Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I'm sure you were all riveted to your TV sets watching the Montreal Alouettes and the Saskatchewan Roughriders play on Sunday for the Grey Cup in the Canadian equivalent of the Super Bowl. I wasn't, actually, but I did catch a brief report on ESPN while flipping channels and I had to laugh about how the game ended - and what was said afterward.
It was apparently a great game, with Montreal kicking a game-winning field goal with no time left on the clock to take the championship. But the kicker got two shots at it. He missed the first one, but the other team had an extra man on the field so there was a 10 yard penalty and a rekick. He made the second won and there was much joy in Mudville.
Now here comes the ridiculous part. The Montreal kicker, Damon Duval, told a reporter after the game:
"The man upstairs gave me a second opportunity."
Really, Damon? God did that? How exactly did he do it? Did he tell the 12th guy to run on to the field so he could be humiliated on national television and be blamed for the loss by his teammates and the Saskatchewan fans? Because that's about the only way God could actually have caused it to happen. Perhaps you'd like to ask God why he hates that 12th man on the Roughriders so much.
Or better yet, ask yourself why you think you're so special that God went out of his way to humiliate another human being just to make sure you could win a game of football. Is that really what God spends his time doing, fixing the results of football games? Perhaps God had money on the game with a bookie and just wanted to cover the spread?
People say things like this without actually thinking through the logical implications of such a claim. They think it makes them look humble, passing on the credit to God, but in fact it does the exact opposite. It really means that you're so special that God intervenes in the world just to make sure good things happen to you (never mind that this also requires making bad things happen to other people).
And on the other side, what if that 12th guy on the other team was also praying for a win? What if he has faith in the same God and was hoping for intervention to help his team win? He'll rationalize away the result as well. And if the shoe was on the other foot, Duval would almost certainly not ascribe a loss to God's will, would he?
This God guy has a perfect gig. He gets all the credit and none of the blame - and all while doing absolutely nothing to deserve either one.
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You forgot to add that he is also asked to damn several things each day, too. So, all the credit, none of the blame, and all the damning he wants.
Posted by: Umlud | December 2, 2009 9:15 AM
I think you're missing the point Ed.
Montreal is predominantly Catholic, while Saskatoon is predominantly fundie protestant.
I think we have here incontrovertible proof that the men in skirts and funny hats had it right all along. God really does prefer them.
Posted by: Craig | December 2, 2009 9:24 AM
Not to be overly pedantic, but Canadian Rules Football is played with 12 players on a side. The extra guy was the 13th player.
Posted by: Kid Presentable | December 2, 2009 9:24 AM
In the CFL, 12 men is normal. There were 13 men on the field
Posted by: John | December 2, 2009 9:27 AM
Of course I had to get it wrong. The Roughriders are from Regina, not Saskatoon. Oh well, they're protestant fundies as well, so the Catholic god would hate them too.
Posted by: Craig | December 2, 2009 9:31 AM
Come on Ed. Obviously it wasn't the prayers of the kicker or dislike for the 13th man caused God to act. I’m sure the big guy just wanted to punish the Roughriders for naming their team after a condom. We all know how much God hates condoms.
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 2, 2009 9:38 AM
As a native of Montreal, I have no doubt at all that God is a fan of the Alouettes and the Canadiens. Unfortunately for the late-lamented Expos (now the still-terrible Washington Nationals) even HE couldn't help them.
Posted by: JusticeLeague | December 2, 2009 9:44 AM
[insert obligatory joke about similar misappropriation of credit during coitus]
I half-watched the game while doing other things. I'm not a huge fan of American football, but I much prefer the way the CFL does it. Three downs means more passing, which I find more exciting.
I thought the East Division semi-final, between the BC Lions (BC? East??) and my local team, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, was more exciting. The Ticats tied it up with a touchdown and two-point conversion in the last minute before losing in overtime.
Posted by: Adrian W. | December 2, 2009 9:46 AM
If god was such a fan of the team, how come they didn't win 56-0? - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | December 2, 2009 9:47 AM
@ JusticeLeague:
Except, apparently, during last night's game against the Leafs. Maybe He likes to keep it interesting by having the Habs get shut out by the worst defence in the league once in a while :P
Posted by: Adrian W. | December 2, 2009 9:51 AM
http://esask.uregina.ca/management/app/assets/img/enc2/PDF/Page-752.pdf
Here's the religious breakdown for Saskatchewan. From 1991-2001 the fastest growing group was "No Religion".
Posted by: JusticeLeague | December 2, 2009 9:54 AM
@Addrian - My wife asked me why everyone was chanting "Habs" during the last Montreal vs. Washington game and I could not tell her. Do you know why the Canadians are referred to as Habs? Doing a google search would be too easy, so I figured that I would ask a complete stranger.
Posted by: DPSisler | December 2, 2009 10:00 AM
@ DPSisler:
It's short for "Les Habitants". I don't know the history behind that, though.
Posted by: Adrian W. | December 2, 2009 10:12 AM
From Justice League's table:
Catholic - 305 thousand
Total Protestant - 452 thousand
3 biggest Protestant denominations, all non-fundamentalist - 331 thousand
No religion - 148 thousand
Saskatchewan is not predominately fundie, and I doubt Saskatoon or Regina is either.
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | December 2, 2009 10:17 AM
@DPSisler: It's short for Les Habitants.
You're welcome. :)
Posted by: Scott Simmons | December 2, 2009 10:20 AM
Sorry, that was actually to answer Adrian W.'s question. (smacks forehead).
Posted by: Scott Simmons | December 2, 2009 10:22 AM
Les habitants refers to the Quebecois (French Canadians), the original inhabitants of Quebec. Of course they aren't really the ORIGINAL inhabitants.
Posted by: JusticeLeague | December 2, 2009 10:24 AM
Adrian,
A habitant of Montreal would be Canadian. Hence, Les Habitants is functionally, albeit not linguistically, equivalent to Canadians. It's close enough for sports, anyway, where nicknames aren't always perfectly fixed.
For example, it took me years to figure out why the Pittsburgh Pirates were called the Bucs. And the University of Oregon nickname used to be the Webfoots, so the local newspaper took to calling them the Ducks. Then the school adopted Ducks as the nickname, and now the newspaper sometimes calls them the Webfoots. And in those two cases we don't even have different languages to blame as part of the "problem" (which in fact isn't a problem at all, but part of the delightfully rich texture of sports culture).
Posted by: James Hanley | December 2, 2009 10:24 AM
James Hanley- Sorry, but no. "Les habitants" refers specifically to Quebecois of French ancestry dating back prior to the British conquest in 1759. No Canadian of English, Pakistani, Italian, Greek, Chinese or any other ancestry would ever refer to themselves as one of "les habitants", though many cheer for the hockey team.
As far as fundametalists in Canada, there is nothing even remotely resembling the prevalence or influence of those south of the border. They are most prominent among new immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa (and there are a lot of Islamic fundamentalists as well). And don't be fooled by the numbers of "Catholics" in Quebec-the churches are largely empty and Quebecois, especially the young, have one of the lowest rates in the Catholic world of religious observance, as well as of marriage and child-bearing.
Posted by: JusticeLeague | December 2, 2009 10:42 AM
JusticeLeague,
I only said it was functionally equivalent for sports purposes. I know it refers only to French-Canadians in normal usage, and of course the team is located in Quebec. But the connection is still there--"Canadians" is the English language term, co-opted from 'Les Habitants." Sure, it would be more accurate, linguistically, to call the team the Montreal Quebecois (or, better for sports usage, albeit somewhat offensive, the Montreal Quebes), but that's not how it happened.
Posted by: James Hanley | December 2, 2009 10:47 AM
Makes sense. I'm glad the two soccer teams I support (Toronto FC and Liverpool FC) are simply called "The Reds", for obvious reasons.
Posted by: Adrian W. | December 2, 2009 10:49 AM
Posted by: James Hanley | December 2, 2009 11:01 AM
God was just making up for making the Alouettes laughing stocks in the past decade of Grey Cups where they come so close but lose pitifully.
Also: "Really, Damon? God did that? How exactly did he do it? Did he tell the 13th guy to run on to the field so he could be humiliated on national television and be blamed for the loss by his teammates and the Saskatchewan fans? Because that's about the only way God could actually have caused it to happen. Perhaps you'd like to ask God why he hates that 13th man on the Roughriders so much."
There, that's better.
Posted by: Reginald | December 2, 2009 11:03 AM
So I have a sort of crackpot theory that ties this in with the Problem of Evil, or at least the pathetic "God works in mysterious ways" attempt at theodicy. My reasoning goes like this:
If you aren't willing to blame God for evil, arguing that he works in mysterious ways, or that maybe it was a result of the Fall, or whatever, then you can't give God credit for good things either. Maybe God was actually quite angry at Damon Duval, and he caused the other player to run onto the field so that Duval would get a second chance, making him a sports hero, so that he would become more famous and be tempted into a lonely life of womanizing and drugs, and eventually die loveless and alone from an OD in a lousy hotel room. How does Duval know that isn't the case? God works in mysterious ways!
Conversely, if you are going to give God credit for doing good things, then He has to answer for all the bad things he's done too. If God helped Duval win the game, then God also killed 300,000 people in the Asian tsunami, including countless innocent children. If he gets credit for one, he gets credit for both, and must answer for it.
So you can't have it both ways. Either the Problem of Evil goes unanswered, or else you have to stop thanking God when he does good things, because you are obviously are mortal intellects are inadequate to understand God's actual reasoning.
Posted by: James Sweet | December 2, 2009 11:10 AM
Be careful there, Ed! You could Alienate Potential Allies and cause Deep Rifts!
Posted by: Valhar2000 | December 2, 2009 11:11 AM
Posted by: Adrian W. | December 2, 2009 11:14 AM
Jon beat me to the obvious comment here... but yeah, CFL sides have 12 players normally, so it was the 13th man. Which leads to a whole new slew of religion-based superstitions that we could parse for a while...
Posted by: Jeff | December 2, 2009 11:36 AM
Since my favored teams always lose - OK rarely win - when I watch them, I made sure this time, not to watch the Montreal Als. They have been losing one too many the last few years. And this time, peeking at the live score, I thought I had saved myself the embarrassment of watching them lose. But Damon Duval's guy worked, it seems. Wonder if he was on a sabbatical all these years!
Posted by: impal | December 2, 2009 11:38 AM
In re the "Habs", note that their real name is not the "Canadians", it's the "Canadiens". Even Anglophone sportscasters in Canada pronounce the team name with the accent on the last syllable, to show that it's really a French word.
As for the religiousness of Montreal vs. Regina, that's really pretty irrelevant. Most players on CFL teams are Americans, usually from big Southern universities where football is king (Damon Duval is from Louisiana and went to Auburn U. in Alabama, for example). It's pretty well known up here that CFL players are way more Fundie Christian than the cities they "represent".
Posted by: Alex | December 2, 2009 11:46 AM
@All...thanks! It all makes sense now...sorry to hijack the thread.
Posted by: DPSisler | December 2, 2009 12:01 PM
Imagine if the situation was reversed:
He makes the kick on his first attempt, but then his team has a penalty causing a re-kick. He then misses the second kick.
God's obviously to blame under those circumstances. I know that I would stop going to church.
Posted by: Randy Crum | December 2, 2009 12:09 PM
Wait a minute! What if the CFL rules require that penalties inside the 2 minute warning go for automatic review? Maybe when he said "the man upstairs" he meant the official in the booth!
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Posted by: Johnny Vector | December 2, 2009 12:12 PM
A cool Catholic friend of mine and I covered Ed's concept in reference to a different event. We live in WI and a lawyer from our area was on the plane that landed in the Hudson. She was on the local news claiming that God put Sully on that plane to make sure it landed safely.
Problem 1 - I think the logistics people from US Airways might have something to say about that.
Problem 2 - To save you? You sure it wasn't one of the other hundred people on that plane God wanted to save.
Problem 3 - (and credit goes to my Catholic friend) "If God wanted to save anyone on that plane, why didn't he just not throw the geese into the engines?" : )
Posted by: Lance P | December 2, 2009 12:19 PM
@Johnny Vector: Not to be TOO pedantic, but the CFL doesn't have two minute warnings, either. They have three minute warnings.
Posted by: Don | December 2, 2009 12:21 PM
@Don: I was afraid of something like that. I was gonna maybe look it up, but then decided the joke wasn't worth it.
Wait, I mean, "You crazy Canukistanians with your wacky football rules! That's why I only watch Real Amurrican Football, and listen to good ol' Amurrican bands like Rush and Barenaked Ladies and Moxy Früvous!)
Posted by: Johnny Vector | December 2, 2009 12:28 PM
You guys have got it all wrong. he wan't talking about God, he was talking about the Man Upstairs. You know, the official in the booth upstairs. . . .
Posted by: Chilidog | December 2, 2009 12:29 PM
Oddly, I was just talking with a co-worker about this very subject, and happen to have on hand a comic strip that explains the issue: http://archive.salon.com/comics/boll/2000/09/28/boll/index.html
Posted by: Charles | December 2, 2009 12:45 PM
Alex @29,
Thank you for the correction. I only hear American sportscasters, generally. I do get CBC, which I watch for hockey and curling, but with the sound down, so I don't have South Park moments while listening to the announcers.
Posted by: James Hanley | December 2, 2009 1:19 PM
All the way to #27 before someone even obliquely mentions 13 is a coven? C'mon.
Posted by: Pineyman | December 2, 2009 1:26 PM
Yay! My batshit crazy deluded jerk levels were running low this week! I'm all full up now... you can stop.
Posted by: LanceR, JSG | December 2, 2009 2:43 PM
sigh, Malbus again, or whatever that sick fuck's name is. Didn't they arrest this homicidal dickwad yet?
Posted by: James Sweet | December 2, 2009 2:44 PM
One of my lasting memories of 9/11 is of a survivor telling reporters that he saw one of the planes coming right at him only to inexplicably swerve to one side at the very last second and thus save his life. He attributed the "miracle" of his survival to God, of course, without a moment's thought of how many others ended up in the plane's path of destruction because of that supposedly miraculous change of direction. But I guess they must have deserved it. Religion can make you very stupid at times.
Posted by: tacitus | December 2, 2009 2:57 PM
This gives me an idea. Instead of singing, "Hey, hey, goodbye" when your team has the game locked up, maybe the fans should chant, "Where is your god now?" THAT would be rubbing it in!
Posted by: Scott Hanley | December 2, 2009 3:11 PM
@Adrian W.:
The Lions were in the East semi-finals as a crossover team. While they were last place in the West Division, they were ahead of both the Bombers and the, (absolutely hopeless this year), Argos.
Posted by: Rick Pikul | December 2, 2009 3:12 PM
Scott,
I hope to be yelling that at my TV screen tomorrow night. And it would have been a great line to have used on 09/08/07.
(Go Ducks!)
Posted by: James Hanley | December 2, 2009 3:32 PM
"Play now, pray later."
George Carlin.
Posted by: Paul Lundgren | December 2, 2009 3:42 PM
And if the shoe was on the other foot, Duval would almost certainly not ascribe a loss to God's will, would he?
In "Ball Four," Jim Bouton makes mocking reference to this very thing; in response to all the "thank the man upstairs" postgame interviews, he said he wants someday to get in front of a mic and say he thinks he won because he doesn't believe in god.
Yet another reason that book rules, along with the copious references to greenie-popping, beaver-shooting, and other fun stuff.
Posted by: Solly Hofman | December 2, 2009 3:47 PM
Awesome.
Posted by: James Sweet | December 2, 2009 3:51 PM
I really wish Damon had thanked the man upstairs for that 7 yard punt he shanked in the first half.
Posted by: Tunde | December 2, 2009 4:50 PM
If God effected results, gambling casinos would soon be driven out of business.
Posted by: Bill Ware | December 2, 2009 4:55 PM
The thirteenth guy who was ran on the field was a gay Ugandan. Really mysterious ways.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | December 2, 2009 5:01 PM
God hates geese?
Posted by: dogmeatib | December 2, 2009 6:20 PM
Ed Brayton on God:
'Perhaps God had money on the game with a bookie and just wanted to cover the spread?"
Funny as shit.
Posted by: King of Ireland | December 2, 2009 8:20 PM
Perhaps Roughriders lost because the 13 men on the field reminded god of the last party his son went to (and didn't that work out well?) - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | December 2, 2009 9:56 PM
As a Rider fan for 40 years, I have to say; why the hell did you have to remind me? Now I have to get drunk all over again.
You should have heard the after game interview with Anthony Calvio, the A's quarterback. He was worse than Duval (who shanked two punts as well as missed that field goal, god must really love him).
Posted by: GaryB | December 2, 2009 10:17 PM
All I know about the CFL comes from a John Candy bit on SCTV, specifically the "It's A Canadian Fact" segments in the infamous CBC episode:
"Canadian football has four downs, not three. Canadians punt on third down, just to be safe."
Candy plays another important role: Back in college I was in a bar and not being a big sports fan, I was idly watching the screen when I had an inkling something was amiss. I didn't recognize the team logo and the camera kept cutting to a guy on the sidelines in the team jacket, sunglasses, and headphones who I thought looked a lot like John Candy. That didn't help - damn near every football coach is some chunky white dude roughly the same shape as John Candy. So a few more minutes of intent staring and I sussed it out: it's the Argos! And being part owner and all, that actually is John Candy!
In retrospect, I wouldn't trade that ten minutes of cognitive dissonance for anything; Candy died not too long after. And like Terry Fox, an essential bit of Canadiana went with him.
Posted by: Bob | December 3, 2009 12:02 AM
I prefer Aislin's take on the Montreal victory.
Posted by: Metro | December 3, 2009 8:04 AM