The NCAA Is Protestant To the Core

EDBS had a fun observation here at ONE LAST NOTE ON BORING REGULATORY COMMITTEES

Here is a part:

We know everyone outside of the USC fanbase wants to see USC get hammered by the NCAA. SImple animal psychology plays a part here. You want to see the big lobster--the one running around the tank bashing everyone around with its big lucky claws and getting all the fine lobsterette ass--have its moment of weakness when the other lobsters, hungry and angry, can creep in unafraid and triumphant from the corners when it sits stripped of all protection in the corners. We root for comeuppance not out of any sense of justice, but out of a natural instinct to see the successful ground into powder for our entertainment.

It's monkey-psych (or lobster psych) 101, and we're passing with flying colors thanks to a lifelong disposition toward spite and the endorsement of mob violence. Dismissing this love of large things being destroyed, the issue of the NCAA's involvement in regulating college football remains something you have to explain not only to outsiders, but often to adherents of this fine church itself. \

We have no pope. For sports Catholics, there's MLB and the NFL. Major League Baseball is akin to the Catholic Church back when the Medici got syphilitic madmen appointed to the position, a corrupted and decrepit empire with frequent insane rulings handed down godlike from on high. The NFL is the Catholic Church under its best, most iron-fisted of popes, ever-mindful of the details right down to the color of the trim in ceremonies, and always infallible. The NBA is Hinduism, a shifting flash of multiple gods
(West/Russell/Erving/Bird/Jordan/O'Neal/Bryant/Vishnu) on parade.

The NCAA does not rule college football so much as occasionally come in with a general consensus on when and where the fatwa comes down. They remain only as powerful as their constituent schools let them be, and certainly no more. They hold no grand cards like they do in basketball with the tourney, and have no Pope or great Leviathan to lord over the sport. In terms of structure, fervor, and chaos, we work with a basic text that everyone rules a little differently.

In short, we're Protestants, forever bickering over the interpretation of these things and nursing the kind of curious grudges only sectarians can nurse. When the ruling comes down, guess who's going to like it? By definition, no one, because that is the nature of group decisions. Everyone. Hates.................

I saw this fun comment at his post

Big Integer: Episcopalian/Anglican – high church, traditional, wants to be Roman Catholic (NFL) but maintain autonomy. Used to be big in the halls of power but has fallen off the top of the heap in recent years.

SEC: Southern Baptist – dominant in its home region, interesting mix of bland Protestantism (Richt) and batsh*t crazy (Miles, Nutt). Envied by many other denominations for the weight it throws around, but it really is the big boy on the block.

Big East: United Church of Christ – Eastern liberals/intellectuals in a loose conglomeration of congregations/schools. Fuzzy core theology/identity.

ACC: Presbyterian – see above, with slightly different fuzzy core.

Big 12: Lutheran – long history of mergers and splinters, lots of unspoken resentment working under the surface. Currently in danger of falling apart at the seams.

Pac 10: Spiritual but not Religious – all over the place, and always chasing after the next best thing. (What else can you expect of a conference that boasts Cal and Oregon?)