Asked if, when he was praying during a San Diego field goal attempt in overtime of last night’s game, he had asked for a miss, Denver quarterback Tim Tebow, widely maligned for both his throwing motion and his open Christianity, laughed. "I might have said that. Or maybe a block. Maybe all of it."
The kick missed, Tebow and the Denver offense got another chance, and he marched them down the field, the Broncos scored a field goal and won the game.
Personally, I doubt there was any kind of “divine intervention” in San Diego’s missed field goal attempt, which was a longish one anyway--I suspect God has more on his mind than the outcome of a particular professional football game, at any given moment. I also doubt that Tim Tebow truly believes God cares which team wins in any given game. Times like that, I suspect that Tebow, and probably most Christians--and anyone else in the habit of praying to a “higher power”--in a similar situation, use prayer more as a way to focus and achieve some kind of inner calm than to try to influence God to influence the outcome.
That’s only a guess, though.
Come tomorrow, I predict that 98% of sportswriters, and closer to 100% of commenters on stories about the Denver-San Diego game, will be dismissing Tebow’s efforts (and, in fairness, he had a solid, but definitely not spectacular game), talking up the Denver defense (which deserves it), and probably dissecting the San Diego coach’s many failures (probably also deserved).
However Tebow’s career eventually plays out, I predict the same post-game outcome every week throughout every regular season and every postseason game in which he plays.
I’m also going to go out on a limb, here, and predict that he will have a longer and much more successful career than most “experts” are forecasting for him. Beyond the fact that he works at it, he apparently is a “born leader”--he makes the people around him better, and they believe in him. Never discount the “confidence factor,” both when it comes to self-confidence--not arrogance--and the confidence someone inspires in those around him/her.
As a lot of people who know more about Tebow than I do, which actually isn’t much, have said since his Florida college days, “he just wins.”
Wouldn’t it be SOOOO cool to get somebody with that quality in a position of national leadership? (One caveat: He/she had better NOT say “God told him/her to run;” count my vote immediately for the other guy/gal in that case.)
But “born leaders” no longer run for president or even congressperson or senator. Only “born followers,” people who will go where the “money” tells them to go, throw their hats in the ring (because that’s where the money is), in a tradeoff for the “power” they crave. They don’t even seem to recognize their essential powerlessness when they sell themselves to whomever lines their pockets most luxuriously.
In a time when we desperately need leaders with what sportswriters call “intangibles,” the kind of natural leadership ability that someone like Tim Tebow virtually exudes, instead we get people like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain and that nut from Texas and Baseball Glove from Massachusetts and on and on and on. Huntsman has potential, but he is a Mormon (Christians will never vote for him. There goes the GOP “base”). Salamander guy, Newt, would look a whole lot better if he didn’t want 9-year-olds cleaning school toilets, and if he did have any kind of “moral” leg to stand on, and if he hadn’t gone to grade school with God‘s grandmother. Have I forgotten anyone? Oh yeah, the older-than-dirt guy, Ron Paul. Pass. (This is not “age-ism;” even my staunchly conservative 79-year-old father thinks we need younger blood in the presidency, as long as it isn’t, um, you know, what we have now. It‘s a tough job that requires a lot of strength and energy that a septuagenarian, or whatever Paul is, may simply lack) Sarah Pales-in-Comparison-to-virtually-anyone is still hanging in the wings, waiting for the GOP to draft her--which it sounds like they might be thinking about.
On the other side we have Mr. Obama, whom I actually like in a lot of ways, but who also seems to lack “traditional” leadership qualities. He is not the “my-way-or-the-highway” kind of guy that, say, Shrub (thank you, Molly Ivins, and may you rest in peace) Bush was, which is not a bad thing--except when it comes to inspiring the majority of the electorate (middle-aged and older folks, more accustomed to and comfortable with the Shrub style, are neither accustomed to nor willing to be comfortable with a more conciliatory, more inclusive approach to governance).
But hell, Obama takes flak for continuing a tradition, started by a Republican, Bush-wayyy-senior I think, of pardoning a pair of turkeys on Thanksgiving--just a lighthearted, fun Republican tradition, and he gets hammered for it. He, his wife and daughters serve up food to homeless people on Thanksgiving day, and it is derided as a “mere photo op”--never mind that everything they DO is a photo op, it’s the nature of the beast, but they were STILL standing there on that serving line, helping other people when they could have been home watching football games or something.
And I’ve wandered far afield of wherever I meant to go, here.
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