Football Field
“Football requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication, and respect for authority.”
A football field is a sacred place. It is a uniquely American sport that captures the attention of our nation every autumn. It is where strength and stamina are required, and regardless of the outcome, a deep respect is forged between those who have battled one another on the field. Football forms not only those who play the sport but forms a sense of identity and belonging for families and communities. It is our modern-day coliseum, a sacred place of suffering, sacrifice, and celebration.
Curt Brouwer has been a high school football referee for 30 years. He played football in high school and college. “Becoming a referee was a way to stay on the field,” Curt shared in our conversation, “I would miss the game if I wasn’t close to it. There’s something sacred about the smell of the grass and the sounds in the action.” Curt’s perspective on the football field provided a greater appreciation for what may be overlooked by a casual observer. “There is a deep camaraderie. Because of the violent force of the sport, there is an honor among teammates. Number 62, standing on the sidelines, has earned the right to be there. And he has earned it with pain.”
Every sport requires some level of sacrifice. A requirement to be on the football field is a willingness to sacrifice your body. Every athletic activity comes with a physical cost. The barrier to entry for football is enduring hundreds of hits to the human body. It is a sport that is formed through strength, tolerance for pain, and grit. Curt notes that throughout human history, every culture has had passages to enter manhood. Football, for many boys, is a physical threshold to cross by persevering through pain. “Football is shared suffering.”
The force of a football field is not only players clashing in violent opposition of the other’s goal, it is amplified energy generated by families and fans. The intensity of the game of football transfers into explosive emotional outburst by observers. And the individual who is asked to contain the violent energy on the field and frenzy of the fans is the referee. “Someone has to show up in stripes,” Curt says, “Someone has to blow the whistle.” Here is an often-overlooked overlap to the sacred. Curt offers other referees his insight from three decades of controlling the chaos; “You are doing God’s work. You hover over the chaos and bring order.” Without referees, he says with both passion for the game of football and compassion for the players, what happens would be horrid. It would be uncontrolled conflict.
A football field is where transcendent moments occur for fourteen-year-olds playing their first tackle game and forty-year-olds playing their final professional game. The football field is a passageway of becoming and a shared environment of belonging in era of social fragmentation. It is a place of opposition and competition, where order hovers over the chaos. The football field is a sacred place.
