The pastor at our church* has a Steeler’s themed stole given to him by Jack Ham.
*I don’t go there anymore, but since it’s where I grew up, I was baptised there, I had my first Communion there, my confirmation, I went to school there, etc, most of my family is buried in the cemetary, I still think of it as MY church.
Praying keeps people who believe that praying works, busy. So it’s a good thing.
They go down to some pretty convoluted tie breakers, including conference record and point differential. If all else fails, God tosses a coin.
To answer the OP: not any more wrong than it is to pray you get that new job with the stock options and the corner office, or for that chick from accounts with the spectacular rack to give you her number.
Who says God is answering my prayers? Maybe God is answering her prayers.
Who cares? God likes the Cowboys.
Somebody has to.
All intercessionary prayer is pretty cheeky when you think about it. I don’t see praying for your team to win as much different than, for example, praying that your brother survives his cancer. They’re both really about the emotional needs of the person (or people) praying.
Prayer is expressing your heart’s desires to God, therefore I would say that no prayer is “wrong”.
Some prayers are answered and others are not (well, technically they’re answered with “I’m not intending to intervene here, things will play out as they play out…”), and I would expect this to fall into the latter category.
YMMV, IANGod, etc
Most players thank Jesus when they win, but I don’t understand why they don’t carry this to its logical conclusion and wonder why Jesus chose them to lose at other times.
Tony Dungy, former Colts coach, a very religious guy, when asked something along these lines - whether he prays for his team to win or something like that - sort of scoffed at the question and said that God doesn’t care about football. Not that I give much respect to any religious view, but that’s certainly a more reasonable belief than thinking you can out-pray the other team for god’s favor or something.
I mean - yeah, it’s pretty silly, isn’t it? You’re asking the Almighty God, creator of the universe, capable of manipulating the world in meaningful, yet so subtle they aren’t detectable or provable ways - to invoke his supernatural powers to influence the outcome of a game - also knowing that no matter the result, someone has to be dissapointed anyway. Is it wrong? Eh - in reality, of course, it can’t hurt anything - but it’s arrogant and silly.
Dear God,
I know I haven’t prayed for a while but it seems there are armies arrayed against me. I am worried that your constant attention to prayers for American “football” teams may limit your effectiveness in caring for the world game - soccer. To ensure the success of the next World Cup I therefore request that everyone playing American football at any level be smitten with Lou Gehrig’s Disease and quickly die.
Thanks in advance.
A Christian
ps Bad luck with the swine flu. looked like you were on a winner there.
pps Hey is this global warming stuff for real?
Thanks for clearing that up. 
Dear Superhal:
If you read what I have already told you, you will notice that I consider some things much more important than others.
Certainly everything is subject to My will, but the desire to be subject to My kingship and My will needs to be pre-eminent.
So the short answer is “No, but keep in mind that I love you more than you can imagine”.
Regards,
God
Well, I know that after the big game in Canada yesterday God hates Saskatchewan. Two Montreal players were quick to point out that God was responsible for the win in the post game interviews.
I don’t know what Saskatchewan did to piss Him off.
I don’t see how that’s relevant. That verse says nothing about the propriety of praying for one’s favored sports team.
That verse is often misapplied by skeptics to criticize believers for praying in public; however, nobody said anything about praying publicly. (You said, “Presumably the players are on the field of a packed stadium and not behind a closed door?” That’s a presumption though, not an evidenced fact.) Moreover, the passage was not written to condemn public praying per se. Jesus was speaking about people who prayed ostentatiously in order to garner attention, and Jesus himself prayed publicly on multiple occasions.
Or we Lutherans just have an “in” with the Boss? 
(Sorry but you gotta realize us Vikings fans have had to suffer quite a bit. And it still rankles me a little that it took a Packer to put us in this position.)
You have a former church? Cool! You are half-way to being a good Lutheran! We almost require that you have a church and a church you used to go to.
That is one of the things that really soured me on the Stillers. I come from northeastern PA where there really was no home team. Philly, both New York teams, the Pats – all were sort of close. When I came here this whole fanatical fandom just confused the daylights out of me. I knew the guy with the original Terrible Taxi and other “Gorillas” from Glassport, I knew clergy to add the Stillers to the weekly intentions. I even remember a Catholic school putting a jersey on their patron saint statue during a Super Bowl run. Never understood it at all. Then a few years ago a Philly fan got beaten to death in the mens room of Tom’s Diner in Dormont. Sorry Steeler Nation ------- you are nuts!!! Just plain nuts.
My personal opinion is that it’s okay. God’s omniscient and omnipotent, according to most believers, so you’re not going to be distracting him from other people praying for things like world peace of the lives of their children. And you not asking for anything sinful unless you specifically pray for something like having the other team’s airplane crash.
I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that there’s a difference between praying that your team wins and praying that players on the other side get hurt.
I don’t pray, but that’s how I see it. While I find the entire “I thank God for letting me win the Super Bowl” shtick pompous and obnoxious, I don’t see anything immoral about it. In fact the same goes for most kinds of prayer, including the prayer for the president’s death thing that popped up recently. Praying is just hoping that something will happen.
Who would dare pray “against” America’s Team (trademark thingy) ???
OUTLANDER!