Spiritual connections: Longest season! Latest Super Bowl

Ask me, “Which is the longest season?” I’d answer liturgically, “Pentecost.” It’s longer than Easter, which is seven weeks; Lent, which is six weeks; Advent, which is four weeks; or Christmas, which is 12 days.

You might answer, “spring, summer, fall or winter,” but they’re all the same — each 13-week seasons. Or your answer might even be about the fishing or hunting season, growing season or harvest season, but in this article, I’m focused on the NFL 2021-2022 season.

Have you noticed that the regular football season expanded from 16 to 17 games this year? Who cares? Well, players that held season records for passes or interceptions, running plays or receptions, kick-off and punt averages and all kinds of other analytics that have become so important just might care more than we imagined!

I confess that I haven’t researched every other professional or collegiate sport in this regard, but this most successful and lucrative of all sports has caught my attention as we turned the corner from the regular season to the playoffs, which are now finally narrowing the field from 32 teams down to the two that will meet each other for the championship game!

Professional football has become the BIGGEST of the BIG sports, and it just got BIGGER! While I haven’t done an exhaustive study or a detailed accounting of the reasons for this seasonal expansion, I doubt any will argue the fact that it all has to do with money — BIG $ — obscene amounts of money! 

And, as it turns out, it’s also about time … timing to be exact! For the first time, the latest Super Bowl ever is pushed by a 17-game season all the way to the second weekend in February, just one day before Valentine’s Day. I for one and my wife for two don’t think of Super Bowl Sunday as a romantic occasion. And as much as I do enjoy watching NFL games, I also enjoy the change of seasons far more than I enjoy the overlapping of seasons! 

After the longest pro football season and the latest Super Bowl ever, I’m more than ready to turn my attention to youth and high school hockey and basketball games … and my own high school sport, wrestling! 

And, by the way, I’m also looking forward to the beginning of the Lenten season, followed by Easter! Now that’s truly Super Sunday!

Editor’s note: EPLN contributor Pastor Rod Anderson serves on the EPLN Board of Directors. Anderson is the former senior pastor of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie. If you would like to contribute a faith-based column to EPLN, email editor@eplocalnews.org.