The day an ambulance transported a player from a football scrimmage, I prayed he would be all right.

The night the trainer was holding up fingers in front of a dazed defender, I prayed the injury wasn’t major.

And when a tight end was helped to the sideline and then taken to the hospital, I prayed he wouldn’t suffer lasting damage.

There might not be crying in baseball, but there is praying in football.

It’s a violent game. Contested in an emotional atmosphere. By young men who in the best of worlds have bonded with their teammates and their coaches. And people get hurt.

So a little head-bowing, a moment of silence, a reminder from the announcer that “it’s just a game” strike me as comforting, not constitutional tinder.

But a New Jersey town has been upended over what separation of church and state means for locker rooms, playing fields and pregame rituals.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh decided that football coach Marcus Borden, who also teaches Spanish at East Brunswick High School, could take a knee and bow his head during his players’ pregame prayers.

Cavanaugh ruled from the bench that Borden wasn’t leading the prayers – or even really participating in them.

“I agree that an Establishment Clause violation would occur if the coach initiated and led the activity, but I find nothing wrong with remaining silent and bowing one’s head and taking a knee as a sign of respect for his players’ actions and traditions, nor do I believe would a reasonable observer,” wrote Cavanaugh, who was appointed to the bench in 2000 by President Clinton.

(Read a transcript at www.thnt.com/assets/html/ B535522726.HTM.)

If only it were so simple.

For most of his 24 years at East Brunswick, Borden perpetuated the “tradition” by appointing players to lead prayers at mandatory pregame meals and conducting a locker room prayer circle, according to court filings.

He did it even though the Supreme Court ruled in the 1960s that the First Amendment bars school officials from conducting classroom prayers or Bible devotions.

Even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that public schools unconstitutionally promote religion by organizing or leading graduation prayers.

Even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that school officials can’t appoint or arrange for students to lead public prayers before football games.

Borden did it until 2005, when some cheerleaders, players and parents complained to the superintendent. They told her, among other things (according to a court brief), that those who objected to pregame dinner prayers were told to wait them out in the bathroom.

When the district told Borden to stop leading prayers, he quit his job; then he withdrew his resignation and sued for a court order allowing him to quietly bow his head and take a knee with his team.

District officials have asked the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Virgin Islands, to rule that even his silent action would go too far toward endorsing religion.

“Borden does not get to infringe students’ and parents’ religious freedom because, as a public employee, he does not get to make policy: The District does,” the district’s lawyers argue in a brief. A three-judge panel heard arguments Oct. 3.

They’re absolutely correct about public employees not coercing students to engage in favored religious conduct. Teachers shouldn’t evangelize on school time. They shouldn’t use their positions of influence to promote certain beliefs, denigrate others or make students feel ostracized.

But honestly, once we start policing what’s intended when people take a knee, have we divorced the law from reality?

When is it genuflection and when sincerely secular?

Ideally, coaches should neutrally respect their athletes’ choices to pray or not, but where’s the line that they dare not cross between promoting unity and seeding discord?

And when you hear about a coach secretly selling players’ medical information to big-money donors, how do you escape the sense that there are worse things that a coach can do than take a knee with his team?