Football, Objectification and Empty Moralism - A Critique

I read an article recently that really bugged me (yeah, this happens a lot). I can't exactly articulate why, but that's what writing is for, so here we are. Welcome. There's coffee and cronuts in the back.

The writing in question is part of a series on Christ and football fittingly titled "Touchdown Jesus." This particular iteration is about 23 year-old NFL player Johnny Manziel, recently in the news for allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend—another incident in a brief yet troubled career.

The writer alleges that Manziel's downfall is directly linked to something called "the altar of icon." What is the altar of icon? As far as I can tell, the altar of icon is something sports fans do to athletes when they treat them like celebrities instead of ordinary human beings created in the image of God.

When we treat famous athletes like...famous athletes, we hold them to impossible standards, then grind them down when they fail to meet our unrealistic expectations for perfection and good living.

I think there's a word missing from Dunham's column: "Idolatry." Idolatry is Christian-speak for anything elevated above Christ or the gospel (Hence "Touchdown Jesus").

We (Christians, it's implied) worship the idol of sports celebrity at the altar of icon.

So who is responsible for Manziel's moral and spiritual breakdown? We are:

[. . . ] Objectifying athletes has terrible consequences. When we do it, we neglect the fact that they’ve been created in the image of God. We apply pressure with our scrutiny and a false sense of importance with our praise—and I do mean “praise.” We take men and make them icons, and we all feign surprise when those icons crumble to reveal the decaying remains of a person. It’s a predictable, broken dance, and it yields predictably broken people. (source)

I'm getting tired of moralizing, particularly Christian moralizing, that pretends to say something profound and spiritual yet says nothing at all. Maybe I've done too much moralizing in my lifetime and that's why it irritates me so much.

But I mean, what does this even mean? That by treating Manziel like a celebrity, we drove him into domestic violence and substance abuse? That fame always has a dark side? That something in the core of Manziel's being just couldn't handle being really, really good at something?

There are so many frames of reference we could use to try to understand Manziel's downfall, like mental health, substance abuse, the sports industry, the NFL and domestic violence, etc.

But this particular narrative manages to vaguely condemn the reader as a bad Christian while erasing the real victim:

The "altar of icon" did not hit Colleen Crowley so hard in the head that it ruptured her left eardrum. How hard do you have to hit someone to rupture their eardrum? This question makes me feel sick and sad, and not just for Manziel.

Dunham's "altar of icon" is ultimately just one more form of objectification (I objectify your objectification!)—one kind of story imposed on the tragedy of a real-life human being. It's a sanctified, Christianized objectification, vaguely condemning something that the reader would be hard-pressed to actually identify, let alone fix and change. It's the Christian version of "a string of misfortunes befell a promising young athlete."

And I can't imagine the reader going home and tearing down the altar of icon they have erected in Manziel's honor.

I can imagine condemning violence, not matter what form it takes. I can imagine holding people responsible for their actions. Once again, domestic violence and substance abuse and generally bad behavior is not something that happened to Manziel. Those are his actions, and he is responsible for them.

Isn't that part of what it means, after all, to be created in the image of God?