"It matters a great deal who is going to win, but not at all who won"
Foolish and useless sport
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Andrew Doyle
Foolish and useless sport: The Southern Evangelical Crusade against intercollegiate football, Andrew Doyle, Journal of Sports History, 24, 3 (Fall) 1997, 317-340
The article is an account of churches’ crusade against college football in 1890s. Rev C L Chilton pastor of First Methodist Auburn was one of the most outspoken critics, coining the title of this article and adding “the whole thing is a travesty upon higher education”.
Citing the authority of St Paul, orthodox Southern Evangelicals objected on theological grounds to football’s brazen glorification of “the inherently corrupt and sinful temporal body”. They believed that competitive sports in general and football in particular, fostered an unhealthy obsession with the body that flagrantly repudiated the Christian ideals of self-restraint and otherworldliness.
The Wesleyan Christian Advocate, 9 November 1892 reminded readers that “The apostle Paul teaches us that bodily exercise profiteth little” and arguing that salvation demanded the repudiation of fleshly pleasures. Theologically conservative southerners, who had long opposed dancing, held fast to this hard theological line and defined carnal pleasures broadly enough to include competitive sports.