I tend to pay attention to “sports” in the daily local paper, which I still — can you believe? — subscribe to, print edition! What interests me always, in this arena and others, is “team spirit.” How do fractious individuals successfully bond/blend into community? What works? What kind of atmosphere is cultivated to ensure that it works?

Sports is one arena where the individual/community dichotomy is writ large, and often features not just rules but also a ball.

Most sports are easy for me to pick up on.

But football is a sport that I do not understand at all, except to notice that the two teams rush back and forth across a long rectangular field, passing the ball back and forth while trying to avoid being tackled, with one team always trying to get the ball to it’s “goal” at either end of the field. Lots of tusseling, fumbling, maneuvering, piling bodies that quickly spring up for more.

Football this year, and even last year, to some extent, is the sport that draws my attention. And now, the whole world’s attention. Why? Because last year Kurt Cignetti was lured to be head coach of a team that has never been much of anything. Basketball is what Indiana University is known for. Not football. Certainly not football.

But then Cignetti arrived, with a massive $27 M 6-year contract (extended this year through 2032), and when people asked about him, he said, “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.”

Nothing’s been the same since. And then this year, not only Cignetti, but Fernando Mendoza came onboard as the new QB, in his first year as an IU graduate student in Business. (He came to join his younger brother Alberto, from the U of Cal, where he received a business degree in three years). And now, with the Heisman trophy, and especially his speech afterwards, he is the new star in our collective sky.

Fernando Mendoza came to my attention several weeks ago, before the hoopla about him went utterly viral. And thank goodness it has!

Here is a young man, only 22 years old, who exhibits exactly, and to the max, the traits needed in today’s young men if we are to go forward as a civilization. Indeed, his astounding virtues are so numerous that to me, he feels like a living archetype.

Fernando grew up Catholic, with both parents and two siblings. He works hard, excels in both academics and football, loves his family, and his teammates, beyond measure. Fernando expresses himself in an open, enthusiastic, loving manner, invoking God first, with intense gratitude to everyone for his success. Above all else, his team spirit is incomparable. And it appears that he does all this, without ego inflation!

This is what we need, each of us to rise to our full capacity as outstanding individuals, while fully embracing those with whom we live and move and have our being.

What interests me, above all else, is this dynamic between individual and community. Or, as they would say, in football, between stars and team spirit. Mendoza himself brought up the subject of stars in the sky and how the light is reflections from all of them. 

What constitutes team spirit? How do we cultivate it? How is it maintained? Why is it so important?

Especially in America why is it so important? Because selfish individualism, freedom, is off the charts important here. And as always, this quality depends, for balance, on its dynamic opposite, selflessness in community.

I keep wondering, how does Cignetti do it? What are the qualities he cultivates in his players, and in his team so that they won every single game this year, 13-0?

I know he keeps saying, just concentrate on what’s next. Don’t get waylaid by anticipation of glory. Just what’s next, and do your very best. That certainly seems to work. But what else. What invisible atmosphere envelops Cignetti’s players and himself, spreading out now, to include not just the IU and Bloomington community, but the entire world?

For it certainly has happened, whatever it is. And by the way, Cignetti, who is famously matter-of-fact, has himself lauded Mendoza as having “the heart of a champion.”

Mendoza was in New York over the weekend, along with his family, Cignetti, and his teammates, who all flew there to cheer him on, as the heavy favorite of the prestigious annual Heismann trophy. And yes, he won, by a landslide over three other candidates.

Mendoza’s acceptance speech was over the top, full of gratitude, and utterly inspirational for all of us, and aimed especially at young boys and men everywhere:

Then, that very evening, Mendoza appeared with four families of Multiple Sclerosis victims, and gave each family $10K. Mendoza’s mom suffers from this disease, and he’s taken it up as his personal cause.

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Mendoza. If there’s anyone worthy of becoming a star in our collective sky, he’s the one. Archetypal. Apparently able to easily balance his new acclaim with every other aspect of his life.

I tried to get his astrology, but didn’t succeed in finding his birthtime. So just know: he was born October 1, 2003, in Boston Massachusetts. Look it up. Fascinating. Especially his Moon/Pluto conjunction in enthusiastic, ever searching Sagittarius (don’t know how close, without birthtime) and his archetypal straddling of 29° Aquarius with 0° Pisces:

Aquarius: team spirit of equal individuals.

Pisces: universal love.

Mendoza exhibits both. In spades.