Overview

It may all stem from this being an Olympic year, but lately I have been thinking about the connections between sports and religion. The Olympic games were begun in 776 BC as a Pan-Hellenic religious festival. They continued at four year intervals down to AD 393 when they were finally abolished by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I. Throughout their thousand-year history, the Olympics continued to be primarily a religious festival to Zeus, the head god of the Greek pantheon. The games were ended by the Christian emperors because of this close association between the Olympic athletic contests and the celebrations of the old pagan religion.¹

Another source for this line of thought was a television documentary on the Aztecs where I learned that one of the hallmarks of the Mesoamerican culture was a ritual ballgame that was suffused with religious imagery. Life and death, victory and defeat, and even the fate of the heavens were at stake in this ancient ballgame. These associations were in the back of my mind as I became familiar with the Notre Dame campus and started participating in traditional football weekends. Unlike most of my classmates, I did not grow up living and breathing football. In fact, I knew very little about the game until I came to Notre Dame. Perhaps this lack of familiarity with the rituals of the sport allowed me to look at the modern ballgame with a dispassionate gaze and think of the connections it might have with earlier religiously motivated sports contests.

Methodology

To write this paper, I have been observing as dispassionately as I can all the hoopla and rituals associated with football at Notre Dame. I have been attending each pep rally and game trying to immerse myself in the traditions and ethos of the sport. As I walk through campus to class on the Thursdays and Fridays before a home football game, I have been noticing how the fans behave who arrive early for the Saturday afternoon contest. Groups decked in Notre Dame hats, shirts, belts and keychains parade around the campus taking in the sights: students bustling to class, the Golden Dome with the statue of the Virgin Mary atop it, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the Grotto, the Jesus mural on the library and finally the football stadium. In their tourist travels faith and football appear to be mixed indiscriminately. At the Hammes Bookstore, this juxtaposition of football and faith can be clearly seen as fans flock through the store picking up Notre Dame glasses, pins and sports paraphernalia as well as postcards of the Basilica and copies of President Malloy's new book A Monk's Reflections. The Friday before the Air Force game, I was surprised to see the number of eager football fans with their weighty Hammes Bookstore bags on a line that ran well into the middle of the store just to speak to President Malloy and have him autograph their books.

For background on the Mesoamerican ballgame, I have relied mainly on oral and written information provided to me by Professor Douglas F. Bradley, who holds joint appointments at the Snite Museum and the Notre Dame Art, Art History and Design Department. My interview with Professor Bradley confirmed my initial intuition about the connections between the ancient ballgame and football at Notre Dame. The interview also expanded my horizons regarding the ballgame and led me to its roots in the Olmec culture.

Historical Background

The Olmecs created the first great Mesoamerican civilization. The center of the Olmec culture was at Veracruz, Mexico. Without the benefit of draft animals, the wheel or iron tools, the Olmecs produced extensive irrigation systems, elaborate urban centers and monumental human sculptures. At San Lorenzo there is an extraordinary collection of these stone monuments, especially several "colossal heads" measuring up to 9 feet in height. Interestingly, these heads are thought to represent players in the sacred ballgame. The heads even wear a helmet reminiscent of that worn by the Notre Dame football teams of the thirties.²

I was delighted to learn from Professor Bradley that Notre Dame's Joyce Collection at the Snite Museum has quite a representative collection of ancient objects connected with the ballgame and its symbolism. Professor Bradley explained to me that there is great continuity in the basic themes of the Mesoamerican ballgame from the Olmecs beginning about 1500 BC or earlier right through the Teotihuacan, Mayan, Toltec, and Aztec civilizations. With the conquest of Mexico in 1521, the ballgame was proscribed by the Spanish but derivative ballgames continue among the Indians there to this day. The classic Mesoamerican ballgame, therefore, lasted at least three thousand years and must be the all-time champion game of history.³

What was particularly fascinating, I learned from Professor Bradley and the written material he gave me that Hernan Cortes took several Aztec ball players back to Spain in 1528 where they demonstrated the sacred ballgame. This introduction to a team sport played with a rubber ball had a profound effect on European society. It seems likely than the European fascination with sports such as soccer and rugby stems directly from this five hundred-year-old transplantation of the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame.⁴ Football is, of course, a North American offshoot of soccer and rugby so there is a discernible line of descent from the Mesoamerican ballgame to football as played at Notre Dame.⁵ Much has changed in this complex journey back and forth over the vast ocean, but the essential social role of the game has persisted through all these transitions.

Analytical Focus

My ethnography will focus on the University of Notre Dame community and its football rituals. Guided by my interview with Professor Bradley at the Snite Museum, I will investigate parallels between the Mesoamerican ballgame and football at Notre Dame. It will use the clearly identifiable social role of this ancient game as a lens to discern similar connections at the university today. Among the many roles football plays at Notre Dame, I will investigate it as a quasi-religious ritual, as a nurturer of Christian values, as a mechanism of social catharsis and control, and as theater. My analysis will be informed by the field data that I obtained from my investigation of the game as a Notre Dame freshman new to the football phenomenon.

Football at Notre Dame

Instinctively, I realized when first arrived on campus that football at Notre Dame was much more than a simple sport. It seemed to articulate the basic values of the university and evoke emotions that went far beyond what a casual athletic contest might. I also felt that the placement of the library mural was deeply significant. At Notre Dame football and religion are closely intertwined just like they were for the inhabitants of ancient Mesoamerica. "Touchdown Jesus" is the equivalent of a neon sign announcing this close association.

Architecture often provides valuable insights into the communal values of a culture because the erection of major structures involves leadership direction and the group effort of the community. For instance, the stepped pyramids of the Mesoamerican cultures are placed at the center of the most important cities and close by would be the palace of the king or local chieftain. In close proximity also would be the ball court with its observing platforms. At Notre Dame the golden dome of the main building with its adjoining Basilica serve as the iconographic center of the campus. Next in importance is the largest structure on campus, the stadium, followed by the tallest structure, the library. This grouping of major buildings tells us something about the local culture itself. The fact that the stadium has such prominence and is aligned precisely with the library and its religious mural provides key information about what is Important to this community.

Mesoamerican Parallels

As Professor Bradley told me: "Religion and the ballgame were almost seen as one and the same."⁶ This was reinforced by the layout of the Mesoamerican ceremonial centers. The ball court was adjacent to the public square where on the stepped pyramids the priests performed their grisly rituals. This tells us the ball court was associated with these rituals and the ballgame had an importance to the local community which transcended a mere recreational game. Sport was literally life and death to the Mesoamericans. The game was itself a religious ritual. The game mirrored the intrinsic duality at the heart of human existence and served to assuage the vengeance of the gods. Under the Olmecs, who seem to have begun the ballgame tradition in Mesoamerica, only kings or nobility could play the ritual game. Often high ceremonial contests with the ruler participating were played at major festivals. At such times one or more members of the losing team was sacrificed to the gods. The ruler's ball game attire was a tripartite apron with a mask and/or mirror showing royal status. This attire seems to symbolize the role played by the ruler in defeating the gods of death and drought and ensuring fertility to his community.⁷

Football As A Religious Ritual

At Notre Dame the religious ritual aspects of the football game are somewhat muted, but they can still be discerned by the careful observer. Prayers are typically said before, after and during the game. For example, the team attends Mass before the game, fans join hands and pray at crucial moments during the game, and Masses are said at multiple locations on campus immediately after the contest. Very often after the games one of my friends who is a Eucharistic Minister will dash out of the stadium to serve in the Stepan Center service 45 minutes after the game. She tells me that these Masses are also always filled with football fans and the presiding priest rarely fails to mention the day's game in either his homily or opening and concluding remarks.

It is also significant that touchdowns and point-after kicks are made into the open arms of the Jesus mural on the library. The religious message of the mural is that spiritually Jesus draws humanity to salvation with His outstretched arms just as He guides the Domers to success in the stadium. This undercurrent of meaning is what makes the sport such serious business for Domers. Heads may not literally roll after a losing contest, but certainly the faces of innumerable fans will be either raised or downcast for the following week depending on the outcome of the contest.

The Ballgame As A Mechanism of Social Catharsis and Control

Humans of whatever culture must wrestle with existential anxieties. Life is an agonizing mystery fraught with many contradictions and uncertainties. All too frequently death and life seem locked in a deadly embrace. Games, especially ritualized games with religious overtones, provide a socially acceptable outlet for the psychological pressure of living a life bounded by death and the caprices of chance. The Mesoamerican ballgame fulfilled this psychic need for its audience by acting out the struggle for existence in a context full of meaning and reassuring rituals.

The three themes found on sculpture associated with the ballgame are life, death and duality. The religious aim of the ball games seems to have been to encourage life and fertility, to placate the gods through human sacrifice, and to mediate the contradictions of new life arising from death and decay. The iconography of the ballcourt murals frequently relate to warfare and battle. The ballgame was a contest between different teams and as such it mimicked the hostility of war. The frequent use of captives in the game and the climax of sacrifice highlight this aspect of the ballgame. The ball court was a place where the contest with the great enemy death took place and by extension where the defeat of all other enemies was ritually achieved. The ballgame thus also served as an outlet for the warlike impulses of the general populace. It was a socially "safe" way for group hostilities to be expressed and psychologically resolved. The drawing of blood or the execution of a team member (often a captive) from the losing side only made this cartharsis more palpable to the crowds. The win I lose, victory / defeat, life / death duality of the game remained the underlying theme of the ball game throughout the period of its cultural supremacy, from long before 1500 BC to the Spanish Conquest in AD 1521.⁸

The ball court symbolically existed at the boundary between the heavens and the underworld. It was in a very real sense regarded as the pivot point of the universe and as such was a place of awesome power. The ball court was divided into four segments to mirror both the human body and the heavens. The great god of the Olmecs was the sun. The orb of the sun was mirrored by the rubber ball used in the game and the rolling head of the decapitated victim on the losing side. The Mesoamericans thought that the ballgame with its associated sacrifice could literally affect the heavens and ward off disasters. The ball's arc was thought to describe the path of the planets through the sky. The sacrificed player's body was also bound up into a ball, no doubt to reinforce this cosmic imagery. The game was very difficult to play. Players had to wear special yokes around their waist and have their knees and elbows protected by religiously decorated pads. The ball had to be hit by blows from the hips, buttocks or knees through an iron ring set high in the ball court wall. Most games were probably won on points as direct goals would have been very difficult through the rings. Spectators seem to have bought little figurines of the ball players which were used in some ritual, broken and then discarded. It is from these figurines that have been unearthed by archeologists that we know much about the iconography of the ballgame.⁹

Notre Dame Analogies

Notre Dame like the Mesoamericans is also leaving behind symbols and figurines of its football games. If you walk into the Hammes bookstore, you will see two floors of football memorabilia ranging from stuffed leprechauns to musical keychains playing the "Fight Song." It is somewhat disconcerting to think that these somewhat tawdry but tangible mementos of the game will probably survive all the hoopla to be dug up like the little figurines in the Snite Museum by future generations of archaeologists trying to discern the meaning of this unique culture.

In highly evolved cultures such as at Notre Dame, the inhabitants still have the same psychic needs, but these needs are met in a sublimated and much sanitized fashion. The two strongest rituals at Notre Dame are the Mass and Saturday afternoon football. The Mass we must recall is the unbloody re-enactment of the sacrifice of the cross. The original sacrifice of Jesus was a bloody and harrowing spectacle enacted before the community just like the public decapitation of the losing player in the Olmec ballgame. In both sacrifices the victim is the key to understanding the whole ritual. The victim is an offering or propitiation to the divinity to bring good things to the community and avert misfortune. The highest and most valuable sacrifice is that of the willing victim. In the Mayan myth describing the origin of the ballgame, there are two twins one of whom gives up his life to be the sun for the continuance of all life.

This sort of thinking goes very deep into the human psyche. It fulfills basic needs and knits the community together. The Olympic games were always accompanied with elaborate sacrifices to Zeus. The games themselves were held at the god's shrine at Olympia and took on the trappings of a religious ritual.¹⁰ This is one of the reasons that the Olympic games lasted more than a thousand years and the Mesoamerican ballgame was played for three times as long. Any cultural practice that lasts for such a lengthy period can only do so if it corresponds to some deep-felt human need.

Football at Notre Dame has not lasted as long as the Olympic or Mesoamerican games, but it appears just as entrenched in the community in which it is played. True fans here live and breathe football. The pep rally is an important part of the football experience at Notre Dame. The rhythmic chanting, exhortations to victory and rousing music played by the band get the blood moving among the fans and set up an expectation of inevitable victory. The pep rally is also an integral part of the Notre Dame football ritual. With a ritual you don't make changes unless they are absolutely necessary because their familiarity is an essential part of the psychological reassurance the ritual provides. An example of this was provided to me by Professor Bradley. For years the band played on the Main Building stairs. This location was changed only after the band could no longer fit on the stairs after the renovation of the Main Building.¹¹

On the day following the pep rally, the game is played before thousands of cheering fans in the stadium. The excitement among the crowd is palpable. For a couple of hours all their mundane cares are forgotten as they hurl themselves vicariously into the struggle taking place before them. The game is steeped in traditions. The team slaps the victory sign as they enter the field to the same music that has been played for decades. certain music is only played by the band upon a Notre Dame victory. Chants and crowd behavior are highly stylized and repetitive.

What is particularly characteristic of a Notre Dame football match, the spectators identify so thoroughly with the team that their behavior is an extension of the action on the field. When the crowd wants the team to show some aggression, it shouts in unison "Kill, kill, kill . . ." until a play is made. When it wants to congratulate head coach Bob Davie or have him devise a winning strategy, it chants "Bob, Bob, Bob . . ." along with back and forth hand motions. If Notre Dame has scored a touchdown or field goal, a certain song is played by the band and the students dance a variation of the jig atop the wooden benches in the stands. The students also lift several people up and down in the stands as many times as the points Notre Dame has scored. This athletic action on the part of the spectators simulates push-ups and conveys the message that the morale support of the crowd is a critical ingredient in achieving a winning team.

Football as Theater

Another analogy springs to mind between football at Notre Dame and the medieval miracle and mystery plays. These medieval plays were didactic instruments invented by the Church for conveying Christian truths to the general populace.¹² They are today recognized as one of the direct antecedents of the modern theater. Like all theatrical undertakings, these plays depended on the crowd becoming sufficiently involved in the story line so that there was a suspension of disbelief and a vicarious emotional identification with the action occurring on stage. This is the same mechanism we see in the Mesoamerican ballgame. The game was seen as a sort of morality play reinforcing the world view of the spectators and participants. Some sports like wrestling are a transparent amalgam of athleticism and theater, but the theatrical element is present in all spectator sports.

At Notre Dame the theatrical element in football is never far from the surface. The Irish Guard, the band, the cheer leaders and the half-time entertainment are all theatrical features. Most of all, the game itself provides the same type of emotional catharsis as a good play. The players are the actors and the differing traditions of each team help provide the story line. There are always heroes and bad guys. At Notre Dame the basic story line is the constant struggle of good overcoming evil. The football game, therefore, reinforces the basic religious values of the institution and serves as a metaphor for the never-ending struggle of the Christian to obtain eternal salvation as he struggles against the forces of evil.

Atavistic Aspects of Football

Not all the messages conveyed by football are, however, so positive. Although the university doesn't like to admit it, football is a contact sport that brings out atavistic behavior in participants that can result in serious injuries. Despite the improved padding that the Notre Dame football team wears, injuries are probably just as frequent as among the ancient Mesoamerican ball players. For one thing the Notre Dame players are physically bigger and tackles are permitted. Three hundred pounds on the hoof can generate a lot of momentum against fragile necks and shoulders. Part of the unwritten code of the game appears to involve "taking out" successful players, particularly the quarterback. It is not coincidental that the Notre Dame team has already lost two of its quarterbacks to injury this season. In several games that I have witnessed, team members have ganged up on opposing players and seemingly tried to inflict injury even after the players were on the ground. This crude behavior is generally not resorted to by the Notre Dame team, but many other teams seem to include gang fighting techniques in their standard repertoire of plays.

I was shown at the Air Force game how one's life could also be lost while playing this sport. After a seemingly ordinary tackle, one of the Air Force players remained lying on the ground after all the other players involved had gotten up. A young woman standing next to me immediately proceeded to get very nervous and related a story about how when she was in high school she knew a player who, after being knocked down on the field, never got back up again and died. She knew the dangers of the sport all too well. Most others in the crowd did not respond in the same fashion. They didn't take much notice to it at all and apparently accepted it as a part of the game.

More Than A Casual Sport

Just as with the Mesoamerican ballgame, football at Notre Dame takes on metaphysical dimensions. One would place oneself at serious risk of injury if one questioned the intrinsic importance of the Saturday afternoon ritual to a dedicated fan. The importance of football is transparent to the true fan. The opposing team is demonized into some terrible force of evil. The Notre Dame team, of course, represents the forces of everything good and true in the universe. Total bliss is achieved for the fan when the home team crushes the opposing hoard after a dazzling display of athletic prowess. Psychologically, this isn't very far removed from the spectators at the Mesoamerican ballgame who thought the fate of the heavens turned on the ballgame being played before them.

One of the most striking aspects of the Mesoamerican ballgame was it cultural pervasiveness. The ballgame was so universally held in reverence and so intertwined with the general religious outlook that it became a defining element of the culture. This key feature is also apparent with respect to football at Notre Dame. Certainly other sports are played at the university but only football is identified with the very fabric of the institution. Just as in the Mesoamerican cultures, Notre Dame football fanaticism can be found throughout the country and in many different social classes. Notre Dame football is an American cultural phenomenon nurtured by movies like Knute Rockne - All American and Rudy and reinforced by weekly major network television exposure. Regis Philbin also constantly advertises for Notre Dame on his popular television shows "Live with Regis" and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

As a result of all this media exposure, Notre Dame has national recognition that compares favorably with the oldest schools in the Ivy League. Back home I found that everyone knew about Notre Dame even people who had never attended college. Most of all, the general populace identifies with the university through its football team. People who have never even been to the campus can be just as avid Notre Dame football fans as a family with several generations of alumni from the university. One friend told me of a woman in a distant city who pulled up a fast food restaurant in a car festooned with Notre Dame stickers and ND vanity plates. He asked the woman if her children went to the school and she said that she was just a fan of the football team. She had no other connection to the school.

Summary Analysis

Performing an ethnography of something as familiar as Notre Dame football is difficult at best because of the subjectivism involved and the implicit values one brings to the task without conscious awareness. I believe that the anthropological data that Professor Bradley gave me served as a potent corrective to these sources of personal error. Human nature doesn't change much, if at all, over thousands of years. If we find parallel social structures in highly dissimilar cultures that have been insulated by time and distance from interaction, we must suspect that we have reached at least some understanding of one aspect of human nature. The ancient Mesoamerican ballgame shares enough features with the modern game of football as played at Notre Dame to allow us some insight into the psychological underpinnings of both games. My researches have lead me to the belief that the Saturday afternoon ballgame is anything but a simple recreational activity. It has heavy religious overtones and assumes many of the characteristics of a ritual. This level of insight, which Professor Bradley says he shares, can help us understand the importance of the game at Notre Dame and the way football dominates so much of the life on campus.