THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO REGGIE : With Super Bowl as His Pulpit and Media as His Congregation, White Delivers Sermon on Not Bledsoe’s Weaknesses but Man’s

NEW ORLEANS —  Five more days to the big football game, but here’s the chance to gain some gridiron insight from Green Bay Packer Reggie White, the greatest quarterback mugger of his generation, who will be on the cover of Time magazine this week with quarterback Brett Favre.

Media Day right there on the field at the Superdome: Down in the trenches with Reggie, talking football, and wondering how many times he will fall on top of New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe in Super Bowl XXXI.

So, Reg, what do you think about getting to this guy, Bledsoe?

“There’s a lot of sinning going on all over this country,” he responds, and 200 reporters write down every word. “I think this country has done a good job of locking God up. I think one of the reasons this country doesn’t want God is that people will stop buying beer, stop buying drugs, they won’t buy things to harm their body. So you got sin going on everywhere.”

Are you talking about McMahon or Bledsoe?

“Men and women who become a threat to society, those are the men and women society gets rid of,” White says. “The reason they crucified Jesus is because he affected their economy. He started healing people, doctors got mad; he started raising people from the dead, the funeral home people got ticked. When a man starts affecting the economy to try and get people right. . . . Don’t forget poverty is a big moneymaker in this country and when you start messing with people’s money they want to get rid of you.”

It was noisy down on the artificial turf of the Superdome, reporters jostling for position, and maybe the question was misunderstood.

“Changing someone’s life is more exhilarating than winning the Super Bowl,” he says, although no one pointed out to the 6-foot-5, 300-pounder that he has never won a Super Bowl.

“I get about 500 letters a week. I got a letter once from a guy who had read my book. He hit a wire and about 7,600 volts of electricity went through his body. He said he had really been sarcastic when it came to God. He wrote that he was in the shower one night, and his son slipped my book to him. He ended up reading it in the shower and giving his life to Christ. When I get letters like that, it’s exciting.”

Somehow, things seem to have gotten a little off track here: Bledsoe, quarterback, tall guy, wears No. 11 for the New England Patriots.

“I want to be like Moses,” White says, and after listening to some of the questions here on Media Day, someone undoubtedly was going to want to know who he played for. “The Bible says he was the most humble man on earth. I want to be a very humble man to the point where I realize where my strength comes from. It doesn’t come from Reggie White. It has nothing to do with Reggie White, it has nothing to do with any of us out here. It has to do with the ability that God gave us, and the question is, are we going to use it so we can help other people?”

No, the question posed was: So what about getting pressure on Drew Bledsoe?

“Most people don’t agree with the things I say or do,” White says. “It’s my time, so you can either write about it or not.”

An assignment is an assignment.

“The media asked me about Michael Irvin,” he says, and that’s odd--why would they ask about somebody who’s not playing Sunday?

“You got to realize, there’s some good guys on that [Dallas] team, and there’s some guys that made mistakes. One thing you always remember when it comes to issues like that, I remember how Reggie White used to be, and the things he used to do, so how can I judge someone else?

“What Michael did, he happened to break the law. What some of us do with lying and fornication and committing adultery and stealing and things of that nature, and hurting people’s feelings, that’s not against the law. If God established his law here, a lot of us would be in jail right now.”

To date, none of the Patriots have been arrested, but this is New Orleans, and it’s still early in the week.

“I think people need to start looking for heroes,” White says. “They need to put stipulations on those heroes. You can be a positive or negative role model, but a hero is someone with high integrity and high morality and, to me, one who serves God. One of the things I’ve tried to do is to live it instead of talk about it all the time.”

Today, apparently, being the exception.

“Living it has more of an impact than anything I could ever say. I think we need to choose our heroes more carefully. You look at guys like Eugene Robinson, Keith Jackson, Darrell Green. Those guys are great fathers and husbands. They’re the guys our young people should want to be like. Our sole purpose is to lift up the name of Jesus, and this Super Bowl is bigger than just winning because it gives me an opportunity to play in the name of Jesus and try to have an impact on people’s lives.”

Not to change the subject, but keeping in mind they are playing the Super Bowl on Sunday, what impact might you have on the life of Drew Bledsoe?

“I think we have a major problem in our country that we don’t want to admit and that has to do with racism,” says White, who explains he is still waiting for federal investigators to solve the burning of his own church in Knoxville, Tenn., a year ago.

“We kind of shove that aside. We shoved it aside with the church bombings. This year, you don’t hear much about churches burning no more. People’s lives have been devastated, mainly because federal investigators have tried to indict some of the ministers, and some of the members.

“It’s been going on for a year, and I don’t understand that. I had an FBI agent tell me one time, because they were doing some things in the community, the black people didn’t really accept them. How do you expect black people to accept you when the name of the FBI building is the Hoover Building? I mean, how do you expect that, knowing [Hoover] was a racist? The man didn’t like blacks, Jews, and people who didn’t fit in with him. . . .

“We forgot about the three babies that were blown up in Birmingham and killed. Put it this way, America does a good job of forgetting the tragedies that are inflicted on people.”

And someone asks, “What can we do, Reggie?”

And Reggie adjusts his thigh pads, tugs at his football jersey and leans into the microphone.

“The people have to take this country back.”

Would that interfere with the Super Bowl?

“There’s not enough information getting out from you guys, and when I look over this year, there were two moneymakers, the politicians and the media, when it came to these church burnings. And you have churches that are struggling to rebuild and the media made a lot of money because they sold a lot of papers and watched a lot of TV programs concerning the church burnings.

“A lot of organizations you work for made more money when it came to church burnings than the churches did. I’m sorry to see a lot of the newspapers and media didn’t even give money to these churches to rebuild.”

Time to try a different tack: Did Bledsoe? But White doesn’t hear the question.

“I have been asked often, in particular about black athletes and why don’t black athletes give back to their community,” he says. “There’s a simple answer to that question. When your heritage and your history have been stripped from you, you don’t appreciate who you are, let alone appreciate who anyone else is in your community.

“It bothered me that once a year we get one month to celebrate black history. Black people contributed to this country more than anybody. Black history should be a part of American history. White people should be able to know about black people.

“I’m adamant about teaching my kids about black history. There were some godly black people that did a lot of positive things, and there were a lot of white people who helped those black people too.

“And that’s what our country needs to know. That’s one thing I admire about the Jewish community, they stress their history. I think once you stress your history, you appreciate yourself more.”

The NFL is taping White’s comments but hours later, when the NFL guys transcribe his comments, they don’t include any of the above remarks.

No, just football stuff, boring football stuff.

“In order for us to win,” says White according to the NFL’s release, “we have to stop both Curtis [Martin] and Drew.”

Yes, Drew Bledsoe.

“The thing we have to do is stop him,” Reggie White says.

And there it is, the definitive word from the man himself.