Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni turned a Super Bowl-sized spotlight on God on Sunday just moments after his team sealed a 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
“God’s blessed us very much. He gave us all the talents to be here, so first and foremost thanks to him,” Sirianni said.
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts shared similar thoughts in his own postgame interview, offering gratitude to God as soon as he had the microphone.
“God is good. He’s greater than all the highs and the lows,” Hurts said.
Then star running back Saquon Barkley built on the theme during the FS1 postgame show, explaining that God was all he could think about during the final seconds of the game.
“God is great man. Without him, none of this is possible,” he said.
Most sports fans appreciate those kinds of comments from athletes, according to a new survey on faith and sports from Pinkston and Sports Spectrum.
Researchers found that 56% of U.S. adults who watch sports at least a few times per month are “very” or “somewhat” supportive of athletes using their platform to talk about their religious beliefs or other spiritual issues.
Just 12% said they were unsupportive.
More sports fans appreciate athletes discussing their faith than appreciate athletes discussing political issues that matter to them, according to the new survey.
While 30% of regular sports viewers are “very” supportive of openly religious athletes, just 17% feel the same about athletes who use their platform to talk about politics.
Nearly one-quarter of fans hold a negative view about political comments, the survey found.
Religion in sports
Faith-related declarations from athletes have been part of professional sports for nearly as long as professional sports have been part of American culture.
But in the beginning, the athletes who shared their faith often did so to explain why they were walking away from their favorite game.
For example, baseball player Billy Sunday left the Chicago White Sox to become a full-time evangelist, as Paul Putz, director of Truett Seminary’s Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University, told the Deseret News last fall.
Today, there are still some sports stars who retire in order to commit themselves to religious work, including former NBA player AJ Griffin. But it’s much more common for athletes to weave their faith into their athletic careers, speaking about God in interviews and on social media as openly and regularly as they talk about big plays.
As the new survey showed, the vast majority of sports fans are at least neutral about religious comments.
In general, viewers seem to appreciate when athletes use their platform to do good.
Nearly three-quarters of fans said they’re “very” (42%) or “somewhat” (32%) supportive of athletes talking about nonprofit causes that matter to them, making that kind of talk even more popular than talk about faith, researchers found.
More data on faith and sports
Here are other notable takeaways from the survey report.
- More than one-third of regular sports viewers (37%) say that an athlete’s personal character significantly affects their perception of him or her. An additional 41% say it somewhat affects their views.
- The NFL is far and away the most popular sports league in the U.S. Nearly 9 in 10 survey respondents (88%) said the NFL is among the leagues they follow regularly, putting it nearly 30 percentage points ahead of the next most popular response, the NBA (59%).
- More than three-quarters of religious respondents (78%) said that God does not have a preference for who wins athletic competitions and does not influence the result.
- More Christian respondents were positive or neutral about sports betting than were negative about it.
The survey from Pinkston and Sports Spectrum was conducted from Jan. 24-30, 2025, among 1,540 U.S. adults who watch sports at least a few times per month. The margin of error for the full sample is 2.3%.