Athletics and the Almighty

Ray Lewis hoisted the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Baltimore Ravens had just won one of the more exciting (or at least interesting) Super Bowls in recent memory. Even more memorable than the win was the quest of the Ravens' future hall of fame linebacker who vowed this season would be his last.

All other storylines aside, it was the words Lewis said as he lifted his hard-fought prize that captured my attention most of all.

"It's simple: When God is for ya, who can be against ya?"

At surface level, this may sound like an awe-inspiring motivational saying. One, of course, derived from the Bible verse Romans 8:31. And you know what? It might be just that. But when you think about the deeper meaning of what Lewis might be implying with that concept, it gets a little tricky. (AP Photo)

Does this statement, undoubtedly uttered by many a winner, mean that God is more "with" one team than another? Does it imply the Ravens had a holier team, or that they sent up more prayers heavenward asking for a victory?

Does God even care about sports?

No matter how you slice it, faith and football mix about as well as oil and water. Not in the sense that they shouldn't have anything to do with one another. I think most would agree Tim Tebow has done it as well as anyone with as much class as humanly possible. But right now, how would you explain the 49ers' loss to the players on the team who truly thought God was on their side?

This question is obviously not as impactful as countless others that could be asked, but as an unashamed follower of Jesus and sports, it's one I know I will have to wrestle with for many years.

I'm the farthest thing from a preacher, but the first thing I think of when considering this is that if we think God is with the winning team more than the losing team, we've dichotomized the concept of winning and losing to where God can only be present in the victory. And according to what I believe, that's the furthest thing from the truth.

It's not like God helped Ray Lewis and the Ravens run faster or hit harder. And he didn't blind the referees to a Baltimore holding penalty in the endzone on San Francisco's final drive. As I said last year in a column about Tebow, the concept of God in sports isn't about whether He helps a team win by lining up on defense for the two-minute drill. It's something deeper. It's about motivation. Just like some athletes play the game for money, family, or fame, athletes like Tebow do it because they believe they're doing it for a higher calling.

Whether or not that's what Lewis was referring to, I guess I'll never know.

But I do know there is a way for sports and salvation to coexist. It's not as simple as 'believe and you will succeed,' or as clear-cut as 'God doesn't stick his nose in the stadiums,' but the balance is out there. I think it's somewhere between the two extremes. And, like always, I think it's not always about winning. But that's what's cool about faith. You don't have to have all the answers.

So much for something different

Sigh.

What can anyone say to possibly sum up what all Bengals fans are feeling right now?

Nothing.

Cincinnati lost to the Houston Texans to make the Bengals' trip to the playoffs about as long as a Brittney Spears marriage. Again. The play calling was awful, Andy Dalton almost made me miss Carson Palmer and the highly touted defensive line never got near Matt Schaub.

It even had the hallmark of a classic Bengals loss: Fans were given legitimate hope at the very end.

And then, with one overthrown TD pass, it was all taken away.

Cue the fire and brimstone. Cue the calls for the heads of Dalton, Marvin Lewis, Jay Gruden and everyone else who may have contributed to a loss that ended Cincinnati's season the same way it did last year. And in 2009. And in 2005.

In some respects, these calls are justified. Going by Einstein's definition of insanity, change must be made. But maybe in a few weeks cooler heads will prevail and Cincinnati's esteemed owner Mike Brown will bring back the entire cast of characters who raised the Bengals to the highest level of play they've been in years.

But what if that's not enough?

What if this cast of characters has hit its ceiling?

We've seen what this crew can do. And to be honest, it's not much better than what we saw from the Dick LeBeau/Gus Frerotte-esque combinations of the '90s and '00s.

I'm not going to pretend I know what the real answer is. Whether it's getting rid of Gruden, Lewis, Dalton or some combination of the three. But I do know another slightly above average season will no longer cut it in Cincinnati.

The bar has been raised. More is expected out of the Bengals than before. Unfortunately for Cincinnati fans, we have an entire offseason to think about exactly what those expectations are.

The Hope of a City

It’s been a rough couple decades to be a Cincinnati sports fan.

Ever since the Reds won the World Series in 1990, championship banners haven’t exactly been a main export of the Queen City. Cincy fans have been subjected to some very bad professional sports teams and even more painfully mediocre ones. These teams have put fans through year after hopeful year of disappointing torment.

And we sat through every game.

All 214 Bengals losses from 1991 through 2011, and each of the Reds’ 1,704 defeats in that span.

Even worse, Cincinnati’s only two professional franchises (I shudder to think what we’d do with an NBA team) managed to win a total of three playoff games in those 42 combined seasons. And all of those victories were in one divisional series the Reds played in ’95. The Bengals assembled three trips of their own to the postseason, all after 2000; all resulted in convincing losses.

We’ve endured all of it.

Sure, we said we were done countless times. I can’t even tell you how often I swore off my allegiance to Cincinnati sports after an inexplicably bad defensive effort by the Bengals or a three-homerun losing effort by the Reds. But just like everyone else, the next day I took the paper bag off my head and somehow truly believed the next game, the next week; the next season would be different.

But year after year, we were met with the same results. The 7-9s; the 78-84s. And those were the good years. Those were the years when we were at least teased and taunted with that dangerous hope of changing winds. Other years, the dark ones, were the 3-13 or 66-93 efforts. The years when we heard of owners who cared more about money than winning and locker room atmospheres that can only be described as poisonous.

Cincinnati’s athletic woes didn’t even end at the professional level. The University of Cincinnati’s hoops team is better remembered for a brawl than its recent basketball success. And the Bearcat’s football team is going through its third painful breakup in less than a decade with a third coach who saw the program as a stepping stone instead of a legitimate contender.

Hope was the only thing that got us through these teams and those times. Hope made us keep watching. Hope told us better days were ahead.

Days, maybe, like this Saturday.

The Cincinnati Bengals are in the postseason for the third time in four years, marking the first back-to-back playoff seasons this franchise has seen in three decades. This year hasn’t always been pretty, but it was highlighted by a 13-10 late-season victory at rival Pittsburgh that knocked the Steelers out of the playoffs and clinched a Bengals berth. Even an ugly win like that is sweeter than anything Cincinnati fans have tasted in a long time.

But now it’s time to take that all-important next step. The reach from mediocre to something more, whatever that is. Sure, it’s nice to move past the .500 seasons of old, but how much difference does it really make if all the farther we get to see is a couple regular season wins and a painful playoff loss?

If that’s the only thing I have to look forward to this week, I’d almost rather not even bother.

Cincinnati fans are tough. We’ve made it through the abyss of athletics with precious little to show for it. But we still have the teams. Unlike the fans from some other professional sports settings, we’ve kept our teams when they were better for a punch line than a sports venue. The Bengals are no exception. Once the laughingstock of the league with more arrests and failed draft picks on a yearly basis than wins, the orange and black have a chance to change the direction of a sports town that’s been going south far too long.

While the first Bengals playoff victory in my lifetime wouldn’t erase the past by a long shot, it would go a long way to starting a new chapter in Cincinnati sports history. I don’t know how many postseason wins it will take for the Reds, Bengals and Bearcats to make the last 20 years of frustration worth it, but I do know it has to start this Saturday versus the Texans.

Short and sweet

A friend of mine took a class that required writing 50-word essays. Fifty words. Exactly.

This summer has taught me a lot. The biggest lesson I've learned is the difference between the things I want and the things I need. I now realize how big of a difference that is.

On the other hand...

I really had no idea how much I use my hands until last Saturday.

Anchoring guests on IWU's rock wall is pretty much routine for me at this point. I did it all of last summer, some during the school year, and then again this summer. The process is pretty simple: You climb with a rope hooked to you and I stand on the ground holding the other end. If you fall, my weight keeps you in place.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

A week ago today, I was belaying my first climber of the night. Everything was, as is always said before something bad happens, going normally until he fell. Still, normal. I've caught my fair share of overly ambitious climbers.

But this guy was different. Partially because he was probably about twice my weight. But mostly because when he fell, as often happens, he didn't stop.

For reasons I, nor any of the other people at the wall that day can explain, he kept falling. I tried to hold on to the rope to slow his descent, but it just kept rushing through my hands. When he landed, perfectly and miraculously unharmed, I realized my hands felt like they were on fire.

Second degree [rope] burns was the diagnosis. And the fun kept coming. While being driven to the emergency room, I partook of my first car accident. But wait, there's more! Since my hands were temporarily out of commission, I wasn't even able to buckle my seatbelt before we left. Again miraculously, I walked away from that wreck with the same amount of injuries I had going into it.

So all of that left me with two stubs for hands and enough painkillers to knock out a charging rhino. I was stuck like that. I couldn't open doors, tie shoes, take a shower, or even eat without the help of a friend. It was (and still is) an incredibly humbling experience, one that taught me a lot about pride, humbleness, and yes, being grateful for my hands.

As I type this, completely overjoyed that I have six available fingers to use, it's now hard for me to think of any aspect of my life that wasn't affected by this injury. I could try to pull some kind of deeper meaning out of this whole incident, and it might work. But really, I don't think I need to. Because I went a week without my hands. It wasn't easy. And I never want to do it again.

But on the other hand, if I take as much out of it as I hope to, maybe I'm glad it happened.