For those of you lucky enough to have skipped the article, here's a summary:

A few academics have noted that religious participation is declining in America, interest in spectator sports is increasing, and the two have a few broad similarities. Therefore, football is the new American religion.

I don't care much about sports or religion, but frankly this article is laughable. They even troubled to throw in the perfunctory "correlation does not equal causation" admonition, as if it makes their line of reasoning any less spurious. Pure junk.

It's just the musings of a pastor. One shouldn't expect anything approaching a data-based analysis or 'reason', which is utterly at odds with 'faith', from a pastor.