BYU is lone holdout for not playing on Sundays

In the current realignment of college sports leagues, a lot has been made of BYU's policy of not allowing its sports teams to play on Sunday, citing, specifically, No. 4 of the Ten Commandments — or what ESPN's SportsCenter would call the top 10 do-good gems — which states: "Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy."

I find this remarkable.

Not that BYU doesn't play sports on Sunday.

But that everyone else does.

They all do when it comes to the NCAA Division 1 level, at any rate. Apparently, no other major athletic program in America has a policy that prohibits its teams to participate on Sunday.

This includes any number of private institutions run by Christian churches — Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, St. Joseph's, Notre Dame, etc.

I'm not suggesting what churches, or anyone else, should preach. Holy writ is open to interpretation, and heaven knows there are plenty of ways to interpret "to keep it holy." To some, what could be holier than an afternoon at the ballpark?

But, still, to have the "Never On Sunday" faction reduced to just one major sports-playing university in America reflects quite a defection.

There were years — thousands of them, actually — when conventional wisdom leaned decidedly in the other direction. Whole epochs of time passed when the people who played on Sunday were way in the minority — and sometimes in jail.

If you were to chart a rough timeline of the whole sports on Sunday chronicle, it would go something like this:

 1441 B.C.: Moses receives the Ten Commandments, including No. 4.

 After that, the followers of Moses, i.e. The House of Israel, became so enthusiastic/obsessed about what they CANNOT do on the Sabbath Day that when Jesus came along, he managed to look downright liberal by comparison (e.g. "ox in the mire").

 After Jesus came his followers, the Christians. Early Christian history — due to political harassment, being fed to the lions, etc. — is spotty about pretty much everything, but we do know that when the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian, one of the first things he did, in 321 A.D., was clamp down on Sunday activities.

"Let all judges, and all city people, and all tradesmen, rest upon the venerable day of the sun," he wrote.