In a world where athletics are becoming more and more prevalent, their influence on individuals and cultures create intrigue among both secular and religious cultures.
Jeremy Lin, Tony Dungy, Jimmer Fredette, Morgan Pressel, Deion Sanders, Reggie White and Muhammed Ali are only a few of the most prevalent athletes and coaches who allow faith to dominate their role as an athlete. In light of these issues, UT held their second annual interfaith dialogue on the impact and relationship of religion and sports.
Father Charlie Donahue, pastor at Blessed John XXIII Parish; Rabbi Alon C. Ferency of Heska Amuna Synagogue; Chaplain Abdel Rahman Murphy, director of the Roots Program at Muslim Community of Knoxville; and UT’s own Roger Woods, UT athletics’ official chaplain, were all panelists invited to discuss religion and sports in a global society.
With differing religions and opinions on display, Woods said there was an atmosphere of love in the room, keeping the topic firmly based on the surface of faith and spirituality in sports, rather than the topic of specific faiths.
For some, it meant just being open-minded to the fact that every religion or person has its own unique flaws and imperfections.
“I’m not someone who thinks you can only be a decent person if you are Jewish,” Ferency said. “I think Judaism is a structure within which you can become a decent person, but there are plenty of jerks who are Jewish and there are plenty of horrible people who are Christian or Muslim. It’s a hope that your religious system cultivates your ethical person, but it may not.”
For students like Trevor Egli, a doctoral student of sports psychology, the discussion created an opportunity for him to consider the specifics of sports and religion as well as the broader issues that arise throughout. Egli said his studies tend to focus on how religion can impact performance and the well-being of an athlete and he enjoyed having his horizon stretched outside his regular mindset.
“For me, my interest and my research has been spirituality, faith and sport and how they intersect,” Elgi said. “Getting into something like this, it kind of expands my own viewpoint and where I’m coming from and especially on those different topics. There’s a lot of topics when you talk about faith and sports that I don’t necessarily think about.”
The panel moved from issue to issue, falling for a few moments on character and role models in the sporting world. With so many stories of broken athletes and coaches, several panelists questioned the wisdom of the culture in allowing athletes to become, or putting athletes on the pedestal of, role models.
“My daily motto is to encourage and enrich and empower by keeping it real, realistic and relational because the athletes and coaches are put on such a high pedestal,” Woods said. “But at the end of the day are common people just like you and I.”
The issue caused a bit of a debate but ended with an agreement that athletes should be aware that they are being evaluated on their performance on and off the field whether or not they asked for that, and fans should be aware that these athletes are not infallible beings.
“(Athletes) should be mindful, ideally, they’re coaches would instill in them some mindfulness that ‘you have a platform and people are watching you on the field, on the court and off,'” Ferency said.
For Tennessee, that may mean focusing more on the character of the leadership over each sport and less on the athletes.
Egli, who grew up as a professing Christian, went on to play basketball as an undergraduate. He said his time as a collegiate athlete became a difficult season for him and that it stemmed from a lack of leadership on the team.
“Integrity wasn’t something, character wasn’t something that was an important part of the culture that I was a part of,” Egli said. “For me my faith was a part of everything that I did.”
As UT looks to provide a healthy environment and a mentality of excellence throughout every sport, this topic can uniquely apply to coaches. UT men’s basketball head coach Cuonzo Martin addressed this topic a little bit during a media luncheon on Monday. Martin said he hopes his players look at him as someone they want to pattern their life after, as a father figure or as a man.
“These guys come in here at 18 and 19 years old and there’s a transition from a young man into a man,” he said. “There’s certain things I have to do and I have to give and there’s a certain way I have to walk so those guys can see that. It has to be a lifestyle, not just me talking about it. It has to be who I am, but not just me, (it has to be) my staff and guys around me. If you don’t have those people around you then you’re not showing those guys good people and good styles of what they need to become.”
But it’s not just about personal morals and character. Woods said he sees a marked difference between UT players who have a specific religion and those who do not.
“I just see that they’re more at peace, more balanced and just more stable in their walk,” he said.
