Brady, Manning worshippers: Football is our religion, Tebow. Don't mess with it.

Sunday, as Al Roker likes to say, is ”Football Day in America.”  It’s our national Sabbath.

Football brings people together. A Wall Street banker prays for a touchdown just as fervently as the construction worker standing next to him. And when it happens, they rejoice together. The 1 percent and the 99 percent.

Your denomination might be Giants or Patriots, but underneath the face paint, all fans are essentially the same. They practice the same type of game-day rituals: wearing the right colors or a special pair of socks, eating the same foods, watching the game at the same place. They believe the same things: that miracles can happen, that their voice can change the outcome of a game, that it’s not over till the Fat Lady sings. 

The game also has Saints (they play in New Orleans) and dark forces of evil (the Oakland Raiders or your team’s arch rival) and Hail Mary passes and The Immaculate Reception (for you religious historians, it happened 40 years ago) and The Gospel (“A winner never quits and a quitter never wins”) and redemption (see Michael Vick) and acts of kindness (The NFL gives millions to charities) and blind faith (see Cleveland Browns fans) and ecstasy (which awaits either the fans of the Giants or Patriots February 5th).

I have seen men who didn’t cry at their mother’s funeral cry at the end of a particularly brutal last-second loss. And I’ve cried with them. Football, like religion, contains rituals for grief and provides opportunities to celebrate joy. 

But football does something even more powerful than religion, something we desperately crave in today’s America: It brings people together. It levels the playing field in a way our tax system doesn’t. The richest fan is just as likely as the poorest fan to be ravaged or rewarded by the gods of football every Sunday. Intellect, personal taste, ethnicity – none of it matters on Sunday. All that matters is the purity of your pigskin faith.

There are no culture wars between fans. Only fierce rivalries. There are no blue fans and red fans. Just fans wearing red, blue, and gray uniforms (see Giants, Patriots). As football followers, we are all the 100 percent. And Tim Tebow’s proclamations of his religious faith are an unwelcome reminder that come Monday, we are all smaller percentages of different minorities. 

Jim Sollisch is creative director at Marcus Thomas Advertising.

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