Case Thorp
Then you’ll have to come back and tell us about it. Jeff earned his undergraduate at Baylor, barely a master of divinity at Princeton. Just kidding. You know, if I hadn’t been there to write half your papers, you wouldn’t be where you are today. No, no, that’s right. I earned an MDiv for Roger McDaniel and an MDiv for you. He earned his PhD without me, ironically, in religious studies.
Jeff Scholes
It’s true. No, I wouldn’t. You get all the credit. All the credit. You did. Thank you.
Case Thorp
and Theological Studies from the University of Denver’s Iliff?
Jeff Scholes
Iliff School Theology. It’s really two different schools, but they’re on the same campus, so it’s a joint doctoral program.
Case Thorp
Okay, he is happily married. Well, I think happily, right? Is she gonna see this? I don’t know.
Jeff Scholes
Not anymore. You won’t now. Yes. Good. Okay.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, my wife didn’t watch my podcast either. And has two boys ages nine and eight. So what did I miss about your bio that you’d like people to know?
Jeff Scholes
Gosh, you pretty much covered it all. That’s it. No, yeah, I mean, I’m from Dallas, Texas. I grew up in Dallas and went to Baylor as you said. And I think with the sports fandom, the religion and sports stuff, I mean, I joke that I’ve kind of been an expert in sports since I was like four. So it was an easy kind of area to work in.
And they’re really, you know, it’s a subfield of religion and sport as a discipline. So there aren’t a lot of us, which actually I advise grad students and anyone else in academia to try to kind of find a niche, even if it’s not exactly what you thought you would be doing and just get to know people for networking quickly. So it’s worked out perfectly for me with this kind of religion and sport discipline. But as you know, in Georgia and Florida and in Texas, certain sports, football in particular, but other ones are just kind of in the water that you’re swimming in. It just was kind of a natural fit for me to write on the relationship between religion and sport. Yeah, but no, we live in Colorado Springs and love it and I’m sure we’ll get into kind of this center for evangelicalism and we can talk about Colorado Springs and its relationship to evangelicalism, which is one that’s well known. But anyway, yeah. It’s great to talk to you again. It’s been a long time, Case.
Case Thorp
So I thought in preparing for this how neat that you get to sort of combine two of your passions.
Jeff Scholes
Yes, it is really, really great. I mean, one nice thing is I can spend not every Sunday, but a good check of Sunday watching football and call it research, at least to my wife. No, it is. It’s funny. When I was doing my dissertation, I was writing it on political theology. And that was, I guess, at the time, not only supposedly more accepted, respected, sub-area within religious studies. But I’d written an essay on baseball and religion that got published and my dissertation committee thought sports just wasn’t serious enough, right? Or who in academia would care about millionaires catching a piece of leather or something like that. I think that was actually a line from one. And one member of the dissertation committee left that had a problem with it and someone was replaced and I just brought up to him, I go, know, I really want to write on religion and sport, they said that you should, but for the dissertation, you need to stick with political theology. So I did. But right after that, I really started focusing on religion and sport. And I’m so glad I did. And I’ve kind of helped with a handful of others, like turn it into a relatively serious sub-discipline. It’s been around for a while, people writing on it. But I think for a lot of academics, it’s more kind of a hobby. Like a serious academic will write about the New York Yankees because they love the Yankees as a one-off, and they’ll come back to their more serious pursuit. But there’s a handful of us that are really devoted to it.
Case Thorp
Well, it sure does.
George Will, the political commentator, was sort of that in every, gosh, 25 articles, he was just such a fan of baseball and the history of baseball.
Jeff Scholes
Yes, he was. His book Men at Work, which really kind of chronicled the Oakland A’s in the late 1980s, is a classic. He’s one of those guys that can write about anything. And then you wrote another one, I think, in the early 90s. But Men at Work is a remarkable book by George Will. It’s one. Bob Costas is another one, too, who’s a sports broadcaster, but has also written just this brilliant book called Fair Ball on Baseball.
Case Thorp
For somebody listening that this might be a completely new thought, religion and sports, like illustrate for us how the two come together and where you’ve focused.
Jeff Scholes
They come together, I think, on the surface for a lot. And I’m trusting maybe some of your listeners are from Florida. Just take, for instance, the Tim Tebow phenomena, really 2011 season for the NFL. Then, I mean, go back to his Florida net championships and Heisman trophy winner. But he’s a figure that you look at and say, OK, this is where religion and sport are coming together. And a figure like him, that’s a part of it, certainly, and it can be dissected and analyzed.
His public pronouncements of his own faith and utilizing sport as a platform for that as opposed to a pulpit or politics or something like that. That’s certainly one way. Think what with the rise of sport as popular as it is, in particular football nowadays, I think there’s been a lot of, and with kind of the move towards secularization within our society, there has been questions that have arisen amongst theologians, religious scholars, ministers, and others, like is sport like our new religion? So this is another way in which the two kind of come together. I chafe at that question, but nonetheless, I understand why it’s being asked. Functionally speaking, I mean, sport does some things that religion does. It does things, or religion does things that sport cannot do. But I think that question is oftentimes a worrisome question that people are asking like, my gosh, this is seemingly taking over our cultural life and supplying some of the functions that religion historically has supplied. So therefore, it’s often a question of concern for a lot of people. But for people like me, it’s like, well, is it right? And then there’s analysis that follows.
Case Thorp
I don’t know if you’re familiar with James K. Smith out of Calvin. He, in one of his books on Augustine and the formation of one’s loves, goes deep in how the worship of a sports team parallels so much the worship experience Christians have for God. And it’s pretty compelling. I wish half the men in my church had the same passion for Jesus as they do the Florida Gators.
Jeff Scholes
You know, it’s funny, I think too when you talk about football in the South in particular, it’s different than, I don’t consider Texas a part of the South by the way.
Case Thorp
Amen. And why are they in SEC? There is a bit of sin in sport and religion that you need to explore.
Jeff Scholes
There’s plenty of it. It’s all about money, of course. And then I think Longhorn fans are saying, see, we told you as they’re playing for the SEC Championship against your Georgia Bulldogs. Or it did, sorry. But they’ve had an unexpectedly good season in the SEC. But no, Texas is its own thing. Let’s be clear about that. I’m a Texan. But I think football in the South oftentimes is kind of considered somewhat tongue in cheek. It is a religion.
But it’s also, it’s not, but it’s so ingrained in the rights and cultures and almost like sacramental behavior, I think, of a lot of like hardcore football fans and broken down by region too. If you’re a Tennessee fan, clearly you hate Georgia and Florida, all this other stuff. But there’s an embeddedness, I think, in the South with college football in particular that leans more into being able to talk about it as a kind of maybe civic religion.
You know, one that invokes certain kinds of symbology and mythology and history in the South that just doesn’t have, say, in Oregon, where they have a very good football team, but it’s just different there. Texas is its own thing altogether. But I think those are interesting areas to explore. And it begs the question of, you know, kind of what is religion if in fact we are at times equating a certain sport with religion, right, and religion as you’re suggesting in the public square. It just invites a lot of different kind of discussions that I think are very interesting.
Case Thorp
And community formation, the way in which it brings people together. you, Jeff, would you be my priest and take my confession?
Jeff Scholes
Thank you. Yes, I will, my son.
Case Thorp
Okay, thank you. So this is silly on the presentation of what I’m about to say. It may appear silly to some, but I truly in my gut have struggled with my son going to FSU. Silly, silly. He got a full ride through the Bright Futures program that Florida government pays for the smarty pants. It’s a fantastic place. It is academically substantial.
Jeff Scholes
Yes.
Case Thorp
He rushed K.A. and he’s doing R.U.F. and he’s thriving. But I just, and I’ve said to myself, get over it, Case, you know, it’s okay they’re not the SEC. It’s okay that they’re not Georgia. Get over it, Case. And it’s kind of like if your child marries someone of another religion. Right?
Jeff Scholes
Yeah, yes. Right? I think I’ve heard your confession. You need to know what the equivalent of a Hail Mary or the rosary would be. You have to do several of those. You may never fully overcome it. But I think it speaks to, first of all, I mean, this is your son and you’re so excited for him and proud of him. I think ideally those that are not sports fans would say, why is this a hangup whatsoever, right? I get it. And in particular, as you say in the South, not an SEC team, the FSU Florida thing is so ingrained. There was a book that came out maybe seven or eight years ago called Tribal, and it’s a scholar at FSU talking about these kinds of things and this own kind of, she’s an English professor, curiosity as to why she as an English professor is so obsessed with FSU football, so disappointed and despairing when they lose, who knows what she’s thinking this year after last year with FSH football, but there’s a tribal aspect to it that is really hard to explain and hard for you to probably explain to yourself why you can’t fully get over this. I get it, absolutely.
Case Thorp
Well, and he almost went to UF. We sat down and did a list of pros and cons. And one of the pros was, well, FSU’s football team is top notch this year. And so therefore, you’re going to have a great run football-wise. And then, of course, to see what happens.
Jeff Scholes
Right, well FSU, no, but no, I totally get it. You should let him know, he may already know this, but FSU has one of the best religious studies programs in the country. They have a doctoral program that’s fantastic. It’s a remarkable, it’s one of best in the country. So if he wants to go into religious studies, FSU is a fantastic school, but no, I get it. In Texas, it’s the Texas/ Texas A split typically, and there are just like Texas families. There are A families, and neither of the twins, show me and marrying someone who’s a Longhorn fan if you’re an Aggie is, it needs some explanation to the rest of the family. And this person better be stellar in order to overcome the fact that they’re a Longhorn or an Aggie. And it’s not a joke. It’s deadly serious. So this also kind of speaks to this force and power of, in particular college sports, but you could say it with pro sports to some extent as well, that there’s just something else going on that you’re perhaps tongue-in-cheek suggestion indicates. I mean, it really does. It’s there.
Case Thorp
It’s that Augustinian understanding that my loves were formed deeply in my youth in such a direction. And it also speaks to how careful we need to be of what is forming us and is what’s forming us for that which is true, beautiful and good. And of course, Georgia football fits that, but not for everybody.
Jeff Scholes
Yes. Well, it’s interesting too, I think, to win, say for insight, I just delivered a paper at our national conference a couple of months last month on Baylor football. And, you know, I’m a big, big, I’m an alum and a big Baylor football fan, but, you know, there was a massive scandal that really erupted about eight years ago with rape and Baylor administration as an understatement to say it didn’t handle it well. But at a religious school that has the temerity to enter into big time college football, which Baylor put money and resources into about 15, almost 20 years ago. And it’s like, okay, you want to compete with the big boys? You know, you’re going to have to, we’ll see how you uphold your Christian values. And so when the scandal hit, really broke in 2016, it’d been going on for a while, but it really kind of broke then. There were a lot of charges of hypocrisy and of I told you so, and this kind of, so.
And being a fan of Baylor and alum of Baylor, it’s a different proposition as well. And especially when kind of a scandal breaks and in other words to do it, quote unquote, the right way that uphold one’s Christian values in a way that maybe is not as expected at UT, Alabama, Georgia, Penn State, which we saw of course quite a few years ago. So it was an interesting thing of college football, especially when BYU’s and Notre Dame’s and Baylor’s attempt to kind of, you know, compete at the highest level. Some do it better than others.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, so I’ve been struggling so much with, in college football, the NIL situation, the portal, the portal, I have, insight from FSU alum and big givers here that talk about how they fell apart because the quarterback came through the portal and it killed team morale, that everybody there realized, you’re here for the money, not for the camaraderie and the spirit. And so I think about how those two things have broken covenant that no longer is about your school spirit. And that breaking of covenant from a religious perspective, really it ripples out.
Jeff Scholes
It’s really tricky because I think if in fact college football stayed safe for instance the way it was 50 years ago, where you are a student athlete, right? And the athlete always came second. And obviously there’s school pride in the way you play. And if you win the Ivy League back in the day or the SEC back in the day as well, there was something that you gained that was of inherent value of just being a student at the school and playing for your team and representing the team.
Case Thorp
Fidelity.
Jeff Scholes
Obviously it’s always about money, right? The amount of money that has poured into college athletics over the last 30 years. There was this discrepancy between, know, okay, you get a scholarship, but is that fair compensation for the amount of money that the Alabamas of this world are bringing in when Nick Saban pulls $6 million a year in as a coach and the school gets a ton of money through television? All of that creates this gap and claims of injustice and unfairness to the players who are putting their lives on the line for the…So I certainly get why something needed to happen. Obviously, the NIL and the speed with which it happened, the transfer portal in NIL, and honestly, the NCAA really not thinking it through and leaving it to be a Wild West situation and not accounting for the kinds of covenant and or milieu within a college environment that is expected that is different from the professional leagues where you’re expected to be a mercenary, you’re expected to be a free agent, you’re expected to get as much.
Case Thorp
And that’s why I don’t care for NFL, but boy college football. It’s the “our boys” kind of camaraderie.
Jeff Scholes
It is right, right. But that team can be completely different next year. And the motives, as you’re suggesting, what are they exactly? I mean, money and contract sponsorship is now a big, you know, I’m in Colorado where Deion Sanders has come to Boulder and been unapologetic and unabashed in his statement that this is the kind of coach that I’m going to be. Right. And by the way, you know, his son, Shedeur, who’s the quarterback of the team who’s a rock star who will go to the NFL. You know, I can’t remember the number of millions of dollars that he’s gaining in endorsements this year, right? And so the attraction to Colorado, perhaps it’s not necessarily about Boulder or the history of the school itself, but it’s like, I can make a lot of money. I mean, that’s a large part of the lure for instance, to come to CU Boulder.
It’s scrambled. I’m hoping the dust will settle at some point in time, but the NCAA is going to have to clamp down on, let’s just say, for instance, a shorter time period by which you can transfer in the portal, like in the off season. You know, now, as we speak, someone can leave mid season because they got benched. I mean, it’s really wild westy and it’s troubling. So we will see. But I hear you.
Case Thorp
And so, faith-wise, I see the love of money and the corruption, the sin that’s breaking up community and fidelity. So if anybody from the NCAA is listening, here was my solution. Because I agree with you, something needs to happen. Because then you hear the sap stories, well, not sap, but real stories of players without coats and family that can come to the games and these sorts of things. So my thought was, you know what? Give them some of the money, but put it in a trust they don’t get until they’re 25 and not playing. And in the meantime, allow an administrator in another department to cut some checks for a coat or plane tickets for mom and dad that are reasonable.
Jeff Scholes
There is that. I think at the same time too, you’re gonna still hear, I think, some justified calls of kind of a level of injustice that I’m playing the game tomorrow. I should be paid now and my family needs money now. So I think because it got opened up, Pandora’s Box got opened up so quickly, getting it back in is gonna be very difficult. There’ll be some tighter controls, but that horse is out of the barn.
Case Thorp
Yeah, well, so I hope our listeners better understand this intersection and why the study of it is important. And I’m inspired to work into some more of my teachings and sermons, these parallels, because there’s something people can relate to. They are known and felt and how the gospel…
Jeff Scholes
Yeah.
Jeff Scholes
Absolutely. I should say too, real quickly, sport, since Paul in Corinthians has been utilizing sport as a metaphor for the talking about spiritual truths, this is not a new thing whatsoever. The marathon and the laurel that won’t fade. So in other words, he’s kind of like saying, you know what a marathon is, of course, well, we are running a spiritual race for eternity for a laurel that will not fade.
But he needed to use sport as a relatable metaphor. So it’s been happening for millennia.
Case Thorp
So here’s the question then, Dr. Scholes. Who’s the savior? In sport.
Jeff Scholes
In sport. LeBron James? No. Right.
Case Thorp
I mean, the super athlete.
Jeff Scholes
Well, I think the question then is always, think within the history of Christianity is of course, what is one being saved from? And if in fact that is, whatever the answer is, is compelling, then it’s a second question as to who or what is going to save me from it? I think with sport, there’ll never probably be an answer to that question because there’s not an answer to that first question of.
I think sport has been a distraction and an escape for a lot of people, but not necessarily thought of as saving me from something, as a fan at least. As an athlete, say for instance if we’re talking about, there are families that put all their hope upon their kid who is going to save them financially because they believe he’s going to be an NBA star, an NFL star, something like that. But I think sports just lacks that kind of power to save one from at the very least an existential situations. So this is one way in which religion and sport differ, right? But nonetheless, I think if one is asking and connecting religion and sport in a Christian sense and asking those kind of salvation questions, sport will probably never live up to that in my opinion. It helps temporarily if your team wins the Super Bowl, right? But it’s not getting you to heaven.
Case Thorp
Right. But there’s another season right around the corner.
Jeff Scholes
Yeah, there’s always another season as well. That’s the great thing about sport, right? It’s on a cycle. Your team can win it next year. Even FSU fans, I know it’s been a tough year, but you got next year.
Case Thorp
For Halloween we walked the neighborhood and see friends and relatives and our kids now run off on their own so we don’t have to stare right on them. And at the last minute my wife was like, well, where’s your outfit? Like, well, you know, I’ve had a thing or two going on and didn’t get an outfit. So I thought, you know what, this is what I’ll do. I ran back and I put on an FSU shirt. And if anybody asked, I’m like, I’m a hopeful fan. I got a lot of good laughs.
Jeff Scholes
I like it. Or a delusional fan this season. I’m just keeping hope alive. And you wore the FSU jersey, so I’m proud of you.
Case Thorp
Yeah, well, it’s so stupid, but I love my son and I wear it for him, not for the team. Now, a real pastoral concern that has arisen and I have become more bold speaking out on this primarily because of my kids, their journey is the way in which travel teams are killing youth groups and you have these parents whose kids go off to college and have no connection to their faith. And then I’m like, duh, for three fourths of the Sundays you were traveling the country thinking your kid was the next Tim Tebow and travel teams I feel are so destructive and I say this with a 13 year old who’s one of the best lacrosse players in central Florida and I’ve almost thought about saying to his coaches do not talk to him about travel teams because as a father I’m not letting it happen and I don’t want you to form my kid in that way. Has anybody done research in this?
Jeff Scholes
Not that I’m aware of , Case and my kids are too young to where we haven’t dealt with that yet. Maybe we won’t. I’ll see how good or how much they want to play. But I think that, you know, even talking about the NIL and the transfer portal with college football, there’s this seeping professionalization that continues to infect athletics at a younger and younger and younger age. I mean, when we were growing up, was there any such thing as quote travel team? No. You know, the best you could do was like a club soccer team, but we still played in Dallas and the most you may travel to San Antonio once a year. So that professionalization of sports as it continues to move back into college and moving back to the fact that you’re even considering this as you know, with your 13 year old son is very troublesome. Not only that it’s perhaps convincing kids, that are on such a team, on a travel team, and you’re traveling like a pro, that it is giving them this kind of weird, not only false hope, but as you also say, of tearing at the fabric of kind of consistency within the family. More typical weekends, right? Yes.
Case Thorp
Yeah, right. It’s time consuming. You know, I don’t want to be in hotels that much. I want to be in my own home.
Jeff Scholes
Well, and I trust too, you wonder too about the kids, right? Is there this kind of pressure once you get on the travel team, because you’re really good, to continue to do it? And they’re probably not thinking about all the things maybe they’re missing out on, but I don’t know. I mean, my guess is that if your kid is this good, whether, you know, I trust there’s a high school team, someone’s gonna find him, whether he’s on the travel team at age 14 or not is my guess. But then again, it’s the FOMO. He’s missing out on coaching and playing competitively nationally, all this stuff. I can only imagine there’s just real tension there. I’ll be dealing with it at some point down the line, but I hear you.
Case Thorp
We are blessed by living in Orlando in that a whole lot of those contests are done here. I go there in their cars from Texas and Georgia and New York state and like you people are crazy. And if you’re listening, we love you. Keep listening, please. Even if we disagree. Somebody recently said, if traveling to the game takes longer than the game, there’s something wrong.
Jeff Scholes
Something’s wrong, right? I mean, there’s just as many podcasts as you can listen for your edification, but come on. Right, yeah, something’s off. Coupled with school that is so busy during the week and then all of sudden you’re getting in a car. I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s just some questions that some families hopefully are asking. It’s like, what is this worth it? Right? And can we have our cake and eat it too? In other words, our kid can continue to play the sport that he or she loves.
But we’re not sacrificing these other things. My hope is that there’s a kind of recalibration down the line, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon.
Case Thorp
What am I forming my child towards? And I know for Brooks to have an empty Sunday, I’m sorry, an empty Saturday, to have to fill himself and stumble around the neighborhood with his two buddies and go play on the lake and just figure out being together, that’s a valuable thing that should not be taken away from another lacrosse game.
Jeff Scholes
No, yeah, I wonder too to parents that are dealing with this tension, if their child depends on the age and maybe how good they are, is whether the kid really understands that they don’t have to do this and that there are some things being sacrificed and that you’ll love them nonetheless whether they decide to be on the travel team or not. I don’t know whether I think there’s probably this pressure if you are good enough to make team X to continue with it with everything that comes with it. And I just remember as a kid, I didn’t know, right? I mean, there’s peer pressure, there’s all kinds of things going on and the decisions that you’re making at that age that you believe are in stone, they’re not in stone, right? So I’m hoping that parents can kind of like set forth options and looking farther down the line on perhaps you’re gonna miss out on these very important things here at home. And do you really want to do that and then I guess on some level let them make the decision but at least they have all the information right as opposed to Tiger Woods’ dad which is you are playing golf from age two and there is right I mean there’s Tiger Woods dads and then there’s everything less than that so anyway that’s that’s my hope but we’ll see we’ll talk in ten years and I’ll see if I’m doing what I said I’m talking about now or not.
Case Thorp
Well, and maybe I’ve given you a book idea so I get 10%. Tell me in our closing time here, tell us some of your current research and what’s got your attention.
Jeff Scholes
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
So I’m writing a book on religion and sport fandom. Kind of like we talked about a little bit before, there’s this sneaking suspicion for a lot of people that when they say sports is the new religion, they’re really talking about fans. They’re talking about, has sports kind of supplanted some of the main functions of religion? That’s one way to look at religion and sports fandom. I’m interested in this, it’s been going on for a while, scholarship around the secular, the relationship and the dynamic between religion in the secular and a way to talk about sports and sports fandom as obviously on the face of it a secular pursuit. At the same time too there’s a lot of literature dating back, you know, if you want to just go back to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age which came out, gosh, 17 years ago. But even before that, secularization theory from the late 1960s and early 1970s, which has been debunked largely in the ‘90s. But there’s been a lot more literature from religious studies scholars dealing with a religion secular dynamic to acknowledge that religion, first of all, is largely kind of a creation as a category by academics, white European men primarily, to help kind of categorize, quote, correct religion as opposed to, quote, incorrect religion.
But it is, as Talal Asad, this great anthropologist of religion said, that they are Siamese twins, the religion and the secular. So therefore you cannot cleave one from the other. And when we look at sports fandom, what I want to do is look at that dynamic. What I want to argue, I think, is that sports fandom is so effective nowadays at compelling people to follow and supplant some things that religion is able to do because it is doing religion more than it’s doing secular things. It is certainly a secular pursuit, but it is leaning much more into a way of doing kind of religious things. So therefore the question is sports supplanting religion is kind of a worrisome question by a lot of people to say that is a secular thing supplanting a sacred thing. I’m wanting to say no, we’re just thinking about religion perhaps incorrectly. So that’s what my new thing is on.
Case Thorp
That’s great. And what you mean when you say, is sport doing now religious things, by that you mean community formation and giving someone a bit of meaning and rights and practices together.
Jeff Scholes
Community formation. Yes. All of that. I mean, as you’re talking about with the kind of tribalism that your Georgia fandom has done to the point of where you are asking yourself, am I OK with my child going to FSU? That is the kind of community form. And what’s tough, because I’m kind of an imagined community. Right. Do I know every Dallas Cowboys fan? Of course I do not.
But if I see someone with a star on their hat at the airport, I may go up. There’s something there that sports does that other institutions aren’t really able to do as much anymore. So that’s certainly a part of it.
Case Thorp
You said something there that just struck me. So my son says that amongst his peers, sports betting is out of control. Young men in sports betting, I mean, is out of control. Michael Lewis recently did a podcast series. I don’t know if you heard it on the laws that changed to the rise of sports betting. And it is just bigger now than Vegas and all the casinos combined.
Jeff Scholes
Yes. I did. Yes. I think there’ll be a chapter in my book on sports fandom. I mean, you know, is it appropriate to call someone betting on a game? And by the way, one of the reason was why sports gambling is so ubiquitous is it’s so easy. You can do it on your cell phone. You can do it pretty much in any state. You can bet in the middle of a game, right? On a prop bet that this guy’s going to kick the field goal or not. It’s not just, you know, in a dark alley with a bookie before the game with cash that made it more difficult and that it was illegal in most states except for New Jersey and Nevada. So that is one part of it. I think what’s interesting with the relationship between religion and sports with this is that gambling, historically speaking, has been a prohibition. And you look at, say for instance, Pete Rose, who died recently, was kept out of the Hall of Fame, not because of performance enhancing drugs, but because it’s believed that he gambled as a coach player on his own team. That’s it, right? You know, there are drug users that are in the Hall of Fame, but you gamble, especially if you’re playing. That is the cardinal sin. Not only a baseball, but whatever I was forced to. If there’s the belief that some outside influence has infected the game, that’s it. That’s the worst thing you can do. Now we are outsiders or, you know, students at college with your son that are betting on games, but my belief is that because it’s again so ubiquitous and easy and you can make smaller bets that I’m just wondering kind of a quasi religious response to it. Will it be as strong as it used to be regards kind of a gambling is a sin? You’re not hearing that as much. It’s just become a part of the fabric of how one consumes sports. I don’t bet on sports, but I know plenty of people do that are becoming unable to watch sports without having some kind of money on it. That is different. That is changing consumption of sports. And it certainly has contributed to its popularity, no doubt about it. Why else would the NFL join up with corporations like DraftKings? Why else would they do that? Unless it was to bring more fans in, right? Fans that maybe even like football, but they’ve done the research and they’re making a bet on the Jacksonville Jaguars to win the game, even though they don’t even know who the quarterback is. So it’s, we’ll see how this all shakes out, but it’s a thing now that is radically, qualitatively different than it was 10, 20 years ago. No question about it.
Case Thorp
We’ll put that link to the Michael Lewis podcast in our show. It’s very, very interesting.
Jeff Scholes
There’s one episode on fandom interview with a sociologist on that podcast series. That’s excellent. So yeah.
Case Thorp
So what says Jeff Scholes about Pete Rose? Should he have been in the Hall of Fame?
Jeff Scholes
No. I agree with, it was actually Bart Giamatti, the father of the great actor Paul Giamatti, who was the Commissioner of Baseball and late professor at Yale before he became Commissioner of Baseball in late 1980s. No. I do think, I think if in fact baseball is anything, it can stand as a game with integrity. It has to be at as far as we know, free of, in particular, external corruption from people who have an impact on the sport, including referees. There have been referee scandals as well for throwing games, right? Pete Rose, it’s established that he bet on baseball. And while he was a player coach, pretty well established while his admissions are vague, that as a coach, he was betting on his own team.
You could then argue, about, you know, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez and Mark McGuire and same stuff, you know, that we’re also bringing something external, i.e. performance enhancing drugs into the game to alter it. And they are out of the Hall of Fame as well. It’s on the same continuum as far as bringing something external in. I would put gambling and the possibility of you modifying your performance to affect you getting money from a bet is different. I’m going to sound like a purist and a moralist here, but I think Pete Rose should have been kept out and he was kept out until he died.
Case Thorp
Did Pete Rose ever bet against his teams that he was trying to lose? I always thought, assumed he was betting for them to win, which he would want anyway.
Jeff Scholes
He would want anyway so what what is he going to do if he’s betting on his team to win what is he going to do outside of being a manager who of course also wants to win differently it’s about throwing games right and it’s unclear whether he actually did that or not he bet on his own team there were a couple games where he wasn’t manager of some of those so it’s it’s murky. Pete Rose was ornery and you know never quite admitted things and there was proof that he bet on baseball while he was a manager on other teams.
So that is different from Bettingham’s own team. So it’s just unclear, but his lack of contrition, I honestly think if he was contrite and admitted at all, he would have been in probably. So that’s another aspect of religion coming in. There is forgiveness and there is second chance, but he was unwilling to ever really fully admit the extent and admit that he had a problem, all these are the kinds of things. Lance Armstrong went on a redemption tour. It didn’t really work because he didn’t do it properly. He did it with Oprah, but he didn’t do it properly. So there is redemption in sport, but Pete Rose’s sin was one, it’s the cardinal sin, in particular of baseball. And I don’t know, and absent any form of contrition. You know, there may be a posthumous allowance in now that he’s died. Who knows, you know, in other words, he can’t be punished anymore by the baseball gods. But I think while he was alive, I personally think it was appropriate to keep him out.
We’ll see with Roger Clemens and A-Rod. A-Rod has come clean and admitted. Weyer never has. Sammy Sosa never has. Roger Clemens never has. So is that a difference? Is it just an act of contrition where you’re candid? Like not just telling a little bit of it or candid with it. It’s really interesting how in time, time obviously heals some wounds, not all, some.
Case Thorp
Well, thank you for your time. This has been one of my best interviews. It’s really enlightening. Who knew that from the D bar at the graduate school at Princeton downstairs smoking cigarillos that we would have such a conversation.
Jeff Scholes
I had a feeling that it would. There was some germs of truly, like not only brilliance, but just the people, the level of the people that we were with. It was just formative for me. And I really say it was really about the people that were there, you know? And they go, professors like, in part, but it was the people. And if you think about we lived together, we ate every meal together, you know, it was, we got to know each other very well but I’m just so glad to reconnect with you Case, it’s been way too long.
Case Thorp
You’ve inspired me to see about coming to the 25th anniversary. That’s great. Well, thanks, Jeff. I really appreciate it. Friends, if you want to learn more, go to center.uccs.edu/CSE, the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism. This is for the University of Colorado Colorado Springs website and check out his book, Religion and Sports, an Introduction and Case Studies.
We’ll have links to those in the show notes. Well, friends, thank you for joining us. As a reminder, please like and share. It really helps us to get the word out. Leave a review wherever you get your podcast. You can go to collaborativeorlando.com for all sorts of content. Give us your email and we’ll send you a 31-day Faith and Work prompt journal, a way in which you can process the ideas of faith and work and grow closer to the Lord. And you’ll find us across the social media platforms. Don’t forget our Formed for Faithfulness podcast, a weekly 10 minute devotional for the working Christian that follows the liturgical calendar. I want to thank our sponsor for today, the Magruder Foundation. I’m Case Thorp and God’s blessings on you.
