This is one for the ‘you just can’t make this crap up’ file -- not the incident itself, but the Air Force Academy's gem of an unbelievable excuse for it.
On October 30, the Air Force Academy men’s soccer team had a home game against Seattle University. This being the last home game for the Air Force Academy players who are seniors, a banner was put up below the scoreboard with each of the seniors’ jersey numbers on it. The players’ numbers were 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9,11,12,15, and 16, and you think they would have appeared on the banner in that order, right? Wrong! All of the numbers were in numerical order except for the 3. The 3 was place in between the 15 and the 16, making the banner end with 3 16, which as many people will remember from Tim Tebow’s short-lived football career means John 3:16, the sports world’s favorite Bible verse — “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’’
According to an article in The Boston Globe, “The verse first leapt into popular culture in the 1970s, when born-again Christians started holding ‘John 3:16’ signs at stadiums as a way to spread the Gospel,” and was popularized via TV by “an eccentric named Rollen Stewart, who wore a rainbow-colored wig and danced with a ‘John 3:16’ sign behind the goal posts at football games, home plate at baseball games, and the backboard at basketball games.”
And now, albeit not in as flashy a manner as a guy jumping around in a rainbow wig, we have the ever-Christian-supremacist U.S. Air Force Academy sneaking it in on a soccer game banner, seen not just by those attending the game but also all those viewing it online.
Immediately after the game, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) received a number of emails pointing out this slick bit of Christian proselytizing by the Academy’s soccer team, and MRFF founder and president fired off an email to the Academy’s superintendent Lieutenant General Richard M. Clark, who was present at the game and certainly saw the banner, demanding an investigation.
The proselytizing incident was also publicized in the Colorado Springs Indy, which obtained a statement from the Academy, which is where we get to the ‘you just can’t make this crap up’ part of the story.
This was the unbelievable — and I mean literally unbelievable — statement from the Academy’s public affairs department:
"There was no significance to the order of the senior jersey numbers posted in the soccer stadium during last weekend’s men’s soccer game. The intent was to recognize the 10 seniors playing in their last home game. Recognition was conducted in a pregame ceremony with the players and their families and with two banners inside the soccer stadium highlighting their jersey numbers (1,2,3,6,8,9,11,12,15,16). The numbers were to be printed sequentially and attached to each banner. After completing the first banner, our staff recognized that the number three was missing. To correct the oversight, the number three was added to the second banner out of sequential order – it was done simply to insure the player was represented as one of the ten seniors.
"Again, the only intent behind the banners was to celebrate the senior cadets at their final home soccer game."
Really??? An “oversight”? But there just happened to be a space in between numbers 15 and 16 that was just the right size for that “forgotten” number 3 to be placed before the 16??? Were the Air Force Academy staff who put the numbers on the banner really that spatially challenged that they just happened to leave that big gap between 15 and 16, so conveniently just the right size to add the “forgotten” 3 in front of the 16, uncannily forming the favorite Bible verse in sports? One look at the banner renders the Academy’s beyond-far-fetched excuse not just implausible but patently absurd.
MRFF Advisory Board Member Marty France, a retired Air Force brigadier general and former professor and department head at the Academy, called this absurd lie out for what it is, also noting that this is just the latest in a string of Christian supremacist actions by the Academy — following on the heels of August’s “Spiritual Fitness Month” and the Academy’s scheduling the most important training day of the semester on the Jewish high holy day of Yom Kippur, another of the Academy’s so-called “oversights” for which three United States senators are now demanding answers.
From: Martin France
Subject: USAFA Men's Soccer Number Incident -- 3:16
Date: November 2, 2022 at 8:58:02 PM MDT
To: Mikey Weinstein
Dear Mikey and MRFF Staff,
Thanks for forwarding the latest on this bizarre, disappointing, but oh so common and now consistent lie by the Academy's Director of Public Affairs. What kind of public affairs officer throws out such a silly, outrageous pile of crap? It's the kind of smirking lie I'd expect of a third grader, but even my grade school age grandsons could see through this one. As a USAFA graduate, staff member for more than 17 years, and Professor Emeritus, the response saddens and embarrasses me. It's such an obvious fabrication. Let’s see… You forgot ONE number (probably lie #1) and then when you reprinted it (probably lie #2). Then, you chose to put the “3" right before the “16" and not in its correct order? Can you provide a copy or photo of the "correct" second banner that had the numbers in sequence? Why not? Did it not exist? If you say that the numbers can be attached to the banner after printing, then they can be moved AFTER printing and assembly and put in order.
Was there somehow a magical gap before the “16" on this banner and not the other one? In that case, they must've originally intended to put it there. If not, then they INTENTIONALLY put it there after the fact versus putting it in numerical order, or in one of NINE other possible locations (after each of the other nine numbers). Their explanation doesn't hold up to even the simplest scrutiny.
Oh well, so much for an honor code. But then again, the honor code, if it still exists functionally, only applies to cadets--not to public affairs officers and the Superintendents that direct and approve their responses to the media.
What else has happened so far this academic year? Is this just a “one off” mistake? It would seem not.
First, it was Spiritual Fitness Month with its Orwellian chaplains' videos exhorting cadets to church, synagogue, and mosque (in that preferred order) on TVs in the academic building, while ignoring any input from the hundreds of "nones" among cadets and faculty.
Then it was the Commandant’s Challenge scheduled on a Wednesday with months of warning that happened to also be Yom Kippur--and a Christian senior cadet telling a female subordinate Jewish cadet to try Christianity and just get along since it's just "enlightened Judaism." The problem is HER faith, not his or the administrations. That’s the conflict.
Now, they're sneaking biblical code into NCAA athletic events and thinking they're tricky by lying about it in a public release.
I can't wait for the Holiday Season now when Christmas wreaths will be placed on the graves of Jewish and Atheist deceased grads and veterans as was done last year.
It's just one thing after another... One can logically conclude, after so many "mistakes," that these aren't accidents at all, but part of a systemic, endorsed plan of fundamentalist, evangelical Christian indoctrination by USAFA leadership.
Sincerely,
Marty France, PhD
Brigadier General, USAF (Retired)
USAFA Professor Emeritus
MRFF Advisory Board Member
What are the odds of that number 3 just happening to be placed out of order to fall right before the 16? Well, according to a statistics expert that MRFF asked to do the probability calculations, these are the nearly impossible odds:
*If* they forgot the 3 and then needed to put it somewhere, there are at most nine places where they could put it, fewer if they really put it on a second banner. But not knowing or not accepting that information, there are strong prima facie mathematical reasons to be suspicious. In particular:
1. The odds of any random permutation of those 10 numbers ending in “3 16” is 1/90, about 1.1%. Those same seniors would have to be honored in 63 games to make those odds 50-50.
2. On a soccer team with 25 jersey numbers (good approximation to USAFA), the odds of any random sequence of them ending = in “3 16” are 1/600 (599 to 1). If we started this season, we’d have to wait until the year 2438 to have a 50% chance of seeing one at a USAFA senior tribute soccer game.
The blatant lie from the Academy in its weak attempt to cover its ass yet again flies in the face of the Academy’s Honor Code, which states: “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” But I guess the Bible trumps that pesky little Honor Code, right?