Bizarre Play Of The Day

Now, this is funny:



PZ Myers, a University of Minnesota professor, provides the color commentary:

It's disgraceful. During some football game, our mascot, Goldy the Gopher, mocked a player on the opposing team who thought it was appropriate to ostentatiously kneel down and publicly pray.

Now Goldy wasn't the disgrace (I have a new-found respect for our goofy guy in a costume), nor was the young lady who came out and gave him a fist-bump afterwards. Hooray for them! The guy making a show of his piety…yeah, he's a disgrace, but he's not on the UM team. No, the real disgrace is our craven PR flacks.

Minnesota spokesman Dan Wolter says the stunt was "plainly a mistake" and the mascot didn't intend to offend anyone or trivialize religion.

I call shenanigans. He was too trying to trivialize a religious ritual (although, admittedly, he wasn't trivializing it quite as much as the clueless goon who thinks the almighty ruler of the universe will help him win a game), and we like him for it. I think it ought to be a Minnesota tradition to point and laugh loudly at any player who thinks he gets holy credit with a deity for catching a ball.

Shame On The University Of Minnesota

Here's what's not hilarious, though. The team they're playing against is my alma mater, Penn State. Jeebus H. Crispies, do we grow 'em unsophisticated back in Penn's Woods.

In case you missed it, here's my view on this subject:

For the sake of argument, let's suppose that there are such things as gods.

Let's further suppose that there is one god.

Then lets suppose that this god is an entity with a personality - the sort of personality that leads him to prefer one group of humans out of all the others, help them escape from another group of people, and then help them slaughter all of their neighbors so they can have a place all their own.

It seems to me that with billions of galaxies in the universe, all of which have billions of solar systems, that this god just might be pretty busy. What do you suppose a busy, somewhat wrathful god would do for people who are always wasting his time with requests for stuff they could do on their own? [whiny voice] "Please help us get out of Egypt. Please watch over our friends and relatives, because we don't have time. Please don't let our planet burn up, because we don't want to stop emitting greenhouse gases."

Don't you think that, with perhaps millions of intelligent species to deal with, such a god might not decide that this planet needs a makeover?

Of all the suppositions I made in that argument, the one in the last paragraph is by far the least implausible.

Another God-Bothering Imbecile

I know at least a few Christians who are smart enough to know this, too.

So, just for the record, I don't resent Goldie's behavior. I certainly don't mind it if some UM professors find it funny. I'm offended that there are players on this Penn State football team who seem to feel the need to flaunt their religion in front of a stadium full of people and a television audience. I'm offended that, not long after I finished bragging on how well PSU is doing at the things that mattered, they seem to be trying to make us all look like fucking goobers.

It was hard to find an article that mentioned the game itself, the first page of responses to my query "Penn State University of Minnesota football score" were all about how the UM mascot had to apologize for the incident.

I suspect I'll be waiting for a long time for those two showboaters to apologize, won't I?

By the way, Penn State got the laugh that counted. They won, by a score of 20 - 0. So I guess that means our god can beat up their god, doesn't it?