and ????

From the Huffpo via the Birmingham News:

AUBURN, Ala. (RNS) Chad Gibbs has been on a pigskin pilgrimage throughout the South, searching for spiritual truth in Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, Gainesville and Fayetteville.

He grew up a fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide and switched allegiance to his alma mater--and the University of Alabama's archrival--Auburn University. For a while, Gibbs became so fanatical that he wondered if football had replaced God as his god.

"I wondered about how much I could care about football before it starts to hinder my faith," said Gibbs, a 2002 Auburn graduate who lives less than a mile from the school's famed Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Gibbs set out to find how other Christian football fans handled their dual obsessions. For 12 weeks he attended football games involving every Southeastern Conference (SEC) football team.

That quest resulted in Gibbs' new book, "God and Football: Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC," which tracks college football's near-religious following in the heart of the Bible Belt, where fans worship their SEC teams on Saturdays and God on Sundays.

In the summer of 2009, he contacted churches and campus ministries in all 12 SEC university towns.

"I was looking for fanatical fans that were also Christians," Gibbs said. "My idea was to go to the games and spend time with them and see how they balance the two."

Among the many memorable people he met was a Catholic priest, the Rev. Gerald Burns, pastor of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Baton Rouge, La., who watches Louisiana State University games on his big-screen, high-definition TV. He once joined the LSU crowd in chanting, "Go to hell, Ole Miss!" while wearing his Roman collar. LSU won 61-17.

( the rest )