Football season is in full swing across America. Professional, college, and high school athletes are assuming positions to hike, punt, tackle, and blitz. Fans are pouring into stadiums, gathering around big screen televisions, and setting up homes away from home in parking lots as they tailgate their teams to victory. Estimates are that 21 million viewers watch Sunday Night Football each week. Additionally, over 19 million people attended regular season games. Consumer spending on the Super Bowl alone reached $17 billion in 2024. With these kinds of numbers, one can not help but wonder if football is the new religion in America.
According to Durkheim, “Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” Traditionally, religions are either monotheistic or polytheistic. Monotheistic refers to the belief or worship of a single god. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all monotheistic religions. On the other hand, polytheistic religions assume the belief or worship of more than one god. Regardless of the approach, religions divide the world up into the sacred, those things set apart and requiring special religious treatment, and the profane, the ordinary, and familiar realm of everyday existence. Sacred items include symbols like the cross, holy books like the Torah, and sacred spaces like the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
It is assumed that football fans have team favorites, thus taking a monotheistic or “mono-team” approach to the game. By all accounts, the Dallas Cowboys are the top mono-team with over 8 million fans. Like religious adherents, many fans of American football also divide their world into the sacred and the profane. Their favorite team and players are sacred in the hearts of fans. Certain players even transcend the boundaries of teams to become sports gods. Tom Brady, Jerry Rice, and Jim Brown frequently make the list of the best players in history and are revered accordingly. On the other hand, rivals in this context are profane and are treated in a more pedestrian manner that borders on outright hostility. Fans of the Dallas Cowboys may jeer and yell at the Philadelphia Eagles because, by its very nature, sports fandom requires you to hold your team in higher esteem than that of your opponent.
Athletes and fans alike often have rituals they believe will help lead their teams to victory. These include:
