My New Sports Analogy

Image credit: Jason Antony

Lately, I've been thinking about a movie that my bishop had the youth in my ward watch a few years back. (I have to mention my bishop because he said he was worried that I would mention him in my blog, and then I told him I'd be sure to include him at some point.) The movie was Facing the Giants. It's a Christian movie which basically compares the gospel to football. It's a good movie; very inspirational, funny, good morals, etc. In particular, my bishop emphasized a scene where the coach puts a blindfold on one of the players and challenges the player to crawl across as much of the football field as he can with another player on his back. The player ends up crawling across the entire field, and it turns into a teaching moment for the coach.

Anyway, for some reason, I started wondering what I would do if I were in that player's shoes. Let's say that by some miracle I feel a desire to be on a high school football team, I make the team, and I stay on long enough to make it to this moment. Would I crawl across the entire field? I don't think so. You see, towards the end of that player's crawl, the coach gets down into his face and yells at him constantly. "Don't give up! Don't quit! Do your best, your very best!" That would drive me insane. Seriously, I would just drop down and quit right then. Why? Because football is just a game; it's not life and death. That's when I finally understood the main problem I have with sports movies and analogies: sports are not about winning and losing. They're not even about how you play the game.