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Review in First Things Magazine of Touchdowns for Jesus

I hope you will check out Peter Leithart’s review of Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports in First Things Magazine.

Click here to read the review

Touchdowns for Jesus Play Book, Page 4: Sudden Change

In football, when there is a sudden change, it usually means something that could change the course of the game is getting ready to happen. A sudden change is when something like a fumble or an interception happens. Those sudden changes are not what alter the course of the game; it is what happens after them that can. John tells me he tells the players he coaches that a sudden change is a time to pay special attention because it could lead to a big, big break. It’s a chance to turn something good into something really good. And it’s … Read the full post

Interview on Touchdowns for Jesus on 87.7 The Game in Chicago

I had another great conversation about Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports.  This time on the Kap and Haugh show in Chicago.

There is so much going on these days in big-time sports! I would love to hear what you think!  Here’s the link to the radio broadcast.

Interview on Tobacco Road Rivalries Radio Show

Thanks to Matt Haley for a great conversation on Tobacco Road Rivalries Radio, about Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports. We covered a lot of territory about big-time sports and what my family learned during the NCAA investigation at UNC. I hope you’ll listen to the show.

Here’s the link: http://tobaccoroadrivalries.com/touchdowns-jesus-interview-author-marcia-shoop/

Touchdowns for Jesus Play Book: Page 3, Feminist Questions

This post originally appeared on the Feminism and Religion Blog on July 29. I am reposting it here as a part of my “Touchdowns for Jesus Play Book” series because it engages my chapter on gender, “Man Up,” in Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports (Cascade Books, 2014). Do sports depend on gender stereotypes that prop up particular expressions of masculinity?” This question is just one of the defining quandaries of my new book, Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports, just released from Cascade Books (an imprint … Read the full post

Touchdowns for Jesus Play Book: Page 2, Power Plays

The NCAA is busy making some adjustments these days. You may have noticed. If the NCAA were a ship at sea, they would be trying to get their sea legs in a stormy ocean. This is a time of great unrest and shifting tides. And we are watching it feverishly try to set its sail for the direction that will keep it from getting sucked down into the whirlpool of the power vacuum that is forming. The power vacuum is forming around who gets to call the shots and how in Division I revenue sports. Mike Carmin, the football beat … Read the full post

Touchdowns for Jesus Play Book: Pg 1, Core Formations

“I have some thoughts on your chapter titled ‘White Lines’ that I would like to share and hopefully get feedback. …I thoroughly enjoyed the book.  I started reading it last night and finished about an hour ago.” Those are the bookends to an email I received yesterday from Jacob Kiper, who lives in Owensboro, KY and is an avid sports fan. In between these sentences Jacob asked some excellent questions and shared some important insights on how race and privilege have functioned and continue to function in the NCAA investigation at the University of North Carolina. Jacob and I then … Read the full post

Calling Audibles XXIV: Truth and Contradictions–UNC’s Sports Scandal and Other Promising Opportunities

In the heat of the NCAA football investigation at UNC when I was writing my Calling Audibles blog series, I met a lot of people and learned a lot of things about big-time sports. In fact, it would be safe to say that what my husband, John, and I experienced during his coaching tenure at UNC has radically changed our lives. When I heard a few weeks ago about the story brewing at ESPN about Rashad McCants and dummy classes at UNC I was not surprised. I was not surprised for reasons that may surprise you.   While John coached … Read the full post

The Tyranny of Obliviousness–My Latest Post on the FAR Website

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Michigan voter-determined ban on Affirmative Action in college admissions decisions is just the latest example of how white obliviousness suppresses America’s collective capacity to heal from the wounds of racism. This obliviousness (a dynamic well described in Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s Places of Redemption) often manifests itself with pronounced potency among those who understand themselves as the well-informed stewards of fairness in our society. The Court’s decision in the Michigan case is a bewildering example of the self-perpetuating nature of obliviousness. When the ethos of a society is fed regularly with the pabulum of … Read the full post

A New Day–Easter Morning

Morning breaks birdsong sounds on a world of husks The taste of death and frailty lingers And the weight of mourning the caverns of broken hearts  emerge from fitful sleep still there still here A woman, tired from the ocean of tears of goodbye and the cruelty of what unfolded finds solace in duty’s clarity and mechanically dresses herself for tending to tomb and harsh reality. She approaches and finds the stab of insult to injury The stone rolled back, the body gone. Someone took him her mind sifts through bitter scenarios and the cruel script that she has witnessed— … Read the full post