It was Patriots 45, Broncos 10, NOT Patriots 45, Tebow 10

I’d have been rooting for the Patriots last night even if they’d been playing Pittsburgh, and not because I think Big Ben is a creep of the first water.  I rooted for the Steelers against the Broncos, but not because I was rooting against Tim Tebow.  It’s a question of longstanding loyalties.  I went to college in Boston.  The Steelers drafted the first college player I was aware of as a great football player and I knew who he was because he played for Notre Dame, the only college team that mattered to me as a kid because I was Catholic and Irish and assumed that as such I was required to go there for college when I grew up. (Which would explain why this painting hung on the wall of my bedroom when I was growing up, even though I was a Colts fan first and then a Packers fan, because of Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr and Jerry Kramer.)  If the Pats had played the Steelers, the loyalties of the college kid I was would’ve trumped the loyalties of the college kid I outgrew wanting to be, that’s all.  In games the Steelers play against teams towards which I am indifferent, the latter’s loyalties win out.

I’ve never cared about the Broncos one way or another, except when they played the Giants in Super Bowl XXI and the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV and then I cared about them only enough to root against them, although it’s more accurate to say I was rooting for the Giants and the 49ers because they were two of my favorite teams and still are and I wonder who I’ll be rooting for next week if the Giants beat the Packers this afternoon.  I expect it will be New York, but I don’t know.  When I see those red and gold uniforms, I can’t help it. I flashback twenty-five years and start rooting for Montana to throw long to Rice.

If the Packers win, the choice’ll be easy.  Green Bay.  As I mentioned, very longstanding loyalties there.

I’m taking the long way to say I didn’t root against Tim Tebow yesterday and I wouldn’t have rooted against Ben Roethlisberger.

I don’t think it’s fair to root against a whole team because of one player.  Big Ben may not deserve another Super Bowl ring in some “If the universe was just and God really exists” kind of way, but there are nearly fifty other guys on the team and a lot of them are deserving.  Even if I was inclined to want to see Tim Tebow smacked down for his unfortunate habit of praying in public, he has a lot of teammates who keep their faiths to themselves, some of whom are good guys, some of whom definitely aren’t.  Every pro football team’s roster includes more thugs than saints.

Well, except New Orleans’. 

Get it?

I crack myself up.

Tim Tebow strikes me as an amiable kid who might grow up to be an NFL-level quarterback some day, if his coaches let him.  He’s far from the only professional athlete who makes a show of his religion, but then, what do I care?  I have to admit to being reflexively annoyed whenever some baseball player points to heaven or kisses the cross around his neck as he crosses the plate.  But most of them think of what they’re doing as an act of humility.  They’re not boasting that God is on their side.  They’re not saying God hit the home run for them.  They’re thanking Him for the talent that put them in the position to enjoy a moment like this.  One thing I’ve read about Tebow that made me feel fondly towards him is that he gets a kick out of it when opposing players Tebow after sacking him.

Shows he has a sense of humor and a healthy dose of humility, qualities sadly lacking in a great many people, including a lot of the people who are annoyed by his religiosity.

I have to admit, though, I’ve made my share of jokes, in the analog world and on Twitter and Facebook, about which side God’s on.

But I don’t really mean the jokes to be at Tebow’s expense.

In fact, I think it’s the case for a lot of people who seem to have been rooting for Tebow to fail.  I’m sure there are plenty who plain don’t like the guy because of his praying in public.  But I think much of the animosity is actually directed towards the Right Wing Christians who have made Tebow their saint of the moment and towards the fawning media who hype him in order to attract that market.

These are people who believe that God takes sides, not just in football games, but everywhere, all the time, and the side He takes is their side.

In rooting for Tebow, they are rooting for themselves and against the rest of us.  They are declaring in another way what they’re always declaring, “God is on our side and not on yours.  God is with us and against you.”

Which of course provokes a reaction.

It’s not the case that we’re rooting against Denver or against Tim Tebow.  We are rooting against living in a country in which women are required to spend their youth either pregnant or nursing, in which gay people go back to being ashamed of themselves and hiding who they are in closets (For you Right Wing Christians: go back to hiding their lights under bushels.), in which brown-skinned and Spanish-speaking immigrants are worse than vermin, in which our children are taught that the earth is a few thousand years old and people were created by magic out of dust, in which the poor and the sick and weak and the oppressed are left to fend for themselves, and in which the ultimate goal of our foreign policy is all out war against the entire Muslim world so Jay-sus returns that much sooner.

And we’re rooting against a craven and opportunistic media that for the sake of a few more hits on their websites flatter and fawn over the Right, pretending they are just good old-fashioned God-fearin’ folk and refusing to acknowledge who they are, what kind of people they are, what they believe, and the kind of country they want to force the rest of us to live in.

Comments

[Janelle Dvorak]

Here Endeth the Reading.

You sure your antecedents aren't pulpit-thumping, revival tent Baptist? That was one whale of a sermon. ;)

[Deborah Testa]

Yes.

[Chris the cop]

I've always prided myself on my football acumen and thus, I'm proud I told my 10-year old last week that the Giants have a shot against Green Bay but that it doesn't really matter because nobody's stopping the Saints this year.

[Linkmeister]

I'd say "Amen" but that would be misconstrued.

[Earl Bockenfeld]

What has Tebow done lately, a miracle victory over Ben Roethlisberger. and a week later a blow-out thrashing by Tom Brady.

How staggering was the difference between Tim Tebow and Tom Brady? Entering the fourth quarter with the score 42-10, Brady had more touchdown passes (six) than Tebow had completions (five).

Late in the game, as the Patriots’ fans sang “Teeeeeee-boowwwww. Teeeeeee-booowwwww,” he had been sacked as often (five times) as he had completed passes.

Tebow hit more than 1 million mentions on Twitter. Sunday night after the miracle victory over Pittsburgh, the rate of tweets announcing the victory hit 9,420 per second. The all-time record was set last month when a TV screening of Japanese movie drew 25,088 tweets-per-second. But Tebow still beats the 8,868 tweets-per-second rate reached when Beyoncé announced her pregnancy during the 2011 MTV Music Awards...

He also starred with his mother, Pam, in a controversial Super Bowl ad sponsored by Focus on the Family. In the spot, Mom cheerfully recounts how she defied doctors to continue a risky pregnancy and gave birth to her "miracle" baby — then goofy Tebow pounced on her in a fake tackle and the ad closed by pointing 92 million TV viewers to the group's anti-abortion website...Tebow's popularity has risen to such heights that he may be second only to crusader Billy Graham in his evangelical commitment, says Mark Coppenger, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and director of the seminar's Nashville campus.

His rise to prominence, at least for this season, is over. The stage is left to quarterbacks who can really wing it, not one who gets by on a wing and a prayer.

There is no shame in being crushed by the Patriots in the playoffs. The list of quarterbacks who have suffered similar fates in that stadium in important games is illustrious. More will walk away broken, but their tests always were measured in how they came back. This is how it will be with Tebow as well.

[nancy]

It's the last two paragraphs in particular Lance, that explain the story of our USA and its current landscape. Not being a refined football fan, to put it mildly, the Tebow jokes I thought a bit overwrought. Get it now. Thanks guy.

[Kaleberg]

I remember watching a game, or at least pretending to, with some diehard Redskins fans back in the 80s. The Redskins had a reputation as a hard drinking, hard partying bunch of rowdies and hell raisers, and then they creamed the Dallas Cowboys with all their prayer meetings and sanctimonious God loves us more than he, she or it loves you crap. It was a real triumph of good over evil.