098 – The Altar Of Sports

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0:58 I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it!

1:00 Alright guys, this is one of the greatest times of the year, and do you know why?

1:05 It's because it's October baby, and there's all kinds of great sports that come on in October, so not the least of which, because it's the best of which, it's baseball.

1:16 It is the best time of year because this is playoff baseball.

1:20 Now, I'm one of those guys that all winter long.

1:23 I'm sitting there like, "Yeah, you know football's good, I like football, but I'm just waiting for baseball.

1:27 I'm waiting for spring training, I'm waiting for opening day."

1:30 And I like watching baseball, like, of all the channels on, you know, direct TV or whatever it is that we have at this house, of all the channels, the one that I watch the most often is MLB network, right?

1:40 And everything culminates in October, every single last thing.

1:43 And I'm especially excited because yesterday I'm recording this the day after my St. Louis Cardinals clinched the NL Central Division for the first time since 2015, so they finally decided to pull their heads out of their rear ends and remember how to play baseball.

1:57 Which was nice, it took them all the way to game 162 to clinch.

2:01 It was a very, very good time, good game to watch, they smoked the Cubs, so it was even sweeter, even better.

2:06 But that's not the only thing about October that makes October awesome.

2:10 It is a great time and probably the best month of the year for sports because there's different kinds of sports coming at you from all different angles, right?

2:18 So obviously college football and NFL football have started within here in the last month or so.

2:23 And so you get a lot of people that all summer long, what they get excited about is making sure that their favorite college team has the right players in the right positions and they got the right coaches and all that.

2:32 And then in the NFL, it's making sure that your players don't have CTE and making sure that they can actually make it onto the field long enough, even if they have to be brought out on a stretcher or in a wheelchair, whatever the situation may be.

2:41 But also in the month of October, the NBA season tips off.

2:46 So for me, big Oklahoma City Thunder fan, this is a new era for us. No, no Kevin Durant, no James Harden, no Russell Westbrook, no Paul George, none of those guys.

2:56 So pretty much the only guy on the team that you could probably name is Chris Paul and he's probably going to be traded before the end of the season.

3:01 So it's just kind of one of those deals, but it is the NBA season.

3:04 This is one of the first seasons where it actually feels like it's up in the air, right?

3:08 All the previous seasons, it's just been like, okay, as long as Golden State stays healthy, they're going to win, which last year I know Toronto won the NBA championship, but obviously if Kevin Durant hadn't been hurt, I don't think that that would have been a very difficult series for the Golden State Warriors to win.

3:21 But this year it feels wide open. You got the Clippers, they've got Kawhi Leonard, they've got Paul George, you know, you've got Anthony Davis going over to the Los Angeles Lakers, you still got Toronto, which isn't bad.

3:30 I mean, there's a lot of different things. I just said Toronto as if they're going to be a good team. The Bucks are probably going to win the East, but it is what it is. NBA season, it's coming.

3:38 Like we got preseason games coming up, but then it actually tips off this month as well. We got the NHL starting. The NHL is starting. There's going to be some great stuff there.

3:46 There's awesome UFC and Bellator fights that are going to be happening in the month of October. We talked about some of those on previous podcasts.

3:52 I just got through watching the ADCC's. So if you're not familiar with that, it's basically the world championships of no gui jujitsu. And so my favorite jujitsu fighter, Andre Galval, he won his super fight against Felipe Peña.

4:06 You know, you have Gordon Ryan winning double gold. So that's kind of a great time. You got that happening this month. You've got soccer going on.

4:12 So if you're a soccer fan, you know, you've got the UEFA Champions League, the English Premier League, La Liga, Syria, you've got the MLS, you've got all those games going on.

4:20 There's even international rugby. So if international rugby is your thing, I got a neighbor here in the neighborhood that I live in. He used to play for the All Blacks for New Zealand.

4:28 And so he's constantly posting about rugby and different things. And the funniest thing about him is he always comments on college football about how people don't know how to tackle.

4:36 Because the thing is, is if you play rugby and you don't know how to tackle with proper form, you're going to break your collarbone or your nose literally on every single play. So you have to use incredibly good technique, whereas in, you know, the NFL or college football or something like that, you basically use your shoulder pads and your helmet

4:50 as a spear and, you know, you're basically a rocket ship flying into other people. But again, I spent several minutes trying to explain to you that October is the greatest month for sports in total.

5:01 Now, your favorite sport might not be represented in October, but just about everybody has a favorite sport at some point that is doing something in October.

5:11 But this got me thinking. And it got me thinking back to a podcast I did at the very beginning of the year. So this was podcast 56 and this is a podcast I've gotten a lot of very good reviews for I've had a lot of guys reach out to me saying, "Hey, I really appreciate this podcast for this reason or that reason." But it was the top 15 ways to avoid being a crappy man in 2019.

5:32 So if you haven't heard that episode, I would encourage you, highly encourage you to go back to episode 56 of this podcast. It was the first episode for 2019 and have a listen.

5:40 Because basically every year, there's kind of like this new, new year, new me type of a mindset for a lot of people. But then there's some very tangible things that aren't that difficult to do that most people just, they just can't wrap their heads around.

5:53 And so I basically threw 15 different things out there and said, "Hey, you know, focus on some of them." But if for whatever reason, you can check all 15 of these boxes, man, you are well on your way to being a good dude, right? It's just pretty simple.

6:05 I even have a good buddy of mine that I train with on Sundays. He actually typed out the list of 15. He printed it out and put it on his mirror like the mirror he gets ready in in the morning in his bathroom, right?

6:15 And so he's constantly looking at these, this list of things that you should be able to do. And number 13 on that list was this.

6:23 And it's don't let sports ruin your night. Don't let sports ruin your night. Now these weren't in any particular order. I mean, the top three were that important to me.

6:32 But I want to actually let you listen to the clip of what I said in episode 56 of this podcast, and then we'll get back here and I'll tell you why.

6:40 All right, so here we go.

6:42 Number 13, don't let sports ruin your night. Okay. So guys, I'm going to be talking to you on this one as much as I'm talking to my old self.

6:52 But I have seen so many grown men let sports that they're watching on television, not even live watching on television, absolutely ruin their night.

7:05 And I'm kind of being generous because some guys at ruins are weak, right? They just can't get past the fact that their team lost.

7:11 And so here we are. I'm in Edmond, Oklahoma. We're right smack dab in the middle of college football country. Again, people love Oklahoma State and OU.

7:18 They just follow everything. And I've literally been at parties and I'm watching grown men and women.

7:26 People in their 30s, 40s, 50s and maybe older. Literally screaming their lungs out as they're watching 18, 19, 20 and 21 year old boys play a game.

7:40 And I mean, these are people that don't have like a nuanced background in football either. These are just fans that watch sports and they're screaming at the screen.

7:48 They're like going nuts when something goes right going nuts when something goes wrong. And they're just literally living and dying with every single snap.

7:57 And then when their team loses, kind of like OU got trounced by Bama about a week ago, I mean, then, you know, just ruins their night, whether they had money on it or not, whether they have a kid on the team or not.

8:10 And it's hard to talk to them the next day at work because they're still so frustrated over what happened or two days later, maybe you're talking to them at church and they just, they can barely speak.

8:19 And again, I'm talking to myself here. So one of the biggest changes I've made in terms of my maturation as a man from basically my mid 20s to where I am now is to not let sports bother me that much.

8:33 Because here's the thing, I love my St. Louis Cardinals. I love my Oklahoma City Thunder. I love my Manchester United Red Devils. I love certain fighters, like, but when these teams are these people lose, it has nothing to do with me.

8:48 And I remember people saying that because I would just lose my mind, absolutely lose my mind and let it ruin my day. But I just looked at how it affected the people around me.

8:58 Like, people didn't really want to hang out with me and watch sports because I would just literally flip out every time something didn't go my way for the team that I was looking at.

9:05 And the thing was, is it added nothing to my life.

9:08 So I wouldn't say that I'm less of a fan of any of the teams that I was a fan of up to this point. Like, I'm certainly not less of a fan, but I can tell you that I don't let it affect me in the same way high or low.

9:20 So when the team gets a big win, it's like, man, that's awesome. I'm really glad my team won. If the team gets a big loss, it's like, oh, man, that stinks. But, you know, there are bigger things in sports.

9:28 And so for a lot of guys out there, I know this one's going to hit you square between the eyes. You've got to learn to control yourself, especially if you're around children.

9:35 You know, I've got some buddies that are OU fans and literally just the things they say and do during during games is absolutely reprehensible. And one thing I'd like to have them do, and I might even suggest it to him, is y'all should take video of you guys while you're watching games.

9:50 You know, when the kids really aren't around when it's just the guys together, and just play it back later. You know, after the game, after you've kind of settled down from the up or the down of the outcome of the game, and just watch it. And tell me if you're proud of yourself.

10:05 Tell me if you would like to show your grandkids this video. So if there was nothing else surviving about you, and you know your grandkids are trying to learn about who granddad was, and this was a video that he showed, would they be proud of you? Would they think you were a lunatic?

10:20 So just think about that. Think about if somebody was sitting there watching you, if a kid that you were mentoring, or maybe it's your son or your daughter, do you really want them to look at you and be like, man, my dad just he loves sports.

10:33 That's what defines who he is. That's what defines every night. So number 13, don't let sports ruin your night.

10:40 So obviously that's kind of a gut check for some of you guys, and it was certainly a gut check for a lot of people that listen to this, but to be honest, just to see even follow up on a point that I made earlier this year.

10:49 This is probably the biggest point of maturity for me in my early 30s. I just turned 33 this year. But I mean, not that long ago, I was letting sports literally dictate whether or not I was going to talk to my family, whether or not I was going to talk to my friends.

11:02 Whether or not I was going to flip out on social media or something like that, which, you know, I haven't really done that since my maybe mid 20s or something like that.

11:10 But I just let sports have this tremendous amount of power over me personally. And there wasn't like a thing that happened, right? Because sometimes when people make a big change in their life, it's because something happened, right?

11:22 So they really stopped drinking because, you know, they basically got arrested for DUI. And it's like, oh, I guess I should get my drinking under control, or your wife catches you looking at porn. You're like, oh, gosh, I guess I should probably get that under control.

11:34 It's a different situation for everybody. But for me, this was just basically this growing sense of foreboding around me as like, do I want to be that guy?

11:43 Do I want to be that guy that gets that out over his skis about sports? And so for me, I made the decision to make some changes in my life to adjust that.

11:53 So for me, some of the things that I did is baseball is a perfect example because there's 162 regular season games.

12:00 And then in order to win the World Series, if you win your division, you have to win 11 games. You have to win the DS, which is three games, the CS, which is four games in the World Series, which is another four games.

12:09 If you have a wildcard game that adds one, and if you had a play in game, that adds one as well. But there are basically 170 plus opportunities for you to absolutely lose your mind in a good or bad way throughout the season.

12:22 That's a lot. That's like a lot, a lot, right? I mean, that's way more than basketball. That's 82 games, way more than football with 16 games or college football with, you know, was that 12, 13 games spinning upon.

12:32 If you're in the playoff, like, it's, it's a lot of opportunities to lose your mind. And so one thing that I stopped doing is I stopped watching the Cardinals games every single night.

12:42 Now, at some point during the evening, the Cardinals game is on, but it's probably on in the background. I might be working on a podcast. I might be reading a book.

12:49 I might be doing something else, but it's just kind of on, but I'm not living and dying with every pitch because that's the other thing.

12:55 It's 170 plus games if you make it all the way through the World Series, but it's thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pitches and at bats and opportunities to.

13:06 Oh, what a bad call. Oh, how could you not swing at that? Like, what is wrong with you? There's so many opportunities. So I just had to take myself away.

13:15 Now, for some of you, you're like, that's a little bit extreme. Don't you really like baseball? You say you like baseball. You say like the Cardinals. Why wouldn't you just watch?

13:21 For me, I looked at it like my personal character, my relationship with the people around me that are around me the most while I'm watching sports is worth infinitely more than me watching every single pitch of this game so that I could break it down in my brain later

13:35 and talk to literally no one about it, right? But the whole reason that I had to make these changes is because sports had a tremendous amount of power over me.

13:45 And it still has this pull where there are times when I get pulled back in this last weekend, when it looked like the Cardinals were going to blow a three-game lead with one week's worth of games left to play and have the Brewers come back and win the division, I could feel it creeping up.

13:59 I could feel like creeping up for my gut. This like literal, this guttural like just anger and frustration and darkness. And I just had to push it away. I just had to push it away. I just had to get it away for me.

14:13 But I asked the question of myself, and this is a question I want to post to you, that sports has such a tremendous amount of power over us. But why?

14:22 Why does sports have this amount of power in control over us, right? So I started doing a little bit of research. And here's the thing, the first place that I went was kind of looking at different scientific theories because no matter what type of weird thing that you're into or whatever your interest lies in,

14:39 there's probably been a scientist or a group of scientists that have studied that. But here's the thing about scientific theories about fandom is there aren't really any scientific theories.

14:52 There's really not. I mean, I looked. There's really an overall lack of evidence in terms of scientific theories for why we like sports so much, why it has so much power over us.

15:04 I was able to get to something that even resembled a scientific theory is there is the leading sports fan psychologist in North America. It's a guy named Daniel Juan.

15:13 And so in this saying that he's a leading sports fan psychologist is not saying much because there's not a whole lot of people that are looking at this. Like literally, there was an article I read where he was at a conference and he's like the leading guy of like two dozen people that are there.

15:27 And so that's that's the participants. And that's also the panelists, right? There are a couple of dozen people that were looking at this, which for his biggest sports is and as you know, it's worth literally billions and billions of dollars of all these different sports agencies

15:39 and things that you're going to watch. It's kind of interesting that there's not more people that are studying this. But what Daniel Juan was able to do is he was able to reduce how we function in terms of sports and our attachment to them into eight different motivations.

15:54 Eight different motivations. And I thought this was good. So the first motivation is that people like sports because they get self esteem benefits from it, which is pretty obvious, right? Because if you're a New England Patriots fan, you had a pretty good last 15 years, right?

16:10 You've got a lot of championships. Most people think that your quarterback is the goat. It's just kind of one of those things. When your team wins, you feel good.

16:18 Whether you're on the team or not, because again, there's there's two sides of this. This is you playing for the team. This is, you know, maybe this is a former team of yours that you still support. But then there's also the fact that you don't have no attachment to this team at all.

16:31 You're just a fan. Even if you're wouldn't consider yourself a fan, but like right before the fight starts, you say, I want to go with that guy because I like his tattoos better or whatever, right?

16:40 You just get this little boost of self esteem if they win. So that's a really good motivation for you. The second motivation is that people like sports because they have money on it.

16:50 So this is pretty obvious that sports is not something that I've ever bet on. Like, I don't really gamble when it comes to sports or things like that. There's just too many things up in the air.

16:59 But guys, I mean, there's a lot of people that, you know, there's kind of an in-between area between not betting on sports and betting on sports and its fantasy sports, right? Because how frustrated do you get when the guy that you just picked up gets hurt, right?

17:13 Or the guy that you claimed off the waiver wire and he's going to be the next big thing and all of a sudden he has like four bad games in a row and you're just like, man, I just, if this guy would have done this during this game, I could have won the league.

17:24 You start doing all those different things, but people get rabid about it. And that's another thing that I've had to adjust because I'm not a huge fan of fantasy football, but I do really like fantasy baseball because obviously I like baseball.

17:35 And the more I'm into fantasy, the more I know about certain teams and certain players in certain situations and those types of things. And for me, every time that I've played fan or just about every time I've played fantasy baseball, I've won. So it's another self esteem boost.

17:48 Oh man, I'm so smart. Look at me. I'm like a GM. I could be a GM, right? You know, it's kind of one of those things that you can vent yourself.

17:53 But it's like you have money on it. You have all this pride in self esteem writing on these people that have no attachment to you doing well at their chosen profession, which is a game that they get paid money to play, right?

18:06 But that's another motivation for people. The third motivation is this. People like sports because they're boyfriend or girlfriend or family member like sports.

18:13 So for a lot of you guys out there, you probably don't have the experience of getting into a team because your girlfriend like the team, it's probably the other way around.

18:20 But think about it from the familial aspect from from the family aspect, right? How many of you root for the same team your dad does?

18:28 Or look at the contrary, how many of you root for the team that is the rival of the one that your dad does, just to be a jerk, right? So your dad's a Yankees fan.

18:37 You're a red Sox fan. Your dad's a Texas fan. You're an OU fan. Like that's just kind of where you come from, right? That's kind of your paradigm.

18:44 But that's a motivation for people that gets them attached to sports because it attaches them to someone in their family unit or someone that they would call a loved one.

18:52 A fourth motivation that he points out is people like sports because it's exciting, which is like the most dust statement ever because there's not really a sport out there.

19:01 People watch curling, guys. I mean, think about that. Like people literally freak out about curling. Now, I guess it was at the men's team.

19:09 I think that won the Olympic gold medal in the Winter Olympics here recently or something like that. Like, I remember myself getting a little excited because the American team is going to win curling and they've like never won or something like that.

19:20 So, yes, it's absolutely exciting. That makes it a motivation. The other thing or this would be the fifth thing that Daniel Wan points out is that people like sports because it's aesthetically pleasing.

19:29 So aesthetically pleasing, what he's basically talking about is that it looks good, right? So you think about this way.

19:34 Probably the thing that I think about most when I think about aesthetics is something like action sports, right? So think motocross or, you know, big ramp type tricks and stuff like that or vert ramp stuff.

19:46 The thing about those is when those things are pulled off, they look incredibly smooth and you kind of get this sense like, oh, I could do that, which I think we've all been there.

19:56 You see someone do something on a motorcycle, you're like, ah, that's not hard.

19:59 And then you see someone crashing like, ah, what a dummy, what an idiot, right? Like, how come he didn't land that, right? How come he didn't catch that ball? How come he didn't hit that ball? Like whatever the situation might be.

20:08 But it's aesthetically pleasing. There's something as annoying as this person is, but when Steph Curry hits a three pointer, there's not much else in sports that looks as nice as that.

20:17 Right. My favorite swing in baseball right now, there's actually one from the right side of the plate and one from the left side from the right side of the plate. It's Miguel Cabrera because there's not a whole lot to it.

20:26 But he's built a Hall of Fame career on this very, very simple swing. And then on the other side of the plate, literally on the other side of the swing spectrum is Cody Bellinger, who's probably about to win the National League MVP award.

20:36 I mean, that guy gets every last ounce of power out of his very frail frame. Like, he's kind of reminds me of what Tim Lindscom was like whenever he was, you know, pitching at a sigh young level like Tim Lindscom doesn't have a body of a dominant ace type pitcher, you know, six, five, six, six, you know, incredibly powerful legs.

20:53 He's just this little scrawny guy that just was able to really light it up. But it's aesthetically pleasing when Cody Bellinger makes contact with the baseball, right?

21:02 And I remember a Prince Fielder back in the day was kind of one of those guys were such a violent swing. Right now, Vlad Guerrero Jr. such a violent swing, but whenever they make contact, it's just incredible.

21:13 It's something that's very, very pleasing to watch.

21:16 The sixth thing that Juan points out is this is that people like sports because, like the theater, it's a venue for emotional expression. Right? So the things that you can get away with at a sports arena or a sports field or something like that.

21:31 You can't get away with at the office.

21:34 And we'll talk a little bit more about this later, but you can't get away with that at a church either.

21:38 Like the jumping up and down, the ripping your shirt off, painting your chest and like going crazy and, you know, it's just, it's one of those deals where you just can't get away with that in normal everyday life.

21:49 So it's like a theater where no one's actually looking at you and determining whether or not your behavior is good or bad.

21:55 Now, there are the outliers, the people that will go to the Red Sox game at Finway wearing their Yankee stuff just because they want to get in a fistfight.

22:02 That's not what I'm talking about, but you can emotionally let loose.

22:06 That's why people like concerts as well.

22:08 I mean, you go crazy.

22:09 You're, you know, singing at the top of your lungs because there's a few hundred or a few thousand other people doing the exact same thing.

22:14 It allows you to express your emotions.

22:16 It's pretty cool for people.

22:17 The seventh motivation is this people like sports because they need an escape from real world troubles.

22:23 And now this starts getting into some kind of dicey areas where you see people that are really investing in something and it allows them to escape.

22:31 Which one thing that I've had to do for me personally is I've had to try to stay out of the, you know, make believe world in my mind.

22:38 Because when I think about what things could be or what I should have done back in the past, it kind of takes me away from what I'm doing right now.

22:45 But again, if you can just turn on the television and watch Monday night football, which I'm recording this on Monday, so there's Monday night football.

22:53 If you're stressed out about work, if you're stressed out about your kids, about your relationships, about school, about your, you know, about your business, about politics, you're concerned about Trump's impeachment, like all these different things.

23:06 You can just turn on the game and you can just unwind and you can just sit on the couch with a beer and some popcorn and just chill and just relax.

23:15 One thing that I like to do to relax, I like to watch fights, which I know it seems weird but it's just, it's just relaxing to me, right?

23:22 So it's just like I can just watch these fights and I can try to like piece together the things that I know about what they're doing and that's just really, really relaxing for me.

23:30 I like that and it helps me escape for a minute, right? So if I'm stressed out about something, I'll just turn on a fight, right?

23:36 I've got a lot of fights. I actually have like the top 25 fights in UFC history, you know, they're recorded on my DVR and things like that.

23:42 I'll just kind of go back and watch a fight real quick. So it allows you to escape.

23:46 And the last thing that Juan points out is this is that people like sports because it provides a sense of belonging, a connection to a wider world.

23:54 Okay. And this was when I really, when I read this list, I was like, okay, these last two making an escape from real world troubles and then, you know, provides a sense of belonging.

24:03 Now I feel like we're getting to the meat of the issue because the other things are, yeah, you know, sports are fun and they're aesthetically pleasing and, you know, you like the same team your dad does or whatever thing is like, that's kind of

24:12 done. Like I feel like those things are pretty, pretty straightforward in terms of all that. But I feel like we're getting into the world of psychology now, right? We're getting to some psychological theories. And so I did do a little bit of digging there.

24:24 And so I'm not sure there's been a whole lot of people that have kind of created this correlation. I'm not saying that I'm some sort of genius or anything like that.

24:30 I just don't think people really looked at this in terms of how it applies to sports. But I did look at a couple of psychological theories that I think apply here.

24:38 Okay. And the two are social identity theory. And the other is self categorization theory. Okay.

24:45 So the first one is social identity theory. And so this is basically defined as, you know, social identity is the portion of an individual self concept. You know how you see yourself derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.

25:00 Okay, a relevant social group. Because the thing is, is you're not going to try to self identify with a particular group that requires your membership, whether, you know, on paper or not on paper, if you don't feel like the group is relevant, right?

25:13 I mean, even just think about a simple, like you live in a house, I might be in a neighborhood that has an HOA. That is a relevant social group for you because your HOA can dictate how much you enjoy your neighborhood, how much you enjoy your yard, those different things.

25:26 And it's a perceived membership because you are a member of the HOA. You live in that neighborhood. You are ingrained in the things that are happening. You will be affected by the goings on to the HOA, regardless of whether or not you are an active member of it.

25:39 But again, you get a lot of your personal identity and it changes your self concept because you're perceiving that you're a member of a group. So how that applies to a team is if you have a favorite sports team in a favorite sports arena, right?

25:54 And I don't mean that, you know, colloquially, I mean, I mean, literally like the different arenas of sports, right? You feel a lot of attachment to that, right?

26:02 And when people feel attachment to something and it becomes part of their identity, then they get the swings. They get the up and down swings of good and bad.

26:10 There's also been research to suggest that people that their team loses, right? Immediately after the team's loss, right? The testosterone levels of those people on the losing team drops.

26:24 And the testosterone levels of the people on the other side, the winning team goes up.

26:28 There's an actual visceral physical attachment to winning and losing. And I think has a lot to do with the fact that we have identified with these things because they are a relevant social group for us.

26:39 And the other thing is self categorization theory, okay, which this basically describes the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people that includes themselves as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms.

26:53 And by the way, those two definitions I did pull off a Wikipedia and they do have, you know, different footnotes and things like that that brought that. But again, with self categorization, it's the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people, including themselves.

27:07 That's very important as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms. Now, these are both, you know, basically social science. And so this is going to look a lot at the haves and the have nots. But this is basically the we language, right?

27:20 So a person thinks that they and the other people around them are a group. And so they are self categorizing this group. Now, they're going to categorize as a group. So maybe the group will be, you know, Florida Gators fans, right? So, so that's the group.

27:34 But then one thing that you do as well as part of that is you're categorizing yourself as a good group or a bad group. And typically, if you're a fan of a particular team and then you are part of a group that is fans for that team, you're going to see yourself as good.

27:49 But at the same time, I doubt you would be able to find too many George Bulldogs fans that would say that you are part of the good group, right? That's part of the rivalry is part of us being on to opposite sides of the issue, right?

28:00 That Florida Georgia bat, right? It's whatever the situation might be. But there are consequences to that in terms of self categorization, because people can kind of float in and out of categories, right?

28:12 I mean, you have those people typically it happens with kids, but everybody knows with adults like you've got that person that's, you know, the bandwagon fan, right?

28:18 So you got people that hop on the bandwagon when the team's good and not when they're bad, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you had somebody that in the 90s, they were only wearing Chicago Bull stuff, and then they started wearing, you know, Los Angeles Laker stuff when they got Shaq.

28:29 And then all of a sudden, like later on down the road, they're wearing like Golden State Warrior stuff. It's just like, really dude? Like, it's like, we get it.

28:35 Like, we have pictures with you wearing your Bulls jersey. Like, well, what is the deal? Because those people are trying to find a group that they can identify with that they approve of.

28:45 Because they don't want to have the consequences of being on the other side. Because most, you know, losing teams, they don't have that lovable loser type of mantra. Like, that's something that the Cubs did for over 100 years.

28:57 That just kind of became a thing. And it was almost whenever they won the World Series, it was almost, it was almost an unfortunate thing, not just because, you know, I don't like them and I don't want them to win ever.

29:06 But it was unfortunate because these people didn't know how to identify. And it was like Cubs fans like in an instant went from, oh, we're the lovable losers. Let's play two to like, oh my gosh, we're entitled to this.

29:17 We're going to be a dynasty now. And you can kind of see the underpinnings of the fact that their team and the kind of their core group is falling apart.

29:24 It looks like, you know, they're going to fire their manager, Joe Madden. And so it's kind of one of those deals that actually did come out that he is going to be fired.

29:30 But anyway, I'm kind of getting out into other subject matters. But the thing about it is is psychologically, there's a tremendous amount of attachment that we get our social identity, and we like to self categorize into these groups.

29:41 And that affects how that how we look at sports. And it also affects how we how we communicate.

29:46 Because one thing I think is really interesting that I've caught myself on and I really noticed in a lot and other people is the we language, right.

29:54 We did this. Our team is doing that. And so, so the funniest way that I see this a lot here being in Oklahoma is people talking about the OU Sooners, and they say the word we.

30:05 Okay.

30:06 And the majority of those people didn't go to school there.

30:09 So there was never a we anywhere in there. They were never enrolled. They never went to a class. There's no attachment to them to the University of Oklahoma, aside from the shirt they bought at Walmart.

30:20 Right. There's there's no attachment whatsoever to that team. But it's always weak.

30:25 If they're winning.

30:27 So right now it's man, our team looks so good. Man, we just marched that ball up and down the field. Man, we're getting quarterbacks left and right.

30:36 We might get a third Heisman in a row. We're the best team in the country boom or sooner. Like, it's the we language. However, when the team does poorly, isn't it interesting how it always becomes they?

30:50 Man, they just don't know what they're doing. Gosh darn it. Gosh, this defense, they just they just need to get their heads out of their rear ends.

30:56 You know what? Like, they just need to fire that coach. You know, if they would just fire that coach, it would be a lot better for everybody.

31:03 Right. Isn't that interesting? And I'm not just picking on OU fans. That's everybody. That's me included.

31:08 I've done that with the St. Louis Cardinals. Now it's a little bit different. You can't go to the University of St. Louis Cardinals, right? You can't do that type of thing.

31:15 But I even noticed in myself a lot of times when I was even more ingrained in St. Louis Cardinals and in major league baseball and those types of things and even a former job where I had to be attached to that kind of stuff.

31:24 It was we language when we were doing well and it was they language when things were going poorly. And that attaches to psychology, right? Because it's a self-defense mechanism when you're trying to distance yourself from the category that you've already opted into, right?

31:38 And I know I'm getting a little bit into the weeds for some of you guys, but it's deeper than just I like this team or I like this player. It's much, much deeper than that.

31:46 Okay. But there was a really great quote from an article by Eric Simmons. And so I'll leave this article here at the end of this podcast so you can go to the show notes and find it.

31:55 But the article is called what science can tell sports writers about why we love sports. So obviously this is someone who is writing to other sports writers because he wants them to understand like, hey, hey, in your area.

32:05 If you're a beat writer for, you know, a division three football team or if you're a beat writer for the New York Yankees, then why do people just freak out over sports? Like, what's the deal?

32:15 So there's a really cool quote from that that I want to go ahead and give you here. It's just a couple little paragraphs. So here we go.

32:21 We know one thing definitively sports fans are people. They are subject to all the quirks and frailties of human nature.

32:28 There is no sports watching part of the brain. So what the brain does confronted with the thing thing running around in front of it is resort to what it knows.

32:37 One of those quirks may be my favorite is that the barrier between the self and the outside world is much less defined than it seems.

32:44 Studies of people in close relationships show that the brain is reliably confused about whether achievements or characteristics belong to the body it inhabits or to another person it is in relationship with.

32:55 There is reason to believe that watching sports engages this connection. We connect to our teams to the players on our teams to the other fans of our teams.

33:06 We bask in reflected glory because there is some actual point of contact at the neutral level or sorry at the neural level between a team's performance and our own self esteem.

33:18 So again, a lot of our self esteem is attached to whether or not our player, our team, our city, whatever is going well. I mean, look at right now.

33:25 If you are from Boston, like actually from Boston, the number of championships that they've won in the last couple of decades is astounding.

33:33 I mean, you've got the Red Sox, you got the Patriots, you got the Celtics, you got the Bruins, they're just winning championships.

33:40 And that was kind of a hard luck, you know, sports city for a long time. And now it's just like, okay, basically Philly, that's your hard luck sports franchise. They did win a Super Bowl. But again, woof, they've got a lot of teams that are just leaving a lot to be desired, right?

33:53 So those are some of the more psychological theories. And guys, to be honest, I looked at scientific and I looked at psychological theories.

33:59 There's really one other theory that is a little bit more sociological. And it's basically, but the thing about it was is there was nothing really undergirding this. There's no real evidence for this, but I thought it sounded good enough.

34:10 But it's basically the theory that sports and you're a fan of the blue team and they're a fan of the red team is it's allowing us to go to war without actually killing each other.

34:20 Right. So it's people that are making this assumption that we have this innate desire to want to affect things and people and other people groups in this us versus them type of mentality.

34:32 And sports allows us to do that. So as opposed to us going over the hill and trying to kill our neighbor, we can just let our neighbor be an Oklahoma State fan and we can be an OU fan.

34:42 Right. Again, I keep using terms that are, you know, good for the audience here in Oklahoma. But yeah, I mean, you get the idea. Like you, you, on one side, you got the San Francisco Giants family, other side, you got the Dodgers fans on one side, you got the Chelsea fans on the other side, you got the Manchester United fans.

34:54 You get what I'm saying. Right. But it allows us to go to war without actually getting our hands dirty, which if this person is true again, there's not a lot of evidence saying that this person knows what they're talking about.

35:05 But wouldn't you prefer that? Like I would much rather fans get mad over whether or not their team loss and not do anything about it, then to actually get in fights like I've seen a lot of videos of, you know, especially at Red Sox and Yankees games of people getting in these, these horrible fist fights.

35:20 You've heard about these different crews over with European soccer, especially in England, where each of the, each of the teams kind of has a gang for lack of a better word that, you know, basically they'll go around, they'll actually fight the rival gang of the rival team

35:34 right like it's so much deeper than what people realize. It's not just about, you know, wins and losses. It's not just about, you know, winning two nil. It's, it goes deeper than that. It's this deep, deep sense of desire.

35:46 Right.

35:47 So I say all that to say that there's something that we need to reckon with as Christians, right, as Christian men. And I'm assuming that at this point, if you're still listening to this podcast is because you're interested because you're still a sports fan, that you're a sports fan, you're not into other things.

36:00 So this is something that's important for you. Okay. But the truth of the matter is, guys, is that we worship at the altar of sports. We absolutely worship at the altar of sports. Right.

36:12 Whether it's the sports that we play, the sports that we played, I know a lot of you guys out there, you're still living in your past glory. Right.

36:21 That time you hit a home run when you're in high school, that that time that you scored the winning touchdown at a state game, the time that you won the wrestling meet, you know, it was down to the last couple of seconds and you got to take down.

36:30 We all live through that. And part of it is because those are fond memories that we have. That was a lot of fun that we have. But we're still kind of worshiping at the altar of who we were playing that sport.

36:40 But it goes so, so deep for us that it creates a lot of dangerous areas for us. There's a lot of things that we're going to have to reckon with because we're worshiping at the altar of sports.

36:50 And we've let it infect so many different areas of our lives.

36:54 So it's not just us, what we played and what we did. It's the teams that we like in their history and their future and the players, they're going to pick up and the coach that they're going to hire or fire. Right.

37:03 We're so desperate to be ingrained in all those different things. But there are dangers here and the dangers of worship being at the altar of sports.

37:10 There was four main ones that I kind of threw out. But the first one is that it alters our relationship with reality.

37:17 Right. So if we go back up to to what Daniel Wan was saying is that, you know, people like sports because they need an escape from real world troubles.

37:24 It alters our relationship with reality guys. Because the thing is, is we think there is a true connection there for us.

37:30 We think there's a true connection. I remember this. I was 18 or 19. I think it was 19 years old. I was in college.

37:37 And I was part of this group that, you know, we were on the sidelines and, you know, we would, you know, run up and down the field and we would, you know, try to get the fans into the game and run flags and do all that kind of stuff.

37:46 Like just, just try to get kids pumped up for, you know, our college football team. And I don't remember saying this.

37:53 So fair warning on that. But my wife absolutely remembers me saying this because we were dating at the time.

37:58 We lost the game on Saturday night. This is a specially closed game. And, you know, we're getting a burger afterwards. And I'm just like, I'm in console.

38:05 Right. Because my college football team didn't get the victory. Whatever the situation was.

38:09 And she remembers me saying if we had just cheered louder, you know, if we had just been able to get, you know, the fans to, to, you know, scream more on third down.

38:19 Like, you know, we might have won the game. And she was like, she's 18. And she's like, who is this moron? Like, what is he doing?

38:26 But at the time, again, being 19 years old and not proud of it. But I thought that that was real.

38:32 I thought that if, you know, somehow I could white knuckle and cheer louder and like, you know, get that fan in the front row to say a little bit something louder, that that would have altered the outcome of the game.

38:43 And yeah, you could go all butterfly affecting on stuff like that. But look, I wasn't calling the plays.

38:48 I also didn't have shoulder pads and a helmet on. I wasn't going to alter the outcome of the game in any way. But a lot of us do that, don't we?

38:56 And we call it superstition. Oh, no, I sit in this chair wearing these socks in this undershirt that I haven't cleaned since the last time my team won a game.

39:04 Now, whenever I played baseball, I was very superstitious. It's very superstitious. If I was on a hot hitting streak, I didn't wash my socks.

39:11 It was just kind of a weird thing that I did. But did that change reality? No, that's, that's where I get a get on a lot of people that are like, oh, just think positively and do all this other different things.

39:21 It's like the world is broken. So whether or not you're thinking positively about how something's going to come out doesn't change whether or not it's going to come out properly or in the way that you prefer.

39:31 But again, that when we worship at the altar of sports, we're altering our relationship with reality and it alters all the other relationships in our life.

39:39 And the second danger of worshiping at the altar of sports connects to that. And that's this, we're teaching our kids to worship too.

39:47 We are teaching our kids to worship in the way that we worship. It goes back up to what we were talking about earlier when you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a family member, significant other that's into a particular team or a particular player.

39:59 You all of a sudden want to do that. And I've seen a lot of friends of mine, right? In a myriad of different contexts. So if you think I'm talking about you, I may or may not be talking about you to my friends that are listening to this.

40:10 But I've seen people absolutely lose their minds in positive and negative ways. And you're just like I said on the podcast 56. I've seen it a ton of different ways with their kids around.

40:23 And their kids are watching mom and dad and sometimes I see the kids look at mom and dad like, man, what are you doing? Right there? They're like eight.

40:31 And they're like, gosh, mom, can you like chill chill out? You're like screaming at the television. What are you doing? But then I also see children that look at mom and dad, and then they start to freak out.

40:42 Right. And when the team's doing well, it's cute. Right. When the kid gets up and starts going, whoo, you know, going crazy. Like, it's like, oh, yeah, that's kind of cute. Like, oh, look at them. They're going crazy.

40:52 But it's worse on the other side when the team's not doing well and they're the one kicking the chair. They're the one throwing crap in the yard. They're the one punching a wall.

41:01 And then you're trying to parent, but you're also not self regulating. So it's like you don't really have a leg to stand on it. It's really, really awkward for you. Right.

41:11 But we're also teaching them to look at sports as if it's something that that is worth our worship. So I saw a video here recently was within the last week. I'll try to find it and put it here in the show notes.

41:22 But Aaron judge. Right. So I cannot stay in the Yankees because I'm a good American. So I hate the Yankees. Right. But Aaron judge, you can't hate that guy.

41:30 I mean, he looks like he's, you know, basically cut out of a slab of marble, an incredibly impressive ball player, but in more impressive person. Like this guy is so nice.

41:40 Every opportunity he's given to talk trash about another player in interview. He doesn't do that. I mean, he is the real deal. Like that guy almost makes me want to have part of my brain removed so that I could be a Yankees fan, but I just can't get there.

41:53 I can't get to my core, get to that point. But the point I'm trying to make here, as I saw this video, that it's before game during batting practice or whatever. And Aaron judge is on the field. And so you've got mom and dad there and then you got a couple of kids.

42:05 And so the daughter is probably eight or nine years old. The son was probably maybe 10 or 11. You know, they're somewhere right in there, right? They're not quite teenagers yet, but they're they're not in diapers. Okay.

42:15 And so Aaron judge is kind of talking to him. And then you see Aaron judge hand. I think it was one of his batting gloves to the boy and one to the girl or maybe handed them both to the girls or something like that. And so the mom, the mom kind of lights up and she's so excited, which is fine.

42:30 But the girl crumbles to the ground.

42:34 And she's in tears because she's so overwhelmed with emotion.

42:40 And then the son turns to his dad and he buries his head and his dad's stomach and he's crying. He's overwhelmed with emotion because a baseball player gave them batting gloves.

42:59 Now, I'm not getting on to the kids, right? Because kids don't know how to regulate their emotions. They're freaking kids. Those kids are, you know, 18 years away from their brains being fully developed like they don't have the pleasure centers of their brain.

43:09 Under regulation, certainly not self regulation.

43:13 But I watched that video and I didn't think it was cute. I thought it was sad.

43:18 I thought this is a this is a good dude. This is one of the literally one of the best dudes in major league baseball as far as we can tell, but he gave them a gift and these kids just crumbled.

43:28 And there was a big part of me that thought that's the parents.

43:33 The parents are, you know, they're big Yankees fans and they're going crazy and they're going, they're going out of their way, but they basically just taught their kids to worship at the altar of Aaron Judge, which isn't Aaron Judge's fault.

43:46 He's a six foot seven free beast who can hit a ball almost 500 feet. I mean, he's just doing his job.

43:52 And he's given away his batting gloves and he's signing autographs and that's what he should be doing, right?

43:56 We always get on these professional athletes when they don't do those things and make some look like a jerk.

44:00 But the thing about it was is I was very, very sad for these kids.

44:04 And I was hoping because you will never see these kids again in any type of important context, probably. We probably won't be able to draw that connection.

44:11 But that's that's what these kids might be known for is the kids that were crying over getting some batting gloves and things like that.

44:17 But the overall point again, because I'm not getting on to the kids is, man, these kids, I wonder if they do the same thing with one of their favorite teachers who gives them a good grade on a test.

44:27 Or a family member that's helping them with something.

44:30 It's we're building up these sports stars as these idols, right?

44:35 We're building them up and I don't want to get out ahead of myself.

44:38 So I want to get into my third danger that I want to say for worshiping at the altar of sports and it's this.

44:43 It actively displays our priorities, right?

44:47 Because it's pretty easy to see when sports is more important than your family.

44:51 Sports was more important than your job. Sports is more important than God, right?

44:54 So with your family, how many times have you, you know, said something along the lines of, hey, hey, hey, hey, you know, I'll hang out with my family, but, you know, we're right in the thick of it right now.

45:04 Like we're in the playoff hunt, right?

45:06 Or, yeah, yeah, I know I should probably get this last report done for work, but, you know, the game zone right now.

45:13 And, you know, we're in the bottom of the ninth and we really need this game because, you know, it's July 15th.

45:18 And gosh, if we don't get this game, the entire franchise is going to fold, right?

45:21 You know, I'll do that later. Hey, you know what? I would go to church, but, you know, gosh, you know, I just got to prepare for my fantasy team or what the situation might be.

45:31 But here's the other thing.

45:33 Think about the last time you lost your mind in a sporting event, right?

45:36 Whether you're watching at home or whether you were in the arena or by the field or whatever the thing was.

45:41 And then also think about your reaction or the reaction of your friends.

45:44 The last time you heard about somebody that accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior.

45:48 Think about that. That's one thing that's always bothered me.

45:52 I think a pastor preached a sermon 20 years ago, and I just remember that one part, which is like, you know, when somebody accepts Jesus, right?

45:59 When they raise their hand or come down to the altar or whatever your church does, you know, there's kind of a, oh man, that's just so nice.

46:07 That's just, oh my gosh, that's really good for him.

46:09 That's really, you know, it's kind of just like, yeah, whatever.

46:12 But when it's your team or when it's something crazy that happens in sports, it's just over the top reaction.

46:18 Couldn't be louder, couldn't be more insane, right?

46:20 You're running up and down the streets with your shirt off.

46:22 I've done that before.

46:23 But it's just kind of one of those things where it's just like, we're actively displaying what we think is important.

46:27 Because we don't ever freak out about things that our families accomplish or things that go well for us or our coworkers.

46:35 And I certainly haven't seen anybody like lose their minds and go crazy when someone accepts Christ and basically protects their souls for all eternity.

46:44 Because that's not a priority to us.

46:46 Sports is.

46:47 And the fourth thing here is like, obviously, you know where this was going.

46:50 The fourth danger is that we're making a positive thing in idle.

46:53 Because the thing you might be getting here is that I'm going to tell you at some point, you need to stop watching sports as a devil.

46:58 That's not what it is.

46:59 I think sports is a very positive thing.

47:00 I think it's a blessing.

47:01 But there's scripture about idle worship, right?

47:04 I mean, and you guys know these.

47:05 So Exodus 20 verse three, this is God talking to Moses.

47:08 You shall have no gods before me, right?

47:10 That's the first commandment.

47:11 You should have no gods before me.

47:13 And that's backed up in Matthew four.

47:15 When we see Jesus talking about this whenever, you know, it's kind of the area where Jesus was being tempted by the devil and then it's then Jesus said to him.

47:21 Be gone Satan for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

47:27 And that's the same, the thing that we see in Luke four.

47:29 But the thing about it is that we're making sports and idle and it doesn't have to be that way.

47:34 It absolutely doesn't have to be that way.

47:36 But at this point, I want to kind of help you because some of you, I mean, some guys, we have a tendency to be a little bit dense and you know, I get it.

47:44 But I want to kind of help you understand and help you see whether or not you're worshiping at the altar of sports.

47:50 So I created a list of things that if this is you, perhaps this is something that you should be thinking through.

47:55 Okay.

47:55 So number one.

47:56 Your mood is still affected the day after the game.

47:59 If that's true, you might be worshiping at the altar of sports.

48:03 Another thing, you often tell your family to wait while you watch this play or this ending or this quarter or this fight.

48:11 If that's the case, if you do that a lot, you might be worshiping at the altar of sports.

48:15 If it's difficult for you to keep from looking at your phone for sports updates any day of the week, probably for a lot of you guys, especially on Saturdays and Sundays during football season.

48:24 You might be worshiping at the altar of sports.

48:27 Guys, if you're looking forward to just sitting down and watching the game over being with your family and that's kind of a regular thought inside your brain.

48:36 You might be worshiping at the altar of sports.

48:38 Guys, if you've skipped church more than once because you've stayed up too late watching sports the night before or because you need to keep your Sunday morning clear so you can get ready to watch sports or so that you can set your fantasy lineup.

48:52 You might be worshiping at the altar of sports.

48:55 And the last one I went throughout here is if you spend more time researching stats and players for your fantasy roster or just in general, then you do reading the Bible, the word of God, you might be worshiping at the altar of sports.

49:10 So again, if you checked any of those boxes or multiple of those boxes, you need to really, really think through that.

49:16 Guys, here's the deal. At this point, I want to tell you what the point is not. Okay. Again, the point of this podcast is not to make you feel bad for being a sports fan.

49:25 I will be a sports fan until the day that I die at varying levels for varying different sports at different times. Again, I used to be into the NFL way more several years ago, but right now I'm more so into MMA.

49:36 Right? It's probably always going to be MMA or MMA and baseball for me, right? But I really like college football and I'll watch sports here and there and I'm just into different things.

49:45 I'm not trying to make you feel bad for being a sports fan. That's not what I'm trying to do. Also, what I'm not trying to do is to convince you that you need to stop watching or enjoying sports.

49:52 Right? Because I think it's a positive thing. I absolutely think it's a positive thing. And the other thing I'm not trying to say is I'm not trying to get you to believe that your life is a zero sum game where you have to choose between sports and everything else that's important.

50:05 I don't think that that's true. I think that some of us treated that way, but I don't think that that's true. So let me be clear about what the point is of this podcast. The point is sports can be a blessing.

50:20 Just keep your priority straight. That's it. I spent 50 minutes trying to convince you that sports is a blessing, which you probably already knew that, but keep your priority straight.

50:32 And the thing about it guys is you know this. You know this in your heart. You've had those moments of angst over sports.

50:39 I've literally watched my favorite team lose a World Series game and I could barely function at work the next day.

50:47 The people I worked with were avoiding me because I was just gruff and looking down and when someone had a question, I would just be very curt and very short.

50:56 I felt that I've been that person, right? And I'm not saying I'm better than you because I've matured past it. I still get that angst. I just talked about it earlier.

51:05 It just kind of like works its way up to my soul. It's just kind of how it goes. But guys, this is a great month to practice this.

51:13 If you're listening to this on time, October of 2018, practice this. If you feel yourself getting a little heated during the big game, turn it off. Turn it off.

51:26 Now, you might turn it off and come back to it 10 minutes later. You've kind of reset. You've recharged. Your team still sucks. Your team's still good.

51:33 Whatever the situation is when you turn the TV back on, but you at least got away from it for a second. You self-regulated.

51:39 If you think it's going to be especially bad, turn it off and don't turn it back on.

51:43 Go for a walk. Go work out. Go hang out with your family. Walk the dog to do something.

51:49 But just think about it because it's very important. And I know for a lot of you guys, the overwhelming majority of my listeners, sports is an important part of your life.

51:57 And I think it should be. But when it gets into all the other crevices of your life, it can be a really, really bad thing. I want you to avoid that.

52:05 All right, guys, for let you go, we're going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now, we are men's ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience.

52:11 Specifically, we do that by providing content like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual, mental and physical toughness. So for today, I've got a few resources for you.

52:19 So I've got that video. I was able to find that video of the Aaron Judge batting gloves gift reaction. So it's just like a 15, 20 second little video.

52:26 So you can kind of see what I was talking about. But then a couple of articles that I was able to pull some interesting information from.

52:31 So I made mention of this one. What science can tell sports writers about why we love sports. And the other one is this is your brain on sports.

52:37 So this is a Grantland article. So Grantland's not really a thing anymore. But, you know, for a lot of you guys, you'll recognize that website.

52:44 But this is a very, very in depth kind of brain science article on a sports platform that kind of talks about what happens in our brains and kind of around our brains, the different synapses and all that nonsense or, you know, whatever, while we're watching sports and kind of what that does and how that connects.

52:59 I didn't want to bring a lot of that into the podcast today, because to be honest with you, I don't fully understand it. So if I don't fully understand it, I didn't want to kind of throw it out to you, but I think we were able to make it happen regardless.

53:08 So appreciate you guys. Thanks again for listening to the podcast. We really do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media.

53:19 Guys, if we deserve a five star review, please leave us one. Take a few minutes, leave us a few sentences, letting us know why you like the content. I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2019 in the beginning of 2020.

53:31 So if you want me to speak on your podcast at your men's event, at your conference to your team, whatever, hit me up info at undaunted.life. Again, the email is info@undaunted.life.

53:41 The website is www.undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @undauntedlife or Facebook.com/undauntedlife. Check out our free Diversionals on the YouVersion Bible app. Just search "undaunted life" under plans, and as always, we want to thank the band, August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their entire music library for our content.

53:59 The intro outro track on this podcast is our song "King of Sorrow," which is off their latest record entitled "Phantom Anthem." The links to all of this are in the description.

54:07 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.