Touchdown Jesus

Once again, God came to the football game. He was there yesterday, when the Philadelphia Eagles handed the New York Football Giants they're second smackdown of the season. He showed up not long after Brain Westbrook took a 30 yard hand-off into the end zone, and again when Westbrook caught a 40 yard pass for the same result. After each touchdown, Westbrook took the time to first point towards the sky-the apparent location of said deity-before joining his teammates in more earthy celebrations of the high-fiving variety.

So what's with God and football is the question? Sure, organized athletics have long been linked to acts of worship (the Olympics, for one, began as a religious celebration, though there is much dispute over which God, specifically, they were celebrating), but football has taken it to a whole other level. The examples of this are myriad, for Notre Dame's famous Touchdown Jesus through the player-led Bible study groups which are everywhere in the NFL. Football players love their faith, that much for sure.

Researchers trying to figure out why there's so much religiosity in football have come up with a lot of ideas, but one that's not received a ton of attention is John Bowlby's fabled "attachment theory." Bowlby spent most of his career trying to understand patterns of familial interaction which, obviously, lends itself well to football. Okay, maybe not exactly, but hear me out.

Bowlby's actual theory was published in 1969, but it was first presaged by a trilogy of now classic papers-The Nature of a Child's Ties to His Mother, Separation Anxiety and Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Adulthood-which appeared between the years of 1958-1960 and laid out many of his core ideas. Among those is the notion that attachment-in academic terms, the feeling of devotion that binds one living creature to another-is the direct result of an infant's reaction to alarming situations. Essentially these bonds first form when a newborn infant initially encounters distress and the nearest adult or, as Bowlby puts it, the nearest "identified attachment figure" to respond to the situation becomes their primary caregiver.

Over time, this primary caregiver becomes what's called a "secure base" from which the newborn learns to explore the world. The University of Virginia developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, who worked with Bowlby and built on his thinking, added in the notions of "stranger wariness" and "reunion behaviors" and developing the now ubiquitous "Strange Situation Procedure" for developing and classifying different attachment styles.

One of the other things that Bowlby discovered is that this "secure base" can be transferred. One example of this was a 2006 study published in the Journal of Psychology and Theology in which John Beck experimented with the idea of God as a "secure base." He found that Christians who are "secure in their faiths" are more open to examining other religious ideas and more tolerant of people of other faiths.

This base switching, especially in high risk situations, can also happen pretty quickly. Teenagers in trouble tend to switch parents for friends in an instant. And, when that trouble passes, often times they switch back again. This is basic developmental psychology, but how it works out on the football field is a little stranger.

For a professional football player the quarterback is the secure base. After all the quarterback is often called a ‘field general' or the ‘coach on the field' and other such appellations for a reason. Sure practice can be hard, but it's on the field, during games, that football players risk the most. It's usually during games that everything from a spine-snapping injury to a humiliating (and very public) defeat can be in the offing. And these are very big risks.

So my thinking is this-the quarterback forms the player's secure base, but the farther a player gets from their quarterback the less secure that base becomes. And at no time is a player more "exposed" than when in the endzone for a touchdown. Sure, this is a moment of exhilarating excitement (as many trips away from one's base are), they're also usually celebrated on an island. The receiver or running back or tight end surrounded by enemy forces who are really angry at having failed to tackle said player prior to the score.

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So why do so many players find God in the endzone? Maybe it's because they're religious. But maybe it has something to do with their distance from their quarterback and their need for emotional support at that exact moment. Maybe what we're watching when someone like Westbrook points at the sky is nothing more than a little basic developmental psychology in action.