Ruth Institute Blog

Such a nice article. I did see the Superbowl, as I’m sure many of you did too. The very end when winning quarterback Drew Brees held up his son was truly the highlight. Seeing a picture of it even now brings tears to my eyes. This article is a great perspective on the significance of that moment.

The poster says, “Life. Better than lifting the Lombardi.”

by Kathryn Jean Lopez

This Super Bowl MVP would rather hold his son than the Lombardi Trophy.

‘Don’t you live for that moment right there?”

 That was former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason’s take on the final scene of Super Bowl XLIV: The Most Valuable Player, Saints quarterback Drew Brees, was holding his young son in his arms while his wife, young Baylen’s mother, looked on with a face full of joy — a loving family sharing a momentous personal, cultural, and historic moment.

It’s an image America needed. “Given that about one in four American boys are living apart from their dads at any one point in time, it is great to see a Super Bowl champion with his wife and son, and to see that this win is all the bigger for him for being shared with his son,” Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, tells me.

Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce and director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, isn’t a football fan, but she is a fan of that striking image. Brees wasn’t simply using his son as a trophy, she explained, noting “how physically familiar he was with his son and vice versa.”

“The physical familiarity got my attention because it suggested the father actually knows his son, and the son his father, and that only happens from real time spent together,” Marquardt explained, “when mom and dad are sharing a home and a life. Even a busy football-hero dad is able to snuggle with and be there for his young son because they’re one family.”

“Even in a football stadium of screaming fans the toddler boy didn’t look anxious. He knew he was safe. He was with dad.”

The image is all the more beautiful if you realize that Brees, who joined the New Orleans Saints in 2006, has said that he and his wife believe that they were called to New Orleans to be a part of the post-Katrina reconstruction, a cause for which they have raised money. No man is a canonized saint here on earth, but if Brees’s testimony to his faith is any indication, he’s trying.

Shortly after the Saints’ victory — 43 years in the waiting — New Orleans native and pro-life attorney at the Bioethics Defense Fund Dorinda Bordlee set up “The Baby Brees Respect Life Fan Club” on Facebook in gratitude for the image. “The heart-melting photo of Drew Brees lifting his baby boy into the air conveyed that the gift of human life and love is even more valuable than lifting the Lombardi Super Bowl trophy. And that’s saying quite a bit,” noted Bordlee, a long-suffering Saints fan.

The Facebook group has many fans, male and female, but Bordlee says she is most moved by the men who have posted on her page. One wrote: “This picture is just great! It sends a beautiful message to all men that family is the most important thing we all have.” Another man posted a note addressed to Brees: “Thanks for being the kind of athlete/role model my 9 & 11 year old boys need! They love the game, but also realize God and respect for life is so much bigger . . . you just proved it!”

Keep reading.