Editor’s Report John Woods

Whether or not you are a football fan, the sport has gotten a lot of attention in our area, especially since the Giants went on a late-season hot streak that has left them one win from a Super Bowl championship.

And in the two seasons before this one, the Jets reached their conference championship game. So, no matter which home team you root for, New Yorkers have had their share to cheer about recently.

That fact was brought home to me earlier this month as I rode on a train to the city for a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was the Sunday after Cardinal-designate Dolan had received news of his upcoming elevation. The train pulled in at a few minutes after 9 a.m. and I grabbed an empty seat right in the middle of a sea of Giants jerseys. They were obviously on their way to the day’s wildcard playoff game against the Falcons.

I figured it wasn’t going to be a quiet ride, and my fellow travelers didn’t disappoint me. Two groups of guys were spread over the seats in my immediate area. During the 40-minute ride, they shared information on a series of football-related topics, including: where they would be sitting that day; what they thought of the Giants’ chances; and what family dinners were like in their homes when relatives who favor the Jets were at the table.

The conversation continued pretty much nonstop for the whole trip. As far as I know, these two sets of young men didn’t know each other before the trip began. But that didn’t stop them from talking a little strategy and sharing the love of their team with each other.

When the train pulled into the station, I noticed that most of the people disembarking where wearing Giants gear, either a cap, a jacket or a jersey, with the most popular of those bearing quarterback Eli Manning’s No. 10.

The great majority were young guys in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and almost all were on the way to watch the Giants play that day.

It didn’t escape me that all this fan movement was taking place on a Sunday morning. If your parish church is anything like mine, I’ll bet that you see many more women than men in the pews. That’s just a given fact of Church life.

Now, I’m not blaming the lack of men at Mass on professional football. What I am saying is that football has inspired the type of devotion in a male audience that is missing, at least in part, from the Church.

These young men, or least a lot of them, have found their community in sports. Before you dismiss me, consider this: the National Football League is a multibillion-dollar business that provides millions of fans with world-class athletes performing at amazing venues over a 16-game season that inspires fan loyalty like no other sporting enterprise around.

So, what does all that have to do with the Church?

Well, I would argue that the Church does have a bridge to many of those young men. How hard would it be to set up some chairs after the last morning Mass and invite the guys (and gals, too) to stick around to watch the Giants or Jets game on television at the parish center or in the church basement. They could each kick in a few bucks for pizza and soda.

I’ll bet a few Knights of Columbus councils or CYO groups have already tried something like this. One successful example was when St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral invited young people from their lower Manhattan neighborhood to watch World Cup soccer on an outdoor TV screen on parish grounds the summer before last.

Relationships have to start with a point of shared interest. Football may not seem like such a logical common denominator, but I’m sure a lot of the fans wearing Giants and Jets jerseys on game days are Catholics.

Who knows? They just might be looking for a great place to watch the Super Bowl.