CV Rick

Growing Up Mormon - A Cowboy's Fan

It's the end of August and football season starts this week.  Tonight I'm going to watch the Dallas Cowboys play against the Minnesota Vikings in the Minneapolis Metrodome with my friend, Mark.  He managed to obtain an available seat from among the block of season tickets he and his friends get every year.  It's great for me because the Cowboys have always been my team, but it's been years since I was able to see them live. 

Growing up on and around military installations I never had a home team to root for.  My grandparents lived in Idaho and North Dakota – no home teams there.  But I loved watching football because I loved playing football.  Unfortunately I wasn't any good at the sport, basketball and track were more to my talents.  I still loved football and I didn't have a team to root for . . . until . . .

We were on Guam – Anderson Air Base, and I was in elementary school, third or fourth grade.  We went to church all the time, at a branch building that had just been built right outside the base fence.  I wasn't allowed to watch any television except shows my father specifically approved.  I wasn't allowed to read any books that weren't assigned in school or obtained through the church.  I didn't really have any free time because as I said, I was always in school or church – we were undergoing a really heavy immersion of Mormon at that time.  The only exception to this (lack of) entertainment schedule was the USO sponsored shows.

The USO puts on all kinds of entertainment for military members and for their families all over the world – not just in war zones.  The shows were filled with music and comedy, some of the performers were well-known, but most of them were B-list talent – musicians, jugglers, comedians, magicians, etc.  I liked the shows because they were well done and because they had nothing to do with religion. 

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Six

For the entire story, click the Alma the Lamanite topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

There were several reasons Alma wasn't on the High School basketball team. First of all he wasn't a team player, he was a ball hog.  Secondly, he refused to follow the strict workout regimen demanded by Coach Watkins. And thirdly, he couldn't be trusted to show up to the practices and the games.

He was the best player I've ever seen on the court.  However, each of those reasons came directly from Coach Watkins who'd been grooming his teams since they were in Middle School.  Despite the fact that over twenty years coaching the Blackfoot High School team, he'd amassed a total win-loss record slightly under .500, he was the team's coach and therefore the authority in all things basketball.  I didn't like his reasons because I liked to win and I knew that Alma was a superstar.  Oddly enough, when looking along the wall of team photos going back to the mid-sixties there wasn't a brown face to be found on any of the teams.  That was startling considering the large percentage of the student body from the Indian Reservation.

I made the team because I could play.  I also made the team because my family name carried a lot of weight in Blackfoot, in both Mormon circles where the extended family was so large as to have tendrils in just about every ward in town and in civic circles where my uncle was the City Manager and my grandfather had been chief of police when he'd died a few years earlier.  I was in.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite, Part One

For the entire story, click the Alma the Lamanite topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

Living in Idaho, I considered myself an outsider.  For one thing I moved there in high school while most of the kids in town had been there since birth.  For another I'd been on several continents and most of those kids hadn't even left the Mormon Valley which stretches from Southeastern Idaho to Southern Utah.  But I wasn't the outsider I considered myself to be.

During my junior year I became friends with Alma Bischoff, a boy who showed me everything I'd ever learn about being an outsider.  Alma was the fourth and youngest child of an elderly couple in our church ward.  He was also the only one of the four to have been adopted, and obviously so, for you see Alma was Native American and his family was decidedly Caucasian.  It was from my association with Alma that my interest in American Indians and their heritage first began.   

At church everyone knew him, but no one was close to him.  He was dark and sinewy. In his legs and arms his muscles were defined in long strokes like those of a paintbrush, creating the illusion of rapid motion even when he was standing still.  His face was cut at angles that contrasted the rest of us with our softer, rounder, whiter features.  He looked through people with an intensity that would convince you he could.  For those reasons he was watched intensely by the girls as if he were the forbidden fruit.

Growing Up Mormon: The Holy Ghost

When you're a Mormon, life is all about the Holy Spirit and trying to get the Holy Spirit to give you superpowers.   It's true.

Sunday school teachers, parents, and even the Bishop would extol to the youth of their wards or branches the amazing superpowers that the Holy Spirit could grant.  By praying to God (Our Heavenly Father in Mormon-speak) in the name of Jesus Christ (God's oldest kid and in Mormonism a completely separate entity than God), the Holy Ghost (still another magical being and the third person in the trinity) would come and grant you physical strength, mental acuity, the ability to find lost keys, the remarkable power to bend time so that you can do all the things your church callings require and still have time to deal with kids and a job, and the ability to supplement your inadequate studying with some spiritual guidance on tests (Mormons don't call this desperate plea for assistance cheating).

I was told that Mormons are better than anyone else at sports. 

I was really told that.  If I wanted to be good at basketball I had to have the Holy Ghost with me.  It didn't matter that the guys down at the playground had mean game skills and never even went to church.  It was about Mormons having the spirit and just naturally having a leg up on the competition.

How did they go about proving that Mormons have this unique ability to excel in sports?  Everyone in the church followed famous Mormons with fan club – like enthusiasm.  Dale Murphy played baseball for the Braves during that time and everytime there was a game on my father would mention that Murphy was a Mormon and look how much better he was than any other player in the league (umm, even though he really wasn't).

In basketball we followed intently the career of Danny Ainge, in football it was Steve Young.  These were the people who burned brightly with the spirit and excelled because of their personal relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Never mind the fact that if you take the population figures for Mormons in the country vs. general population you'll find that Mormons aren't over, or under represented in professional sports and it seems that many people without a relationship with the Mormon God do just fine. 

 

Large plays Football

My son, Large (as opposed to Small and Medium), is playing football.  I'm proud that he's playing football.  I know that I should say that whatever my son decides to do is a source of pride - that his good grades are a source of pride or his musical inclinations are a source of pride or that his manners and well-spoken demeanor is a source of pride . . . and all those things are true.  But, I love football and I am proud that he's playing and that he's playing well. 

He's a Defensive Tackle and is getting multiple sacks per game.  His team is 3 and 1, and the defense is strong.  Way to go, Large.  Keep it up.

Cheated!

Maybe you aren't an Oklahoma University football fan.  I am.

Maybe you don't know that they won their game last weekend against Oregon.  The scoreboard, however, says they lost 34-33.  They didn't lose, of course.  The officials stole the game from them with 2 VERY BAD calls at the end of the game (actually there were three, but the news articles are only concentrating on 2 of them). 

The PAC 10 suspended the entire officiating crew, including the replay officials, and issued an apology to OU.  But, that doesn't seem to change the record - and OU's chances at a BCS bowl game.  It's unconscienable.  It's bullshit.

The officials have been receiving death threats.  I think that's uncalled for . . . threats don't do anything.