“Him” & the Underbelly of Pro Football

What a gruesome film reveals about devotion, damage, and the business of football

Image via Adobe Stock (Edited by author)

Vince Lombardi once said, “There are three things important to every man in this locker room. His God, his family, and the Green Bay Packers. In that order.” The line celebrates players’ devotion to the team, but even that comes after faith and family. More than other sports, there is a feeling of close proximity to faith in football. The violence of the sport and elevated risk of injury automatically lends itself to a sense of mortality, and in turn makes the belief in God and theology make more sense.

Football itself, in turn, has taken its own belief system characteristics that make it feel like a cult of sorts. Like other religions there are the overarching themes that become gospel to its followers, but there is also an underbelly that gets swept under the rug, a reality that we tend to avoid talking about to justify our love for this game that we watch every week. The film “Him” from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions attempts to pull back the curtain on the more unsavory elements of professional football. It is a brutal and violent depiction of an equally brutal and violent game that has polarized viewers, but behind the imagery and gore there are lessons to be learned about the gridiron sermons that we absorb every Sunday.