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Smite the quarterback!

God must love Texas. Lately it seems everyone there wants to pray before the football games.

However, the United States Supreme Court is still debating over whether Texas' Santa Fe Independent School District ought to allow its students to worship before the kickoff.

So that's what the Wildcat football team was missing this year! Praying before a few games would have definitely gotten us to the Rose Bowl.

But even if the high school football teams in the Texas school district need some divine intervention, they shouldn't be getting God involved in any of their football games.

Hopefully the Supreme Court feels the same way. The case, which began when two families in the school district opposed the policy, has landed on the high court's plate and is expected to be ruled upon soon.

Several of the justices have expressed their concern over the Santa Fe Independent School District's policy of allowing invocations before football games because it is clearly a breach of the separation of church and state.

Most of the justices seem firm in their positions. William H. Rehnquist, the Chief Conservative of the Supreme Court, sees no problem with the policy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most rational of all the justices, knows the policy is bad and needs to change.

Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy are the votes that need to be swayed.

Both O'Connor and Kennedy are concerned, however, that the student bodies at these Texas high schools elect students to give the invocations. Such a system would obviously allow majority religions to dominate.

Supporters of the policy may argue that praying before a game does not harm anyone, therefore it ought to be allowed.

But it does do harm. It makes a mockery of the concept of separation of church and state. It borders on breaking the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that government should not allow for the establishment of any one religion.

For the government to allow a student body to popularly elect students to pray is essentially allowing for the establishment of one popular religion over others.

Would the students hold campaigns to decide who prays? Would the high school campuses in Texas become forums for students to spout their religious ideas and convince their peers to vote for them because their interpretation of God is the best?

Spectators would show up with their beer and their hot dogs to watch a football game, but first they would have to listen to a student thank God for creating pigskin so the football team would have a ball to kick around.

The spectators are there to watch a game, not to sit through mass. They can go to church on their own.

Justices are debating whether spectators at a football game can be considered a "captive audience," or an audience that has no choice but to listen to the prayer because they have chosen to attend an unrelated event. If they are a captive audience, then the case for having prayer before football games is weakened.

But spectators at a football game are clearly a captive audience because they are forced to witness an event that is entirely unrelated to what they have come to see.

Justices probably know that deciding that such a policy is constitutional will create a slippery slope, allowing for prayer at high school graduations and other school events at which prayer has no place.

They should also know that even the idea of incorporating prayer into schools leaves atheists in an awkward position.

Some might think, "Who cares about the atheists?"

But atheists like football, too!

Clearly, the religious ideas of any majority should not be spouted upon ears that don't want to hear it. Instead of having a neutral policy on religion, as a public high school district should, Santa Fe Independent School District's policy is inherently discriminatory because it assumes that everyone believes in God.

The Supreme Court's decision should be an easy one. It should determine, once and for all, that football doesn't need God.