Des Moines Register, IA
06-16-07
Why single out football players?
Kudos to Herb Strentz for mocking the effort to install a chaplain for the Iowa
State University Cyclone football team ("If a Chaplain Comforts Athletes,
Where's the Solace for Poor Fans?" June 4). I agree with everything he said.
Speaking as a lifelong Christian and an ex-football manager in high school, this is
a well-meaning but absurd idea. Boy, you wonder what grueling hell those
Cyclone players are enduring if they require spiritual guidance above and beyond
that of, say, your average engineering student.
Playing collegiate football is hardly equal to serving in the military, or any other
occupation with very real and brutal stress beyond the norm. Let's stop
pretending that it is. I've no problem with the football players receiving spiritual
help, but let them do so through chaplain services available to the whole student
body.
To single out the football team for a chaplain just serves to snub every troubled
student who apparently lacks the good grace to play football. Somewhere at ISU,
there's an official who needs to find his or her spine, and veto this idea.