THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH—The Lord our God, Divine Creator and Ruler of the Universe, made a statement Thursday in which He condemned the practice of human beings playing football, proclaiming He had never intended the body to suffer such punishment.


"O my children, I implore you, look deeply into your hearts, your minds, your extremely fragile and complicated knees—in fact every part of your glorious but mortal bodies—and ask yourselves if I really intended you to collide with one another as hard as you possibly can," God said as He appeared simultaneously to every football fan on earth and to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, declaring that it pained Him to see the human body, the pinnacle of His creation, abused in such a fashion. "Your brief lives are already beset by suffering and pain. Why make it so much harder on yourself with the brutal sport of football?"

"Frankly, the first hint should have been that just to play this game you need to wear a second protective covering over the protective covering that I, in My infinite wisdom, placed around your brain," God added. "Does that make sense to you?"


God's statement came on the heels of a particularly brutal week in the NFL that saw half a dozen players, including Eagles star Michael Vick, suffer concussions, as well as Packers safety Nick Collins going down with a season-ending neck injury. However, God denied that His remarks were made in response to those specific incidents, saying only that He was "greatly displeased" and had "waxed wroth" upon seeing them, as humanity should simply have known better than to play football in skeletons "with all the tensile strength of cheap plywood."

According to the Almighty, the human body is ill-suited to the intense demands of football in almost every way. God noted in particular that the brain is an incredibly complex and delicate mass of sensitive neural jelly, and that because of "certain early-stage design compromises," it is vulnerable to intense tearing and twisting forces upon heavy impact, becoming damaged when it collides against the side of its bone bowl.


"That's when you get concussions, or worse," God noted. "Then there's the spine, which is a masterpiece of flexibility when you guys bother to take care of yourselves but might as well be a stack of cheap glass ashtrays when a 350-pound lineman smashes into it. And the knees? With those ACLs I gave you, you're not even supposed to run unless there's an emergency, let alone make sharp cuts on turf just as a linebacker comes in low from the side."

God also remarked that He was particularly frustrated at having to "just come right out and say this," explaining that He had provided more than enough evidence of football's destructive effects on the body through signs and portents such as Joe Theismann's famous broken leg, Bo Jackson's destroyed hip, and "whatever the hell is wrong with poor Steve Young."


"Look, I know this isn't war, or murder, or the thousands of ways you people find to make your lives more painful and shorter than they should be, but seriously, think about it," God said before His divine presence faded. "Seriously, as magnificent as football is, it won’t help you live a joyful life and celebrate the wonder of creation if all those men die drooling and soiling themselves at age 50."

Commissioner Goodell released a statement Friday morning that read, in part: "The NFL has heard God's concerns and is taking them very seriously. We value the opinions of all our fans and will consider His words very carefully as we continue to enjoy the 2011-2012 NFL season."