Seahawks: Lucky, Good or God's Team?

I like Russell Wilson.  Mr. Wilson is, of course, the unlikely quarterback of the National Football League Seattle Seahawks.  Tomorrow they attempt to win back to back NFL championship games. It’s not that I don’t like the Seahawks as a team. Let’s just say, “I am not a fan”, and leave it at that. You see, I had a great piece planned for today, and the subject was the way that the Green Bay Packers continue to function as a highly successful team. But, they did not function in that way, so, today I get to write about the Seahawks. Yippee!  However, one of my grandsons has Russell Wilson jersey so I will do my best to write something he would like to read while donning Seahawks colors.

You know, of course, that the Seahawks should not, by any mathematical model, be in this position of attempting the rare repeat.  All it took was (at least) four improbable events in succession. In the qualifying game against the Packers, the “Hawks” pulled off a fake field goal and scored a touchdown. You can count that as one or two events which should not happen in a game between championship contenders. Then they completed a 2-point conversion (instead of kicking an extra point), which happens as Mr. Wilson launches a pass to someone I doubt he could see, who is left wide open by the very men who are paid to prevent such atrocities in life.  Then, on top of all of that, they run a kickoff play that has some miniscule chance of success, unless the opposing team fails to do what they have been, we assume, practicing for a year.  Those improbabilities are all capped off by the 50/50 coin toss which was called by the Packers (“tails never fails”), and won by, who else, the Seahawks. The rest is history.

So, Mr. Wilson says, “God made me for games like this” or words to that effect when, through his tears of shock, he is trying to explain how this could possibly have happened again America’s team of destiny, the GREEN BAY PACKERS!  Which makes me wonder, were Mr. Wilson and the Hawks lucky?  Well, I am not a big believer in luck. My theology (the things I think about God) doesn’t leave room for luck or good fortune.  That leaves the option that the Hawks are good, which they are, but they are not better than the Packers. Aaron Rogers (Packers quarterback) said so when he told the world that his team was better. So, that leaves one option: Mr. Wilson is right: God wanted Mr. Wilson and his team to win. This smacks of sacrilege and heresy. I cannot accept this conclusion.  So, next year, do we pray for our team to win? Or do we  conclude that God doesn’t really care who wins a sporting contest? Or, he cares about some players winning, but not others? Who does the God you worship want to win?