I hope to my Lord Jesus Christ that Saturday night’s divisional round playoff game between the Patriots and the Broncos will end the accursed era of Tebow Time. I think I stand a good chance. Tim Tebow himself will probably have a good game at quarterback, what with facing the abysmal New England defense. He will employ his only two football moves: faking a run and then backtracking, his crane-like throwing motion unfurling a 30-yard softball, or actually running. His efforts, however, will be found unequal to the offense led by science’s most perfect prototype of the pocket passer, Tom Brady. When the Patriots have the ball, there will be no anguished lobs or QB keepers run through defensive ends and linebackers. Instead, precise pigskin beams will emanate from the center of New England’s pocket-womb like Heidegger’s da-sein and find their way to Deion Branch and Wes Welker as though there were no other possible outcome. Brady’s passing will compensate for his defense and the Patriots will win. And I’ll be happy, because we can then stop talking about Tim Tebow for another few months.
I don’t hate Tim Tebow, because he seems like a genuine guy and he’s never done anything bad to me or, possibly, any living creature. He just irks me. Part of it is how bad of a quarterback he is. Over the course of one of the greatest college football careers in history, Tebow excelled at a number of skills that have almost no application in the NFL. By the time the Broncos drafted him, he was the most intriguing cube-shaped question mark in American sports. Could he be an NFL quarterback with that shitty arm and accuracy and release? Would his desire to win trump all obstacles as it heretofore had? Can’t he just play running back? After a much-needed incubation period (in which Kyle “Bowlcut” Orton found himself starting over two of the decade’s most highly-touted college players) the Broncos decided it was Tebow Time. And things started to just work out. Just as Adrian Peterson’s dad and Donovan McNabb’s mom became honorary members of their sons’ teams, so did the Lord join the party in Denver. Miraculous finishes that sometimes had little to do with Tebow started becoming regular and Denver’s season was resurrected. Questions such as “maybe this win over the [Vikings/Dolphins/AFC West shitshow] wouldn’t have been as thrilling if we had put up some points” were relegated to people like me who don’t believe the Good News.
And ultimately, Tebowmania does cleave along those lines, which is the second thing I don’t like about Tim Tebow. His miraculous finishes and improbable success is exactly the kind of narrative that his fellow Christian faithful can’t get enough of. The more materialistic among us have a hard time believing that it was the presence of one underdeveloped quarterback’s “determination” that led Marion Barber to lose his mind in the last minute of a game or the Jets to uncharacteristically suck. But we are unable to argue with Tebow’s results, which frustrates us hugely. Tebow empowers the faith crowd with not only his prominence and success, but the nature of his success. I don’t like it when I find myself questioning whether God actually intervened in an NFL game. It throws my cosmology off. I especially don’t like imagining a stereotypical Southern Methodist family cheering his every broken tackle as a triumph over us infidels.
The worst aspect of Tebowmania, however, he is not responsible for in the least. I remember watching pre-NFL Draft coverage in the early part of 2010. Two analysts were commenting on Tebow’s chances as an NFL quarterback, and eventually one of them resolved the discussion with something to the effect of “well, he’s got his life way more figured out than I do! Who am I to advise him.” Why would he say that? Was it because Tebow was a vastly famous person already and stood a good chance of playing professional sports for millions of dollars? No, it was because of his religious beliefs. In other words, here was a near-50 year old man envying the wisdom—not the football ability, but the wisdom—of a 22-year old kid based on the fact of the kid’s religious conviction.
I don’t doubt that the media would have the same respect for Tim Tebow if his abiding philosophy was based around social justice, or the environment, or civil rights, or any number of other potential cornerstones of a worthy role model’s credo. I do think that it would be a more complicated relationship. Instead of talking about his faith all the time—not only a wholesome topic, but a planted flag on one side of an important American fault line—Tebow would talk about injustice. No one affiliated with the escapist cash cow that is the NFL wants that. So it’s probably true that at least part of Tebow’s fame is that what he’s proselytizing is Christianity. But I don’t like nonreligious people commending him for having that faith. From the reverence I hear describing Tebow’s devotion, I get the sense that the public that this story is being sold to is one to whom deep personal conviction is a foreign thing. As if we, so cynical about the world and our place in it, admire someone like him just for being able to believe in something publicly and unapologetically. Tebow gets much less credit for being a great NFL runner—something that few people can do—than for his “demeanor,” or “attitude,” or “mentality,” all code words lending toward a portrait of a very settled, confident belief, which is something all of us could do. I have no doubt that Tebow’s visible confidence is a result of his faith. It just makes me have less respect for those who could very well choose to try on a conviction of their own and instead commend him for having one.
No comments:
Post a Comment