Speaker to compare Super Bowl to religion

The Super Bowl is once again approaching and many UW students will use the opportunity to spend half a day sitting, eating and maybe watching some football.

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Kane 220 at 7:30 p.m.

$5 for students

$8 for UWAA members

$10 for non-members

This lecture is the first part of the Religion and Sports series. Other upcoming events:

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"Baseball: An American Religion?"

Prof. Christopher Evans, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

Kane 220

7:30 p.m.

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"UW Coaches Speak: Religion in Sports: Tensions and Opportunities"

Kane 120, 7:30 p.m.

A discussion featuring UW coaches Lorenzo Romar and Tyrone Willingham.

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Professor Joseph Price of California's Whittier College sees the Super Bowl differently than most, comparing it to a religious event. Price will be addressing the topic tonight in his lecture "Goal to Go: The Super Bowl as Center of American Pilgrimage."

"Like most traditional religious pilgrimages, the Super Bowl provides a goal to go," Price said. "It combines an outward journey with inward exploration."

As an avid sports fan, Price noticed people's devotion to athletic games as well as to religious congregations. He began making connections between fans' and players' spirituality and intense passion for sports.

Price has written two books about his beliefs in the fusion of sports and religion: From Season to Season: Sports as American Religion, and more recently, Rounding the Bases: Baseball and Religion in America.

Price is in the midst of another work, in which he focuses on the religious rituals of the Super Bowl. In preparation for this book, Price conducted numerous interviews of fans and officials, and collected photographs at four cities hosting the Super Bowl.

"More than any other single event in American sports culture, the Super Bowl enjoys the sanction of the government as a high holiday for American civil religion," he said.

In an article titled "More Than a Game," Price wrote, "Fusing sporting, economic, entertainment and political values and beliefs, the Super Bowl thus functions as a devotional festival for the practitioners of American civil religion. In the distinct ways I have noted, last Sunday's Super Bowl facilitated a momentous spiritual experience for 100,000 pilgrims to Jacksonville and for 150 million other Americans who made a mediated pilgrimage to the game."

Price also explained the numerous examples of the Super Bowl's function as a religious event, giving a particularly strong argument for the pre-game show.

"The innate religious orientation of the Super Bowl was indicated first by the ritual of remembrance of 'heroes of the faith who have gone before,'" he said. "In the pre-game show, personalities from each team were portrayed as superheroes, as demigods who possess not only the talent necessary for perfecting the game as an art but also the skills for succeeding in business ventures and family life."

Reach reporter Andrea Roark at news@thedaily.washington.edu.