Latest / Dangerous Laughter / The War on Christian Athletes: Steve Eubanks on GODBALL, Faith & the Sports Culture War | Dangerous Laughter with A.J. Rice

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The War on Christian Athletes: Steve Eubanks on GODBALL, Faith & the Sports Culture War | Dangerous Laughter with A.J. Rice · Dangerous Laughter

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Dangerous laughter laughter dangerous. Dangerous laughter. Dangerous laughter. Danger. Left earth sam. Day 8.
• 1:09
  Speaker B: The Emergency Destruct system is now active.
• 1:14
  Speaker C: The option to override detonation procedure has now expired. The ship will automatically destruction. And we are back. Another episode of Dangerous Laughter here on the DL. I am your host, AJ Rice. Remember, our job here is is to transform horror into humor. Have a little fun along the way. You know that I'm a Philly guy. And when you are a Philly person, you can take the person out of Philly, but you can't take Philly out of the person. If you've met any of us, all the horrible things that you have encountered or heard are true. And they can be embodied in an old Irish nun or they can be embodied in your humble correspondent. My next dangerous guest has spent decades covering champions, hall of famers, some of the greatest moments in sports. He even discovered me once upon a time. The goat of conservative public relations, ladies and gentlemen. He found me right. What can I say? The guy has an eye for talent. He is an award, a New York Times best selling author, an award winning sports journalist, and author of the new book God Ball, how athletes are saving Christianity. Ladies and gentlemen, an essential southern gentleman. Steve Eubanks, everybody. Steve's in the house. Steve with his. Steve's such a nice guy. You know, I met Steve when he wrote a book about the Masters tournament. Everyone's got to go out there and get this book, God Ball. My old friend Guy that kind of discovered me when I was a puppy. I mean, I've been in, I've been producing and working in PR for a long time, but he was always. Steve was always my go to guy on golf. And then Steve, you did a book on the Army Navy game that I think we helped you out with. And I mean, look, you're a New York Times bestseller. Everyone needs to know your name. Go out and get a copy of God Ball. That's what we're going to talk about today. How you doing, Stevie? What's going on, brother?
• 3:34
  Speaker B: Great. It's great to see you again. It's been too long.
• 3:37
  Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. So. So, you know, there's a lot of sports phenomenon, you and I eat it up. It bleeds over into the culture, it bleeds over into religion, which is what, what your book's about. Although the media can't stand that. And I've got some video footage here that, you know, on some networks, gets buried. You don't get to see this video footage. This is of the World cup soccer team praying at the American team after their loss, unfortunately, to Belgium. Let's hit that, Chris. So, you know, as you can see, even CBN was covering this. You know, that World cup stars from, from, not just from the United States, but, you know, across the globe are showing different types of prayers, different types of religious imagery while the World cup is going on this summer. I mean, what's your take on that?
• 4:50
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, you're seeing it everywhere. You're seeing it at high school and college and all the way up to professional. And even in the World cup, where you're seeing athletes from around the world going out and making public professions of faith, publicly showing their faith. And look, the media is doing everything they can not to cover this. In fact, you're seeing a lot of camera angles that are cutting away from it. But athletes have gotten smarter, particularly in the post Covid era. All of these athletes understand that they control their brand. They are more media savvy now than they have been really ever before. And so they know how to bypass the traditional television networks, the traditional print media, and get those messages out. And that's what they're doing. And they're doing it in such a way that it's having a profound impact on the fan base.
• 5:41
  Speaker C: I mean, it's an amazing thing how we have traveled and look, Steve. Steve covers all sports. I got hooked up with him through a golf book. He did. But, you know, if you look at the sort of history of activism in sports, it appears that the media finds certain types of activism, okay, and other types not, you know, the type that kind of created Western civilization, Judeo Christian values that I guess they're out, but what's in, I guess. And look, I think if you go back in time, history will show that guys like Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown and Kareem and others, Jackie, obviously Robinson, that history has has sort of rendered its verdict that some of their, quote, social justice is worth it and was worth it. And, and, you know, as the left likes to say, the arch of progress bended towards justice. But when it comes to Christianity, when it comes to, you know, Western religions, when it comes to overt sort of, you know, when it comes to Tim Tebow, for example, kneeling, the whole media had a heart attack over this. Right. That. I mean, that is one of those things that, that the media just couldn't handle. They could not handle that image. But they're okay with LeBron standing up for the regime in Hong Kong that were against the pro CCP regime in Hong Kong. They're okay with D. Wade, DWAYNE Wade of the Miami Heat and the. And his trans daughter. Son, whatever the heck that is. Magic Johnson's got a trans son. You know, they. They've all got one, right? I guess they're giving them out in the NBA. I don't know. So. But isn't it interesting? And I want you to weigh in on the media, because you're a member of the media. You know, how, how, how. What type, what type of decisions are they making to say, well, Dwayne Wade's trans son is good, but, you know, Tebow kneeling is bad.
• 7:48
  Speaker B: You know, I've always known that there was an anti Christian bias in the media, going all the way back to, as you mentioned, Tebow. And it even goes further back than that. I mean, all the way back to the days of Roger Staubach, who was a devout Christian, who certainly made the point after every interview of thanking Jesus and speaking about his faith. And producers used to cynically call that the Jesus bite. And they kind of felt like they had to get in and out of it as quickly as they could. I had no idea that it was as pervasive and really as sinister as it has become, because the activism that goes into shutting these people down, shaming them, attempting to somehow cancel or move them or otherize them, it's really been extraordinary. I think if you look back, the case in point that I like to turn to is Jonathan Isaac, who chose not to kneel during the Black Lives Matter protest because Jonathan, like a lot of other people, said, I kneeled to God and got alone. And I think that was a. It was a wonderful, courageous stance that he made. And of course he was. He was vilified for that. He was called an idiot. I mean, he was told that he was. He was selling out his people. It was really a vicious campaign against him. And it had nothing to do with Jonathan Isaac. It had to do with the religion that he was professing.
• 9:13
  Speaker C: And it's crazy because, you know, the African American community, they go to church and, you know, there's different societal issues with some of the churches. You know, other people have written those books. But, you know, you have a predominantly group, you know, a predominant group of people that are, for the most part, some sort of evangelical or Protestant Christian in the black community, which means the athletes are, you know, unfortunately, a lot of them were raised by their mama, you know, with no father in the home. And that's a whole other issue about out of wedlock childbirth in different communities. But it.
• 9:51
  Speaker D: It has.
• 9:51
  Speaker C: It has risen in the last 100 years in the white community, same as the black community. But it's an amazing thing because Jonathan Isaac, who's playing God Ball, which is basically that, which is the name of your book, he gets ripped. But a guy like Kaepernick, right, who, who built. You gotta understand most of these narratives, whether it's the Trayvon Martin lie, the I can't breathe lie, the Ferguson one. I mean, they're all sort of built. Obviously there's holes in the George Floyd narrative. You know, we've covered it here, people have written books about it. But the one thing that could sort of transcend skin color, transcend a lot of things, socioeconomic brackets, is the fact that a lot of these athletes, whether they're a big white guy from, you know, Iowa or from, you know, Bedford Stuyvesant, they all are Christian. A lot of these athletes are. And the media finds that icky. They do. You know, they can always find the like one converted Muslim guy who's uncomfortable about something, Trump's in the building. This, this thing or that thing, they're okay with finding that person. But for the most part, especially with athletes born after 1980, born after 85, born after 1990, you're seeing with young people in particular a trend towards more of a sort of Christian revival going on in sports. Am I right?
• 11:28
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And I think what you're going to find with the media who are trying to squash this, bringing the racial element into it, most of them are white liberals. And you have the most outspoken of the Christian athletes, a lot of them are black. I mean, you have C.J. stroud, Mika Fitzpatrick, Treveon Henderson, Aaron Judge. These are the guys that are out there at every opportunity speaking about their faith. And they're using their social media platforms and YouTube and everything that they can to go out and really be evangelical about their Christian beliefs. And, and, you know, the people who cannot stand that are the white liberals that are in the media.
• 12:09
  Speaker C: So I did, in this, you know, I write political satire, but in this book behind me, the White Privilege album, I did a side by side of Kaepernick and Judge. They're both of mixed race descent. They were both adopted by white parents. They have white adopted parents. And these the nor the stories are so different, the way they treat their family that adopted them, you know, because look, you know, they could have been aborted. And I talk about that. Instead you have, I think, Judge's parents or, you know, public school teachers in Colorado or something, or, you know, something like that. And, you know, the way Judge uses his captaincy of the Yankees, he realizes that when you put on those Navy pinstripes, you're there for everyone.
• 12:56
  Speaker B: You.
• 12:56
  Speaker C: If you're going to be the goat, you're the goat for everyone. Something Tiger knows something, Mike knows, something Brady knows. Right. You're. You're not just the goat, or you're not just the Yankees captain. And Jeter knew this, too, for, you know, the trans people in the audience. And tonight's night, and tonight's, you know, Goya Latino Night, and that you're there, if you're. I mean, it's the most important franchise in baseball, and Judge knows that. And he's responsible with it. He's responsible with what he says. And you can see some of these analysts at ESPN trying to bait him into, you know, sticking his black fist in the air and, you know, going crazy on the race stuff, and he never takes the bait. They tried it with Jeter, too, and he didn't take the bait either. You know, don't you think? I mean, I think he pretty much acquitted himself well.
• 13:47
  Speaker B: He didn't quit himself well. And I would agree that Judges has been almost the perfect captain in that regard. And you have to ask yourself, what is it? What is it that drives his inclusive leadership skills? Well, it's the fact that the man treats everybody the same. And why does he do that? Because that's what the Christians teach you are to love one another as Christ loved us. It says nothing about race. It says nothing about where you came from, your socioeconomic background.
• 14:16
  Speaker E: You.
• 14:17
  Speaker B: You are to treat everyone the same. That's what he does. That's what you're seeing among the black and white NFL players. That's what you're seeing in the NBA, and that's what drives the liberals crazy, because without the racial division, what do they have? That's what's driving this, and that's what's driving the media narrative against it.
• 14:39
  Speaker C: Sure, sure. And, you know, I think Judge knows, too, that, you know, baseball tickets are not cheap. There's all different levels. You can sit behind home plate or you can sit in the nosebleed section. And when you're in the Bronx and you have every type of kid that wants to see a performance, he understands that they're, you know, some families scrape together all kinds of coin to try to get those tickets and get in there, and he understands that responsibility. You know, Kaepernick kind of accidentally found his way to the Super Bowl. He lost to the Ravens, and then he kind of went crazy after that, you know, he's wearing Malcolm X hats and he's, he took an 18 wheeler and he backed over his adopted parents a few times. And it shows you the, the, you know, with some of these role model type positions, there's responsibility that some of these athletes have and some don't. Now let me ask you this, because you mentioned this a minute ago. Is the media, and quite frankly the woke left, is the danger that they see the fact that some of these athletes are evangelizing in the dugout, in the locker room, in the clubhouse, are they worried about that? These places that the media can't monitor? Like are, are they worried that a religious player may minister to a non religious player and create, dare I say, more Christianity? Do you think that they get into the minutia of that? Because I do.
• 16:13
  Speaker B: I absolutely think they do. And I think they are seeing it and that's what petrifies them because it is happening. And look, going back to the race thing for a second, do we think that a single fan of the New York Yankees is counting the skin color of the players on the field? Not one zero is doing that. And that's what the players who are bringing this Christian movement about completely understand. Let's go to football for a second. Does the white Southern Baptist quarterback care that his black Roman Catholic tailback has a different philosophy or a different denomination than he does? He does not. They couldn't care less. And that's what is bonding people around this current movement, is they, the division is wiped away when you're on the sports field and people understand it.
• 17:05
  Speaker C: I, I totally agree with that. We're going to take a break here in a second. We're talking with Steve Eubanks, author of God Ball How Athletes Are Saving Christianity. And I see you got a blurb there from my buddy Riley. Riley Gaines gave you a really an eloquent blurb. My blurb for my book here behind me, the Curse of the Bearded lady is a little more outrageous. Now, one thing I want to say before we go to a break, in most cases, I think you're right. I think the, the Pentecostal in the locker room and the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox, they're just trying to win. And my producer Chris is going to hate that I'm going to bring this up, but there is a sports team that has fallen apart this summer that is having some of the problems that, that you and I just said don't usually happen. And that is the other baseball team in New York City. As a Phillies fan, I'M enjoying this. But I will say to the New York Metropolitans, apparently, I guess Francisco Lindor, his wife works for the socialist Nepo baby mayor of New York City. Mom DONNIE and before the the season began, I guess there was some problems with one of their other star players, Brandon Nimmo, who was a Trump guy. And apparently there is some problems going on now between Lindor and I guess the big money guy that they spent money on, Juan Soto. So here you have a situation where Marxism's in the locker room doesn't need to be right? I mean, you know, and it's spreading like a cancer. People are leaving the Mets because of it. People are getting fired probably because of it. And star players, two of which of Latin descent are not getting along.
• 19:00
  Speaker B: Look, I, I, you never see that among the Christians. And that's all I can say about that. Look, you talk about the Marxists, you talk about some of the other people of other faiths who may have problems that they bring into the locker room with them. Name me one Christian that has had a problem with another Christian of a different denomination in a sports team. I can't think of one. I don't think I've ever seen it.
• 19:24
  Speaker C: Very rarely and quite frankly, with the way the world is going lately and we've had some other guests recently talk about this, is that some of these sort of sectarian conflicts of Christianity are sort of falling by the wayside because of the way the world is going, either through secular humanism or different threats from, you know, the Islamic world or possibly even the ccp. We are talking to Steve Eubanks. We're going to take a quick break, pay a little bills. His new book, God Ball. Steve plays God Ball. He's got I don't know what kind of scratch golfer he is nowadays, but how athletes are saving Christianity. I am A.J. rice. We will be right back.
• 20:04
  Speaker F: A.J. cNN wants you to understand extremism and you can guess who has the biggest extremism problem.
• 20:12
  Speaker B: Watch.
• 20:12
  Speaker C: When it comes to extremism in this country, these people, the issue very much so is on the right, on the far right from, you know, from Charlottesville to January 6th. There isn't exactly an equivalent on the left in this moment.
• 20:28
  Speaker F: All right. AJ The Irishman is telling us about the, about the extremism.
• 20:33
  Speaker D: And the Black Irish only goes one way.
• 20:35
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 20:36
  Speaker D: It's the Black Irish. You know, it's always they always let the very fine people show up any chance they can, but they forget about, you know, when Rand Paul got his Ribs broken by his neighbor, or Steve Scalise got shot, or we had some lunatic running around in Brett Kavanaugh's, you know, neighborhood looking for him. It's always us. It's never the Tesla burners, right? It's never the college campuses, you know, hunting down Jewish students. No, it's always the very fine people. And January 6th.
• 21:02
  Speaker F: No, it's tedious. Lisa, you're never an extremist, except extremely intelligent. Same with AJ or at least funny for Philly guy. We try at least. AJ thank you both very much.
• 21:13
  Speaker A: And now, please enjoy another elegant celebrity endorsement of dangerous laughter with A.J.
• 21:20
  Speaker F: rice.
• 21:21
  Speaker G: Hello, A.J. rice. This is Martin Cove, aka John Kreese, and I just want to chat with you a little bit about some things. You may be the host of Dangerous Laughter, but sometimes in life you have to be dangerous without laughter. Always remember, your enemies think they're right. They are signaling their virtue. They think they're the hero and you're the villain. I think I talked about that in the Cobra Kai. Let them. Do not host this podcast to be merciful. Do not host it to make friends. It's your duty to be unstoppable, to be inevitable. They call you the baby faced assassin, so show them why. Listen to your sensei. You're ready. And remember, mercy is for the weak. Here and on the streets, somebody confronts you, they are the enemy. And the enemy deserves no mercy. So remember, you are the way of the fist. Strike first, strike hard. No mercy. And fear doesn't live in your dojo. Pain doesn't live in your dojo. And defeat certainly doesn't live there. So have a great podcast. And remember one thing. Cobra Kai never dies. And neither does John Kreese.
• 22:27
  Speaker A: This endorsement has been brought to you by collapsing standards everywhere. And now back to Dangerous Laughter.
• 22:36
  Speaker H: Stay locked in with the man who slayed the woking dead. This is Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the Publius Media Network.
• 22:50
  Speaker C: Back on Dangerous laughter. I am A.J. rice. I'm with my. My old time. One of my wise men from. From 20 years ago. Guys getting younger by the. By the decade. I don't know what's going on. His name is Steve Eubanks. I've known him a long time, back to my days producing something called America's Morning News, I believe. A little shout out to John McCaslin, big sports fan. He used to love having Steve on Steve's new book, God Ball How Athletes Are Saving Christianity. Steve, I gotta ask you, I think. And you know, some of this transfers to politics too. I think faith in some ways. And you were, you were mentioning this a little bit during the break. Faith sometimes seems more culturally acceptable if it comes from an athlete versus say a preacher. Like you said, people can name athletes, they can't necessarily name ministers or preachers or Catholic priests or rabbis. Right. I mean that. Don't you think that's the case?
• 23:54
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And look, we have for the first time Since World War II, we've seen a leveling off of the people who say they are Christian. There had been a steady decline in the people who are self professed Christians since the 1940s that has leveled off. And particularly among young men, you are seeing an increase in people professing themselves as Christians. For the first time in record keeping history, more men are going to church now than women. And you know who's doing it? It's the Gen Z culture. It's the Gen Z man. Where are they getting this? What is leading them back to the faith? It's certainly not a religious leader. You ask anybody under the age of 40 to name five prominent religious figures, you might as well ask them to split the atom. They have no idea, they have no chance. They can do it. But you ask them to name five athletes that can do it off the top of their head, they, some of them could name 50. And as a result of that, those are the people driving the culture. The athletes recognize it and they understand that they've got a platform for doing something bigger and better and that's what they're doing now in terms of professing their faith.
• 25:04
  Speaker C: And I think, at least in recent memory, I think one of the poster boys of that is the national champion quarterback from the Indiana Hoosiers, Christian Mendoza. Am I right?
• 25:19
  Speaker B: Fernando Mendoza. Yeah. He's a Christian.
• 25:25
  Speaker C: He's a Catholic. Yes.
• 25:28
  Speaker B: And he was, he was again, I think one of the, one of the leaders, one of the people who not only led in his locker room but made sure at every opportunity, be it his social media feeds or on the field, in the pregame, the interviews, in the post game press conferences, every time he had a microphone in front of him of any kind, he was going to shout out his faith. And the fact that he was there because of the love of Jesus, that was, that was in every message the man gave. And I think his teammates responded to it accordingly. And I think the fans responded to it the way they have.
• 26:05
  Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I, I got to tell you, as a, as an Irish Catholic, I mean I saw him doing the Sign of the Cross on ESPN and All. I mean, he was, it was. He was unabashed. I mean, he, he, he, he was not hiding it. He, he was, you know, using it to fuel his performances, it looked like. And I just know in some of the control rooms of America and some of the sports rooms, although sports writers, you know, tend to be a little bit more blue collar, a little more realistic than your, you know, the, the, you know, the culture editor of the New York magazine. They didn't know what to do about this. They, they didn't. And it was what it's like watching them have, like a seizure, trying to cover it or hide it, you know, cover it up and, and things like this. But, I mean, look, he was the Heisman Trophy winner, correct?
• 26:54
  Speaker B: That is correct.
• 26:55
  Speaker C: Right. Number one pick in the draft, right?
• 26:58
  Speaker B: That is correct, yes.
• 26:59
  Speaker C: And he ended up on Tom Brady's team there, right? The Las Vegas Raiders. Right, Right.
• 27:07
  Speaker B: He will be in Las Vegas next year. Yes.
• 27:09
  Speaker C: So, so we all know him. We all know the face. We know the story. Although I was calling him Christian there. His name's Fernando. Who is a Christian. He's a Catholic. Tell me, tell the audience about the names. We might not know because, I mean, he was. He's the big gigantic neon sign Las Vegas Strip example. Give us a story of someone out there toiling, performing, and putting, you know, their faith on their line and their career on their line and using Christianity to propel them in their given sport. Is there, is there an unknown name the audience should know about?
• 27:50
  Speaker B: Kansas City chief kicker Harrison. But I don't think anybody prior to him being as outspoken as he has been about his faith could have picked Harrison Butler out of a lineup. You could be a Kansas City Chiefs fan and not know who the man was. Who's your kicker?
• 28:08
  Speaker C: We don't know.
• 28:10
  Speaker B: Nobody knows. But he went out and spoke at various college campuses, including his alma mater, Georgia Tech, and used that opportunity and used that platform to speak openly about not only the return to Christ that so many people are making, but, but the importance of standing firm and standing up for your beliefs in a world that. That is hostile toward that. And as a result of that, I mean, people were not just taken aback, they were floored by it, because here's a man who, again, he could have been replaced in a second. He's a field goal kicker, for goodness sakes. How many of those guys, you know, would you be able to. Would, you know? And he took a risk. And I think for a period of time, his was the biggest selling jersey among Chiefs fans. Not because of the field goals he was kicking, but because of the stances he was taking.
• 29:05
  Speaker C: Well, and look, he kicked some in the couple Super Bowls too, so that helped. And look, you know, Andy Reid's a Mormon, but he's kind of a blue collar sort of conservative guy. You know, Mahomes and his wife seem to be as well, you know, in the ownership of the Chiefs, they don't seem to be, you know, eating tofu, the eating tofu type. I mean, they. They seem to be. And I think the daughter of the owner's been out there pro Trump. So, I mean, I. If he was on, you know, another team, he might have gotten hammered. I mean, I watched recently, Sir Buster Posey, the Giants, you know, former. I mean, he's the GM now or president of baseball operation for the San Francisco Giants, brought them a bunch of World Series rings as their star catcher. And we had this situation recently, which plays into your book, I would assume, where Major League Baseball tried to have gay pride day across all the different franchises and some of the players decided to write Bible verses on their hats. Well, you would have thought, you would have thought there was a clan rally happening. The ways some of the media went nuts, in particular the San Francisco media just hammering him over and over again. What do you think about the community and this one and that one. And you could tell Posey, you know, he didn't want to talk about it. He's in the dog. I'll take some baseball questions, you know, you know, but just going on and on and on. And I think Major League Baseball blew it with that. I mean, why are we doing this?
• 30:42
  Speaker B: It is amazing. I mean, the reason those guys did that is the rainbow flag was on the hats that night. And so the verse that they were putting on their hat was the verse in Genesis where God created the rainbow as a message to Noah. And it was an attempt to take the rainbow back to its original meaning and its original form. And it was a covenant that God had made with mankind. And those guys said, that's what it means to us and that's what we're going to put on our hats. Because they're attempting, they're attempting not to get involved politically. They're attempting to let their faith speak for itself. That's what they put out there. And look, the response was obviously people expected. I mean, but it was crazy nonetheless. And I think what ended up happening is Major League Baseball made the right choice in saying, no, these guys are not fined and they're not suspended. But it took a lot of pressure to get there.
• 31:43
  Speaker D: Everyone.
• 31:44
  Speaker C: There was a panic, Steve, okay? They didn't call me. I would have made sure this wouldn't happen, Right? But you know, Major League Baseball doesn't always call the number one conservative PR firm in the United States. But I will tell you, there was a panic in the PR department where all these bozos with humanities degrees, they're running around and they're thinking to themselves, what is this? What, what is this quote? They're getting this. What is this thing? This Old Testament? What. Where are they? What is this thing? They're, they're looking it up. They're asking Chad GPT. I mean, they, they didn't know what it was. It's hate speech, you know, I mean, it's just crazy. But there are, there are segments of the media, they're completely offended by what they did. I mean, obviously San Francisco Chronicle and all the rest of the Jabronis out there on the west coast peppering him. But you are right, and evangelicals have reminded me of that about taking the rainbow back as an Irish Catholic. The Irish want the rainbow back, too. We want that back, okay? We got leprechauns and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Really. I mean, we, I, I've never seen anything like it. Now, the Irish, our rainbow is an echo of what you said as well. I mean, it does resemble God and good fortune and other things. So, I mean, St. Patrick's head, St. Patrick had his job count cut out for him converting a bunch of crazy Celts and Gaelic people and in some cases, remnants of Viking raids to Christianity. But he got it done by, by taking the rainbow that the pagans were worshiping and blending it with the ones that the major league baseball players were writing on their hat. So, I mean, look, however you get there, I tell people all the time, find your way to the deity however you can get there. But the idea that you're going to make. And I believe the Texas Rangers were the only ones who didn't participate. Right? I mean, they, okay, 29, 29 franchises bent the knee. And I saw J.D. vance came out there and said, you know, and he says this a lot. He said, Trump won. We don't have to do this anymore. But what do you think goes on? I mean, I've told people wokeism, the term, they might not use it, but this social justice warrior stuff, they will burrow in like a parasite. They'll, you know, dig into the ground like a tapeworm, though, because they are scared to death, ladies and gentlemen of God ball. They're scared of this. This is the anecdote, this book, what these players are doing, whether it's. Whether it's Mendoza or Riley. You got to get Steve's book talking to Steve Eubanks. So, Steve, there is a Supreme Court decision that I. You know, we talk about a lot of them here, but there's one in particular you drill down on in the book. It's Kennedy versus Bremerton, correct?
• 34:56
  Speaker B: That is correct, yes.
• 34:57
  Speaker C: To tell the audience a little bit about what that is and how important it was in sort of changing the public climate for coaches and players to express their faith.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: A fellow named Joe Kennedy was a volunteer high school football coach. He was a former Marine. He was working as a welder in Washington state. And like most people, he was kind of struggling with his faith and came back to God and decided that after every football game, win or lose, he was going to go out to midfield, take a knee and say a silent prayer. He was not going to ask the players to do it. He was just going to do it on his own. As he was doing that, and players began to realize what was happening. They all joined him, players from both teams. Before he knew it, he had a full congregation out at midfield after every game, praying. Now, as you might expect, the ACLU and others decided that that was just completely unacceptable. They came and told the Bremerton school system, he can't be doing this. There's a separation of church and state. They fired Joe Kennedy because he insisted on continuing to pray. He sued, and a decade later, he went before the Supreme Court. And the man will forever have a Supreme Court decision named after him now, because that was the decision that overturned what we had originally considered to be separation of church and state. In public schools. You can, in fact, display your faith on a public school ground. You can't, you know, you can't have it sanctioned, but you can do it on your own. And that decision and the overturning of a number of the tests that had been previously used to make those kinds of decisions, that really sparked where we are now. And if you don't believe a lot of this is divinely inspired, I think if this. If the decision had come down sooner, if it had come down in 2019, for example, I think the COVID epidemic would have wiped it all away, would have been out of our consciousness.
• 37:04
  Speaker C: Sure.
• 37:04
  Speaker B: The fact that it came down after the COVID lockdowns and all of the things that went with that, to me, really, it sparked this current revolution.
• 37:17
  Speaker C: I. I have a theory That a lot of the people that are the most upset about some of this, I mean, yeah, you got sort of professional agitators and, you know, SJWs and snowflakes that are upset about this, that or the other thing, because MSNBC tells them to be. But I think especially with. If you find men that are upset about this, I. I think these are people that never played a thing. They were playing pocketball with themselves alone. They were. I don't know what they were doing. They were, you know, playing Dungeons and Dragons. That's fine. You can play Dungeons and Dragons, you can play a musical instrument, you can do all kinds of things. But they don't really know that. When you're in a tournament or in some kind of contest, I can tell you, as somebody that played it, 20 years of basketball and baseball, I have won games that I should not have won. I have hit shots I should not have hit. I have seen things happen on a baseball diamond that should not have happened. I've drained pots that I have no business draining. Now, I'm not going to sit here and be, you know, pollyanna, you know, oh, God did this or God did that. But I will tell you, God is on the field in most cases. Some way people can say that. We're not whispering to ourselves. Sometimes it's, God, I hope I hit a home run. And sometimes it's, you know, God, I hope they don't hit it to me. I gotta use the bathroom. I may, you know, I may go to the bathroom in my drawers if I gotta catch this line drive. But as of. As a Philadelphia sports fan, you'll appreciate this. We are fatalists. We are fatalists. So we always believe in Murphy's Law, and we always believe that the worst is going to happen to us. Now, we've kind of changed a little bit lately, thanks to the Philadelphia Eagles. But that first Philadelphia Eagles team, I can tell you, Nick Foles and some of the boys, Jason Kelsey and others, in the locker room, they were praying. There was an interracial prayer group happening during that 2017 run that inevitably ended with Tom Brady throwing for 500 yards in the super bowl and losing. Okay, Correct. Well, I mean, I'm sure Brady. I mean, look, talent can take you a certain, you know, talent and decisions. People talk about luck, but I think the people that are so
• 40:03
  Speaker F: sort of
• 40:03
  Speaker C: mad about the faith displays is because they don't believe in. In any type of sports magic. They don't believe in divine intervention. They don't. They don't believe in any of Those things, they only believe in the material world. So it's hard for them to say, oh, yeah, go ahead out there, Joe Carter, Joe Carter, I dare you to try to say a prayer, Joe Carter, and try to hit this home run off of Mitch Williams in the 1993 World Series, which, by the way, he did and ruined my childhood, I have to say so off the Philadelphia Phillies. But this, these types of things happen, am I right?
• 40:45
  Speaker B: They happen every day and they happen all the time. And I think what people don't, don't recognize is when you look at what it takes to be an athlete, self discipline, delayed gratification, selling out for your teammates, willing to sacrifice and do the things necessary for the person on either side of you on a football field or on the baseball diamond. When you look at all of those characteristics, what's the origin of all of those? Well, it's the Gospels, and if you go deep enough, it's easy to find them. And I think the people who have recognized that the most are the athletes themselves, and they're now willing to share that message.
• 41:25
  Speaker C: Yeah, and that's, that's what scares them. I mean, that's what scares the media, you know, because it's, it breaks down the, the old fences of Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative. It breaks, it breaks down and, you know, it gets to something older and I think scarier to people that are constantly looking for the easy, quantifiable, scientific answer to the mysteries of the universe. Right. You know, whether it's the Immaculate Reception or, you know, you know, in the case of people that survive a NASCAR crash or don't. Right. People that hit a hole in one, people, I mean, all kinds of things that have happened. You know, the fact that people like Ted Williams didn't end up dead in World War II. I mean, there's just, you know, certain boxing matches that have happened, stirs the soul. And I think, you know, for the left, where they're trying to atomize everything and everything is just a marketing ploy and this and that, it scares them because they can't explain it.
• 42:38
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And look, the thing that drives people nuts is the fact that they know it's true. I mean, look, if a team was saying, okay, we're saying magic incantations before going out on the field, or we have a magic potion that we drink before we go out, everybody would laugh and dismiss them because they know that's false. The reason they're so angry at this current God ball movement is they know it's true. And that's what Drives them nuts.
• 43:08
  Speaker C: Absolutely. We're talking to Steve Eubanks, author, as he just said of God Ball, how Athletes are Saving Christianity. We're going to take a quick break. I'm AJ Rice. This is dangerous. LAUGHTER we will be right back.
• 43:20
  Speaker F: Now, A.J. another, another actor I know you follow very closely is Elliot Page, who's making an argument about animals and lgbtqia too.
• 43:34
  Speaker E: Looking at nature as if it's this heteropatriarchal structure is absurd and that this gender binary that we've created is nothing but a quaint little myth. What we have been taught in school in regards to these structures, men being superior, women being inferior, it being this heterosexual existence, is just completely false.
• 43:58
  Speaker F: AJ I know you're not heteronormative, so I'm really yearn for your analysis of this.
• 44:08
  Speaker D: Well, Elliot, they. Whatever, whatever's happening there, the former star of Juno. Never forget, ladies and gentlemen, what they took from you, because that right there is what Homer.
• 44:17
  Speaker C: Because she's going to be in the next.
• 44:19
  Speaker D: She's going to be in the Odyssey movie this summer. That's exactly what Homer had in mind when he. When the great poet wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. That. That's the star right there, the bearded lady.
• 44:31
  Speaker I: You should be women. And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are. Someone once said comedy is the art of turning horror into humor. That's the essence of the Curse of the Bearded Lady. Laughing in the face of madness before it devours us whole. Nothing in living memory has been funnier or more horrifying than a movement convinced there are 72 genders. Boys have a penis. Girls have a voice.
• 45:03
  Speaker G: Vagina.
• 45:04
  Speaker I: The Curse of the Bearded Lady. The curse of the Bearded Lady. The Trans Mafia has whipped America's sanity. It's Monty Python by way of Mangalo. Absurd theater with real victims. I'm not here to conduct a medical examination of the Trans Mafia. This is a cultural autopsy. If Billy Shakespeare could write tragedies, histories and comedies, why can't I? The radicals refuse to surrender their gender mad stranglehold on America's vital institutions. This book will show how we got here, how we fight back, and how the Democratic Party's obsession with mainstreaming the Bearded lady will doom it to political extinction.
• 45:59
  Speaker H: Stay locked in with the man who slayed the woking dead. This is dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the Publius Media Network.
• 46:12
  Speaker C: Welcome back on the DL. We're talking to Steve Eubanks, author of the great new book God Ball. God Ball. Looking for some summer reading I know we just had Father's Day, but, you know, as we go into the summer, baseball heats up, football training camp's gonna start soon. College football kids will be back on the, on the gridiron. Great to have my old friend Steve Eubanks here. I've known him for a couple decades. Again, the man looks sharp. He's a sharp Southern gentleman, let me tell you. I would be remiss to not mention that, you know, my day job is running Publius PR and we had the opportunity to work on some of Charlie Kirk's books. Not the, not the most recent one that Eric is promoting, but the two prior to that. And as Steve mentioned earlier, there is a religious resurgence stirring among Gen Z and some of the younger millennials. You know, I don't know what's going on with the geriatric millennials, which is me, my, my age group. We gotta, we gotta, you know, we gotta get our, our act together. And it's not just Protestants. There's been lots of footage of a Catholic resurgence happening in, in blue places like New York City. In fact, John DePetro is a famous Italian Catholic radio host in Providence, Rhode Island. His daughter, Katie, I believe her name is, who works actually with Dana Perino at Fox News. She put together this groups like Pizza and Pews, which has thousands of Catholics across New York City going to mass on Sunday nights and then having Pete, having a little pizza party. So here's the thing about Charlie Kirk, Steve. I know for a fact, because I was present for some of this firsthand and secondhand, that very famous athletes were interacting with him about their faith constantly. He was all, I mean, you know, he's not ordained, but he was basically ministering to people like St. Paul or something, right? I mean, that's, this is what he was doing. And is of no surprise that when the horrific murder took place In September of 25, you had an outpouring across the sports world. And I'll just give you some of these names across all different types. Brett Favre, mark the Shara Le'Veon Bell Golden Tate, Ryan Garcia, Jake, Paul Harrison from the Chiefs. But like you just mentioned, you know, Antonio Brown. I mean, all it just goes on and on and on. Even people that didn't, like, totally agree with him, they were horrified by this because I think they were horrified left, right and center. I'm talking about the rational people. I think they were horrified because the one thing that they all had in common was this, was this God ball. Your thoughts?
• 49:36
  Speaker B: I couldn't agree with you more. And anyone who thinks that Charlie was assassinated for his politics is missing the point entirely. He was assassinated because, again, his. The impact he was having spiritually with young people, that's what drove the hatred toward him. He was bringing people back to a spiritual connection with something that was lasting and true, and that was the one thing they cannot stand. And look, you can go argue politics with people all day long, they're not going to come out, shoot you over it. They are going to come after you when you start having an impact that profoundly changes the makeup of people's souls.
• 50:21
  Speaker G: And.
• 50:22
  Speaker B: And that was one of the reasons that they came after him. And I'm not surprised. Look, Charlie was a great basketball player. He was an athlete. He followed sports all the time. He loved. He loved the Oregon dunks. He watched soccer.
• 50:33
  Speaker C: Chicago Cubs fan, too, I think, right? Chicago Cubs fan.
• 50:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, he was a Cubs fan. He. He did. He did as much sports coverage as he did anything else because he was just a huge fan.
• 50:45
  Speaker F: Yeah.
• 50:45
  Speaker B: In addition to being a good athlete. So it surprises me not at all that these athletes came out in support, not just of him, but in mourning after his passing.
• 50:57
  Speaker C: And I think you would have to be living in a fantasy world, a total fantasy world. And forgive me, Steve, I might get a little hot here to think that you can't draw a direct line from Charlie Kirk's place in the gen. In the culture of Gen Z and the millennials and younger, his. His take of blending and weaving politics and religion, turning Point USA chapters, the fact that social media doesn't just amplify garbage all the times, sometimes it amplifies this, his message. And you have generations of athletes that are the same age as Charlie being affected by him. So you could draw a line. And if this is not a stretch from Charlie through these athletes to Godball, and knowing that Gen Z in particular, because I've got the numbers here, and this Axio story here, you know, religious resurgence stirs Gen Z, particularly males, like you said earlier, that's a whole nother problem. Because the men want to go to church and the women don't. Right?
• 52:18
  Speaker B: That's exactly.
• 52:20
  Speaker C: For all you bozos out there, all you jabronis, schmucks that are going down rabbit holes looking for the invisible man that killed Charlie or this one of the French Foreign Legion or Barney the dinosaur, little apologies to Richard Lyons, one of my clients whose dad invented Barney. My point is you. You are mistaken. The message and the man. The message became the man. And the message was a defense of Western civilization. Which includes Christianity and Judeo, Christian philosophy and Greece and Rome. And the fact that he was unabashed in defending it. And he could, and you could walk right up to him, way nicer than I would have been. One dummy after another. And he politely, you know, joust with them and send them on their way, hopefully to, you know, go home and go home to mommy and ask them what the New Testament is. Right, Steve?
• 53:27
  Speaker B: Absolutely. This was nothing new. Look at Christ himself, who set the perfect example of going out and jousting with the leaders of his day. This was, this is an ancient practice that Charlie was bringing to a new generation of people. And that was one of the reasons that they couldn't stand him, is they knew that he was getting the best of them because he was speaking the truth.
• 53:52
  Speaker C: Look, I've said it on other shows. I'll say it again here to you. You know, I've been in this game for three decades, and I gotta tell you, he's one of only three people that have been able to reset the board politically and culturally. And in his case, unlike the other two in a religious sense, where, you know, you kind of broke the mold. I mean, Limbaugh is one that affected me. Andrew Breitbart was a mentor of mine and Charlie's the third one. And you just, you don't get. I mean, thank God we all got to enjoy a little bit of them all. But none of them are with us now for various reasons. But let's talk about the Charlie effect and how it sort of does go into politics. Chris, get this Theobro thing ready here. So the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post are very concerned about the Theo Bros. Okay? So I guess theology bros, these are the male voters you're talking about. These are in most cases the male athletes you're talking about. So if you ask AI to define you, you can't get a clean definition of what this is. But I ran this through multiple WOKE AI programs and I got this condescension that I'm putting on the screen for you now. Theobros modern movement of conservative Christian men, influencers and theologians who merge orthodox theology with right wing patriarchal and manosphere ideologies.
• 55:27
  Speaker B: Okay?
• 55:28
  Speaker C: And it goes on. We don't have enough space for it on the screen, but they don't like it. And, you know, apparently the Washington Post is worried that Vance and Hegseth and others, you know, I guess, are the. The point of the spear of this. And they're worried. They're worried about these men Becoming religious. I mean, what's your take on that? I mean, you're not like, you know, you're not a political guy, but there is no really separating the phenomenon you have identified in God Ball with this phenomenon.
• 56:03
  Speaker B: Not whatsoever. And look, you're. They're partially right. Men are coming back to the faith in record numbers. Bible sales for the first time in a quarter century are on the rise. Who's buying them? Young men. Young men are buying Bibles in hardcover for the first time ever. And the reason they're doing that is they understand now, post Covid, what can be taken away from them. The answer is everything. And the trust in institutions have collapsed. And they understand that there's only one thing left out there that is whole and true and lasting, and they're grappling for that and they're reaching for it. And that's what you're seeing with these young men coming back to the faith. Now, I have no idea what the manosphere, or whatever that word was, even means. All I know is that there are young men who are stepping up to lead now, unlike ever before, and we need to embrace that. And I would say this to the people who think that it's J.D. vance or Pete Hegseth or anyone else that's leading this movement. Again, go ask anyone under 30. Tell me one thing Pete Hegsec has said in the last six months. They might not even know who he is. Ask him who Minka Fitzpatrick is, they'll know that. Ask him who Aaron Judge is. They'll certainly know that. And those are the people that are leading this movement.
• 57:29
  Speaker C: I agree with you. And I think, you know, I know Pete. Pete would agree with you. Pete would agree with you, too. Obviously, you know, the left is running out of things to complain about. None of this stuff sticks. They are scared. There is a gender gap, though, forming in the electorate. We saw it in the 2024 election, you know, advance. I think, in particular, who's a Catholic convert. You know, there is a group of people. These are the people that don't like God Ball, that want you alone, miserable. You know, listening to Taylor Swift in your apartment, complaining about the patriarchy, complaining about the nuclear family, complaining about, you know, Western civilization. They want to destroy the middle class. They don't like seeing Fernando Mendoza wear his Catholicism on his sleeve. They can't stand people like Riley Gaines, our buddy. They can't. So as far as the manosphere goes, some of my enemies claim that you're inside of it right now, that you're here inside The Manosphere with the baby faced assassin, AJ Rice. Before we go, Steve, I gotta, you know, I want you to just take a moment, an opportunity to address the audience, talk to them about why you wrote God Ball, why it's a great gift, and why, quite frankly, the story of God Ball is not over even when the book is over.
• 59:05
  Speaker B: No. And look, I think this is a revival movement that we're seeing. And revivals throughout the course of history have taken all kinds of shapes and forms. Go back to the late 60s and early 70s where a group of hippies in Southern California were converted to evangelical Christianity and really sparked what became known as the Jesus Revolution. At the time. It comes from the oddest places. And in this case, I was noticing that athletes and coaches were being incredibly vocal about their faith. And I'm kind of scratching my head going, am I the only person seeing this? Turns out I wasn't. And it is in fact a groundswell and a movement that is going to continue because of the young men who are being affected. Those young men will have families and will carry this torch forward. So I think it is a much bigger story than the book itself.
• 59:58
  Speaker C: He is Steve Eubanks. He's a New York Times best selling author. Where do we want to send people to buy this? We go into Bezos's house. Where are we heading?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker B: You can go to Bezos's house if you want. It's published by Center Street. You can go to centerstreet.com or anywhere that books are sold.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker C: Look, everybody's got to go get a copy of this. You know, he's got a lot of blurbs. I mean, you've worked with Lou Holtz, you've worked with, all right, Jeff Gordon. I mean, you've worked with all kinds of people over the years. And look, don't just pick up God. Go ahead.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker B: I did two of Arnold Palmer's books as well. One of the greatest, one of the greatest men ever.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker C: So, yeah, I mean, he's amazing. You know my daughter's name, Palmer. So believe me, I love the name. I love Arnie, you know, I love the drink, I love the golfer. He's got a beautiful course in Virginia that I'm a fan of. And you know, everyone's got to go out and get, you know, don't just get God Ball, but reach into the catalog while you're in there. You're filling the card up, right? You don't need any more, you know, garbage from Amazon or Chinese nonsense. Go into Amazon and get God Ball, but grab some of Steve's other books in there, Right? Get a couple of them because the guy is chronicling Americana. And in this one sports Western civilization, Christianity. The book is God Ball. Is there a website you want us to send people to?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker B: I would just simply go to center street dot com. It's prominently displayed there.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker D: Beautiful.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker C: Go to Center Street. We're friends with them. We've done a lot of work with them over the years on different best sellers. We're gonna make this one a bestseller. Steve, we love you, brother. Thanks for coming on. It's good seeing you. Don't stop writing. Don't stop fighting, my friend.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker B: Thanks, AJ Great to be with you again, as always.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker C: Absolutely. That's a man of faith. Well, he's a good natured gentleman. I don't know why he likes me. I'm, you know, a wise Alec from Philadelphia, but I am AJ Rice. This is dangerous laughter. I want everyone to go to dangerouslaughter.com. today's discussion was with Steve Eubanks, author of God Ball. Get out there and fight for Western civilization, ladies and gentlemen. And always, always remember, stay dangerous.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker A: Dangerous. Laughter. Laughter. Dangerous. Danger. Laughter. Dangerous Laughter. Danger. Laughter.