My default is set on avoiding sports illustrations because men tend to use too many of them — and not often well.
But throughout the season I have been contemplating a newly popular word brought about by the high-paying, professional world of college football.
It is “decommit.” Which, of course, means that one did not really commit in the first place.
Big money has long been at play in major collegiate sports. It has now moved from under the table to the tabletop.
As a result, young recruits — as well as current players — are switching schools for rewards beyond playing time.
Throw in the whole “transfer portal” and NIL money and fans are likely to see a player score a touchdown for the opposing team and respond, “I thought he played for us.”
He did. Last season.
Gametime announcers previously identified players by the high schools from which they came. Now they tell us all the college teams a player was on before this brief stop on our favored campus.
While I’m unsure of all the eligibility rules, it does seem some players might receive Social Security checks before a diploma.
Nearly meaningless now is the pageantry of a high school athlete donning the cap of the university where he intends to play his next-level competition and perhaps even attend classes.
At any moment that announced commitment might become a decommitment — usually conveyed through social media. Well-known factors are money, playing time, money, proximity to home and money.
Examining the innerworkings of the no-longer-amateur sport is not my specialty nor my purpose here. It is noodling over the whole concept of “decommitment.”
While the word “decommit” is widely used now in the vernacular of college football’s ceaseless recruiting efforts, its essence and application are seen in other arenas — including faith and practice.
While theological debates have long existed over eternal security, apostasy and other doctrinal concepts, those have considerably less interest to me now. My greater concerns are the often-subtle ways a professed commitment to follow Jesus is subverted into other defining priorities.
There is no announced decommitment. No public switching of jerseys.
Rather it an often unrecognized and perhaps unintended departure from following Jesus to the opposing sideline of fear and favoritism.
Leaving a particular brand of Christian identity is often well reasoned. Disillusionment and even abuse are religious realities.
However, it is retaining one’s Christian identity while eschewing what Jesus said defines his followers that causes so much damage to the public witness and to the vulnerable persons targeted by such perversions of the faith.
Many who have long prayed the Lord’s Prayer, recited memory verses galore, read the scriptures repeatedly, heard the many sermons, walked the aisles, professed their faith, entered baptismal waters, tasted the bread and cup, taught the Sunday School lessons, heard the weekly sermons — all while assuming the name Christian — now think being truthful, generous and compassionate are antithetical and a threat to their faith.
It doesn’t take an announced decommitment to observe on which team someone is actually playing. It is the simple recognition of redirected loyalty.
Shifting one’s priority to any ideology at odds with following Jesus as revealed in his life and teachings— even if one’s uniform is still brightly emblazed with “Christian” — is a decommitment.
This season in which we celebrate a divine interruption in history — in which God assumes human form to show and tell us how to love and live — is good time to get back in the game.