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.
Showing posts with label tebowmania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tebowmania. Show all posts
Monday, November 28, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Tebowmania
As only a casual follower of the NFL--that is, I’ll read Peter King‘s “Monday Morning Quarterback” column in Sports Illustrated (online edition), skim through the scores, etc. every week--I’ve nevertheless somehow become fascinated by the whole “Tebowmania” thing out in Denver and, apparently, across the country. Tim Tebow, of course, is the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback out of Florida who helped win the university two national championships, and who against “conventional wisdom” was surprisingly selected in the first round of the NFL draft in 2010 by the Denver Broncos.
None of this would be particularly interesting except that I’ve never seen a single player polarize so dramatically fans and experts and casual followers. Even people who never watch football games and don’t care one whit about the National Football League seem to have an opinion, seem passionately to want the guy to succeed--or fail--for reasons apparently having little to do with the game of football at all.
See, Tebow is an unabashed Christian. He doesn’t hide it, doesn’t downplay it, it’s just what he is, and he is comfortable enough, and sincere enough in his faith that he doesn’t apologize for it.
He is at once revered and reviled for that. The people who revere him call him “just a winner,” which, in fact, he seems to be (game last night bears, uh, witness to that); the people who revile him call him “Saint Timmy.”
I’ve never actually seen the guy play, and, in all honesty, am not enough of a football fan to be able to dissect and identify problems with his “throwing motion” or whatever. I sorta watched the Broncos-Jets game last night, or anyway the last six or so minutes of it--I say “sorta” because I don’t actually have TV; I was watching a Sports Illustrated graphic of it on my computer, which is a whole ‘nother story. When I tuned in after I got off work, the Jets had just punted, burying Denver back at their own 4- or 5-yard line. I looked at the stats real quick and saw that the Broncos had done virtually nothing on offense all evening, and at that point trailed 13-10.
Because of the Tebowmania thing, I found myself glued to the computer screen, watching the red line marking the line of scrimmage move inexorably from the right side of my monitor towards the left. It is admittedly weird watching a game that way, without seeing players or actual action or anything but a green cartoon football field with lines moving across it, yet it is fascinating at the same time, probably for the same reasons. When I was in high school and working every Sunday as a dishwasher at a local truck stop, I used to listen to Kansas City Chiefs games on the radio as I worked--watching the graphics last night was similar, but letting sight, rather than sound, trigger my imagination.
Anyway, that final drive of the Broncos just mesmerized me.
And, as I said earlier, I’m just a casual fan, but still read about the NFL. From what I’ve read about Tebow, his teammates believe in him. They will follow, however the season plays out for them as a team, because he is a leader.
His detractors, on the other hand, keep saying, “well, yeah, it has worked so far, but just wait--he’ll run into _____ or _____ or _____ and he’ll fall flat on his face.”
His fans, of course, want desperately for Tebow to succeed. His detractors want even more desperately for him to fail--so desperately, in fact, that even if he were to wind up winning a dozen Super Bowls, they would gloat that he had actually “failed” because he never managed to complete more than half of his passes, or whatever. He could become the winningest quarterback in NFL history, and STILL the detractors would be deriding him as “Saint Timmy.”
Which brings me to President Obama (believe it or not).
I’ve never seen so many people want so desperately for a president to “fail.”
And, as apparently is the case with Tim Tebow in an entirely different field, that desperation seems to stem less from Obama’s policies than it does from the fact that the president is black (“half,” the detractors remind us; “his mother is white, but he calls himself black, what’s up with that?” It would be the subject of a whole ‘nother post to respond to that one, although I have, in fact, responded to my dad on precisely that question).
Has any other president, or presidential candidate, been “forced” to produce his birth certificate?
Has any other president (aside from John Kennedy, who was Catholic) had to face inquisitions based on his religion?
Conservatives don’t like liberals, liberals don’t like conservatives, that is a given. But I have NEVER seen the level of utter hatred directed at a president as I have in the case of President Obama.
As with Tim Tebow, President Obama’s critics deride the equivalent of “arm motion” with the level of vitriol you might expect people to laser-direct at a confessed child-rapist. President Obama tries to work with the people “across the aisle,” and he is called “weak;” President Obama tries the other tack, “my way or the highway,” and he is called Nazi. Tim Tebow throws a pass and misses, he is called pathetic; Tebow runs it in from 20 yards out, people say he is “just not a pocket passer.”
What is heartening is that both Tebow and Obama seem to be riding their particular storms out with dignity, and even a bit of class.
I’m not a big football fan, I am not a Christian, and I am even less of a fan of politics--and particularly not of “partisan politics”--so maybe my perspective is skewed by the fact that, in my opinion, I don’t HAVE to have an opinion unless I so choose (and so research, etc.). From my more or less objective standpoint, though, many of the “haters” of Tebow and Obama nourish their hate ignorantly--that is, they won’t even admit the real reason they hate, even to themselves.
Interesting times, we live in.
None of this would be particularly interesting except that I’ve never seen a single player polarize so dramatically fans and experts and casual followers. Even people who never watch football games and don’t care one whit about the National Football League seem to have an opinion, seem passionately to want the guy to succeed--or fail--for reasons apparently having little to do with the game of football at all.
See, Tebow is an unabashed Christian. He doesn’t hide it, doesn’t downplay it, it’s just what he is, and he is comfortable enough, and sincere enough in his faith that he doesn’t apologize for it.
He is at once revered and reviled for that. The people who revere him call him “just a winner,” which, in fact, he seems to be (game last night bears, uh, witness to that); the people who revile him call him “Saint Timmy.”
I’ve never actually seen the guy play, and, in all honesty, am not enough of a football fan to be able to dissect and identify problems with his “throwing motion” or whatever. I sorta watched the Broncos-Jets game last night, or anyway the last six or so minutes of it--I say “sorta” because I don’t actually have TV; I was watching a Sports Illustrated graphic of it on my computer, which is a whole ‘nother story. When I tuned in after I got off work, the Jets had just punted, burying Denver back at their own 4- or 5-yard line. I looked at the stats real quick and saw that the Broncos had done virtually nothing on offense all evening, and at that point trailed 13-10.
Because of the Tebowmania thing, I found myself glued to the computer screen, watching the red line marking the line of scrimmage move inexorably from the right side of my monitor towards the left. It is admittedly weird watching a game that way, without seeing players or actual action or anything but a green cartoon football field with lines moving across it, yet it is fascinating at the same time, probably for the same reasons. When I was in high school and working every Sunday as a dishwasher at a local truck stop, I used to listen to Kansas City Chiefs games on the radio as I worked--watching the graphics last night was similar, but letting sight, rather than sound, trigger my imagination.
Anyway, that final drive of the Broncos just mesmerized me.
And, as I said earlier, I’m just a casual fan, but still read about the NFL. From what I’ve read about Tebow, his teammates believe in him. They will follow, however the season plays out for them as a team, because he is a leader.
His detractors, on the other hand, keep saying, “well, yeah, it has worked so far, but just wait--he’ll run into _____ or _____ or _____ and he’ll fall flat on his face.”
His fans, of course, want desperately for Tebow to succeed. His detractors want even more desperately for him to fail--so desperately, in fact, that even if he were to wind up winning a dozen Super Bowls, they would gloat that he had actually “failed” because he never managed to complete more than half of his passes, or whatever. He could become the winningest quarterback in NFL history, and STILL the detractors would be deriding him as “Saint Timmy.”
Which brings me to President Obama (believe it or not).
I’ve never seen so many people want so desperately for a president to “fail.”
And, as apparently is the case with Tim Tebow in an entirely different field, that desperation seems to stem less from Obama’s policies than it does from the fact that the president is black (“half,” the detractors remind us; “his mother is white, but he calls himself black, what’s up with that?” It would be the subject of a whole ‘nother post to respond to that one, although I have, in fact, responded to my dad on precisely that question).
Has any other president, or presidential candidate, been “forced” to produce his birth certificate?
Has any other president (aside from John Kennedy, who was Catholic) had to face inquisitions based on his religion?
Conservatives don’t like liberals, liberals don’t like conservatives, that is a given. But I have NEVER seen the level of utter hatred directed at a president as I have in the case of President Obama.
As with Tim Tebow, President Obama’s critics deride the equivalent of “arm motion” with the level of vitriol you might expect people to laser-direct at a confessed child-rapist. President Obama tries to work with the people “across the aisle,” and he is called “weak;” President Obama tries the other tack, “my way or the highway,” and he is called Nazi. Tim Tebow throws a pass and misses, he is called pathetic; Tebow runs it in from 20 yards out, people say he is “just not a pocket passer.”
What is heartening is that both Tebow and Obama seem to be riding their particular storms out with dignity, and even a bit of class.
I’m not a big football fan, I am not a Christian, and I am even less of a fan of politics--and particularly not of “partisan politics”--so maybe my perspective is skewed by the fact that, in my opinion, I don’t HAVE to have an opinion unless I so choose (and so research, etc.). From my more or less objective standpoint, though, many of the “haters” of Tebow and Obama nourish their hate ignorantly--that is, they won’t even admit the real reason they hate, even to themselves.
Interesting times, we live in.
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