Philadelphia Fans: Do We "Care Too Much?"

Being a Philadelphian and a sports fan has proven to be, for me, an interesting phenomenon.  Indeed, Philadelphia fans are infamous throughout the country, their sins forever magnified because some legitimately frustrated fans of the "Joe Must Go" Eagles pelted a replacement Santa with snowballs on 15 December 1968.  To be sure, the intersection of Philadelphians' (in)famous "addytood" and the vicissitudes of its four major professional sports franchises inherently creates a volatile situation, one which periodically erupts in episodes of fan hostility.  It is in the athletes' reactions to this hostility that their true measure is gauged.


Yesterday, Kyle Scott over at Crossing Broad posted a piece detailing Flyers' $51 million dollar goalie Ilya Bryzgalov's bitter attitude toward the fans in the city where he is paid so handsomely:

You know, I think it’s an easy life when you can blame one guy…’it’s a bad goalie, it’s the goalie’s mistake.’ It’s easy to find a scapegoat. You point to one guy and say we’re always losing because we have a bad goalie, but I think it’s the wrong philosophy. I know I was frustrated in my game today and I know I have to be better and I will continue to work on this, but….I will try to find peace in my soul to play in this city.

Considering the fact that three of the goals he allowed in Saturday's 6-4 loss to the Penguins would have thrilled Mr. Whipple in the old Charmin ads, one could say the fans' predictable reaction (boos, as Robert Johnson might have said, falling down like hail) was justified, and hence that he was trying to absolve himself from the inexcusable (a fig leaf designed to cover his unacceptable .900 save percentage this season).   Even worse, however, is what he said to a fan at Sunday's Flyers Wives Carnival. In the words of the fan in question:

I said, “Hey Bryz, this is a great city to play in. If the fans didn’t care, you wouldn’t hear from anybody. But good luck the rest of the year, man.” And he looked at me, kind of crinkled his lips, put his head back and to the side and said, “I think you (the city) care too much.”

This is an old complaint from disgruntled Philly players chafing under perceived underappreciation.  Think of Mike Schmidt, complaining that Philadelphia was a city where "you can experience the thrill of victory one night and experience the agony of reading about it the next day." Or consider current Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins who, back in August of 2008, whined thus:

There are times, like, it's one of those cities ... I might catch some flack for saying this, but, you know, they're front-runners. When you're doing good, they're on your side. When you're doing bad, they're completely against you.

"Poor J-Roll," I initially thought, "he not only fails to come to grips with why the fans were booing him (showing up late to games, not running out ground balls), he doesn't know what a frontrunner is."  Indeed, America is rife with frontrunner cities—think of Miami and Los Angeles, for instance—and Philadelphia is emphatically not one of them (except, perhaps, with regard to the Sixers).  Every game the Eagles, Phillies, and Flyers play is sold out no matter what the team's record is. I attended a Phillies-Orioles game in Baltimore back in 2002, smack in the middle of a 14-year stretch in which the team failed to reach the playoffs, and more than half of the fans in attendance were wearing Phillies red.  Bryzgalov is right to this extent: despite their faults—implicit racism at times, an over-zealotry that makes them the American equivalent of Liverpool supporters—Philadelphia fans care.

Perhaps he is right that we care too much. Sports are, after all, mere games, designed as leisure-time distractions from the rough-and-tumble of real life.  But that, I might suggest, gets to the heart of the issue.  Bryzgalov, with his generous contract, might not have noticed, but times are hard.  Millions of people are hurting despite their hard work which, as often as not, goes underappreciated.  Fans in Philadelphia want, more than anything else, an acknowledgement by their athletes of how extraordinarily fortunate they are to be in their position, and an effort on the field, court, or ice commensurate with their good fortune.

One of Philadelphia's greatest civic characteristics is its intolerance for superficiality and glitz.  It is this that lies at the root of their distaste for teams from cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, and (for some) New York.  It is also what lies behind their hostility toward home-grown (and, to them, traitorous) superstar Kobe Bryant. 

Philadelphia fans prefer to cheer for grind-it-out, blue collar players like Bobby Clarke, Wilbert Montgomery, Pete Rose, Moses Malone, John Kruk, Brian Dawkins, and Chase Utley.  Players who appear to get by on natural talent alone (Schmidt), who don't live up to hype (Eric Lindros), or who shrink under pressure (Donovan McNabb) tend not to be accorded the same respect.  The rare athlete manages to walk the tightrope and achieve popularity while maintaining flamboyance (Julius Erving comes to mind).  Others, like Schmidt, manage to win the fans over via achievement (I attended his 1995 Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown with 28,000 other red-clad fans, all quite proud and teary-eyed that he had played for their team).  Nevertheless, the recipe for winning over fans in Philly is a simple one: effort + success.

Maybe that's not fair to athletes, but I don't think so.  What baffles me is the attitude that expects adoring support when performance would suggest theft, or at best waste, of the fans' hard-earned money.  Do people like Bryzgalov understand the financial sacrifice it takes for an average working stiff even to attend one game?  Perhaps, but I think it more likely that he—and he is not alone—never bothers to give it a thought.  That is the real problem.  Perhaps he would rather play in a frontrunner city like Phoenix, where the civic microscope isn't nearly as powerful as it is in Philly.  If so, he is all the poorer for it and, were he to leave, I would chime in, "Good riddance!"

The great, fat, and adored John Kruk—who famously claimed "I'm not an athlete, lady," but managed nevertheless to retire with a .300 career batting average—said it best: "You hear players, media people, say that it's tough to play in Philly in front of these fans, to those people I say: 'you didn't have the guts to succeed here!'"

The Wary Approach of a Philadelphian to the 2012 Baseball Season

1964 Topps Baseball Card of the First Philadelphia Team to Break My Heart

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting article by Frank Fitzpatrick, in which he articulates the unease he, as a baby-boomer Philadelphian, has when looking ahead to the upcoming baseball season. Could the Phillies' forthcoming "heading south" to Clearwater for Spring Training be a metaphor describing the fortunes that the coming season will have in store for the club? Fitzpatrick, ever the "realist," knows that the good times will inevitably end. Might they not end sooner rather than later? And would that be a bad thing, seeing as how such could jump-start a future renaissance? Fitzpatrick writes thus:

Sorry, that's just how I'm built. I'm a Baby Boom Philadelphian, incapable of enjoying sustained success. Even on the sunniest days, I'm scanning the horizon for storm clouds. 

I've seen too many landmarks and late-season leads disappear, observed the dismantling of too many preseason dreams and urban-renewal fantasies, watched too many sports heroes and jobs leave town. 

So for me, with the 2012 Phillies on the brink of spring training, I don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. 

If, like me, your 32-ounce Wawa cup is always half-empty, it's not hard to envision a perfect storm of calamities impacting this Phillies season. 

Ryan Howard's Achilles. Chase Utley's decline. Placido Polanco's back. Joe Blanton's elbow. Cole Hamels' contract. Vance Worley's sophomore season. Jonathan Papelbon's fly ball penchant. The holes in John Mayberry Jr.'s swing. And, maybe most significantly, the team's age. 

Plenty of clouds on that Doppler radar in my head. 

I realize that not everyone here shares my inherent pessimism. Five straight NL East titles, two pennants and a World Series trophy have created a new breed of upbeat Phillies fan. 

That's just not me.

As a fellow baby-boomer Philadelphian, I have noticed a curious phenomenon over the past few years. Today's Philadelphia sports fans, particularly those under the age of 30, are most definitely not your daddy's Philadelphia fans. After all, the Phillies haven't had a losing season in a decade, have won five straight division titles, two pennants, and a World Series. Andy Reid's Eagles, despite never having taken home the Lombardi trophy, have nevertheless been fairly regular playoff participants and, at one point, captured five straight division titles. Optimism appears to run rampant in southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey.

I, however, have a different history. The first season I followed baseball in earnest was 1964, the year Gene Mauch's Phils managed to blow a 6.5 game lead with 12 to play by losing ten straight. When they finally managed to put together a great team in the mid-70s, they managed to get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs two straight years despite winning 101 games each season. By the time the team finally won their first World Series (in their 97th year as a franchise), I was already grown and pursuing graduate studies in Dallas. The Eagles of my youth were so bad that they managed to lose five consecutive games to the hated Cowboys by the scores of 38-17, 45-13, 34-14, 38-7, and 49-14. Yet in 1968 they managed, despite losing their first 11 games, to win two in a row to fall out of the O.J. Simpson sweepstakes ("Joe must go" indeed).

The Phillies once traded future Hall-of-Famer Ferguson Jenkins for Bob Buhl and Dick Ellsworth. Even worse, they traded Larry Bowa and future Hall-of-Famer Ryne Sandberg for Ivan DeJesus. The Eagles traded future Hall-of-Famer Sonny Jurgenson for Norm Snead. Classic Sixers trades included the following: Wilt Chamberlain for Archie Clark, Moses Malone for Jeff Ruland, and Charles Barkley for Jeff Hornacek.

Philadelphia sports fans' infamous cynicism and negativity, you see, are entirely explicable by their shared history—a history that goes back a century to the days of Connie Mack, who dismantled, not one, but two Philadelphia Athletics dynasties (1910-14, 1929-31) for cash in order to enhance his profit margins. This history, and the often bitter disappointments it engendered, is part and parcel of the worldview I developed in my youth. Rare triumphs (the '67 Sixers, the '74-'75 Flyers, the '80 Phillies) were to be cherished, but in the back of my mind was the always-nagging feeling that disaster was already afoot on the horizon.

This brings me to the present. I at times fancy myself to be one who can look at matters as "objectively" as possible. Thus I can look at the Phillies' recent history and acknowledge that they still should be viewed as the division favorite and contender for the National League pennant. The primary reason for this is the celebrated mound trio of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels, who by themselves should guarantee a season of 90+ wins.

But I am a Philadelphian of a certain age, and worldviews are difficult to dislodge. The glass, as always, is half empty from my vantage point. I see the threat from the resurgent Marlins, the Braves, and even the Nationals. These clubs may not be the Phils' equals now, but they are closer now than they have been for some time. I see the consistent erosion of Chase Utley's abilities due to apparently irreversible injuries, which has now progressed to the point where I regretfully must consider him to be this generation's Don Mattingly. Jimmy Rollins is nowhere close to the player he used to be, and always seems to be just a 90-foot sprint away from the disabled list because of hamstring issues. Ryan Howard, even before his Achilles injury, had regressed considerably from the days where he was the game's most feared power hitter. When will he return to the lineup? And, when he does, will he be able to plant that left foot sufficiently to drive the ball as in the past? Shane Victorino, despite his massive talent, has always been too undisciplined to be included among the game's elite players. What scares me most is the creeping age of the team's two transcendent mound aces, Halladay and Lee, now 35 and 34 years old, respectively. How long can we count on them to pitch as if they were Koufax and Drysdale?

My head still tells me to relax, that the likelihood remains that the Phils are the class of the division at least in the short term. The Philadelphian in my heart warns me, however, to be afraid, very afraid indeed. Critical realist though I am, I have not yet been able to extricate myself from the horror story that has indelibly left its imprint on my personal narrative. That being said, it's only 16 days till pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater. May that day arrive swiftly!

Wistful Reminiscences of a Philadelphia Sports Fan

Sitting on Seats from Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium at

the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY, 2001

A voice says,"Cry!"
     And I said, "What shall I cry?"
All flesh is grass
    and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
     when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
     surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
     but the word of our God will stand forever.
~Isaiah 40:6-8 (ESV)

Turning 55 has a way of focusing the mind on the important and permanent things in life, the "unseen" things that St. Paul characterizes as "eternal" that will contribute to the "eternal weight of glory" in comparison to which all our "momentary" afflictions pale to insignificance (2 Cor 4:17-18). The flip side of this impulse is to reminisce about all the other things that, however formative and existentially defining, have been lost to the passage of time.

The wistful sense of loss reared its ugly head last week with the announcement by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that the venerable Monsignor Bonner High School in Upper Darby—alma mater of Jets' Super Bowl safety Al Atkinson, St. Joe Hawk standout Mike Hauer, and Heisman Trophy winner John Cappelletti—would be shuttered in June. Then, yesterday, I took a second hit when columnist Frank Fitzpatrick published a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled "Fading Philadelphia sports memories." 

Philadelphians of a certain age, like myself, remember when their greatest sports heroes were players from the past, like Robin Roberts and Richie Ashburn of the 1950 "Whiz Kid" Phillies (who managed to get swept in the World Series!), or Chuck Bednarik, Norm Van Brocklin, and Tom Brookshier of the 1960 Eagles, who remain the city's last NFL champions. The reason, of course, is that their childhoods were dominated by such ignominious failures as the 1964 Phillies, who blew a 61/2 game lead with 12 to play by losing 10 straight games, or the "Joe Must Go" Eagles of 1968, who started 0-11 but managed to win two straight to lose out in the O. J. Simpson sweepstakes.

Yet thrilling memories remain—Dick Allen and Johnny Callison smashing homers at old Connie Mack Stadium in North Philly, Philly's own Wilt Chamberlain and the all-time great 1967 Sixers championship team playing at Convention Hall, the Broad Street Bully Flyers, the for-a-while unfulfilled potential of the Julius Erving-George McGinnis Sixers, the glory days of the Big 5 and doubleheaders at the venerable Palestra, Dick Vermeil's plucky Eagles, and especially the great Phillies teams of 1976-83 plying their trade on the unnatural green turf of South Philly's antiseptic Vet Stadium.

All these memories I cherish. They remain fixed in an eternal present tense for a man who still remembers the obscure statistics on the back of mid-'60s-era Topps cards more clearly than the literature, Latin, and calculus he ostensibly studied in his high school years. These are memories unavailable to younger fans who, in a fit of generational hubris, cannot imagine the truth of what I know first-hand, namely, that Chamberlain remains the most dominant force the game of basketball has ever witnessed.

Reminiscing like this, however, inevitably brings with it an overwhelming sense of melancholy. For, you see, memory underscores the ugly fact of impermanence. Connie Mack Stadium at 21st and Lehigh—gone now for more than 30 years, replaced by a large church campus (the row of houses on 20th Street remain, overlooking the church, but I can't drive past them without imagining the old photo of the houses sporting rooftop bleachers for the 1929 World Series). Johnny Callison, Wes Covington, and Chris Short of the '64 Phils—all dead. The great trio of Phillies announcers whose radio broadcasts graced every summer evening for years in the 1970s: By Saam, Rich Ashburn and Harry Kalas—all dead. Big 5 stars Ken Durrett of LaSalle and Howard Porter of Villanova, whose titanic battles from '69-'71 remain etched in my memory—both dead, the latter the victim of murder on a lonely Minneapolis street. The Vet—imploded seven years ago. Even the seemingly indestructible Chamberlain and Reggie White—both dead prematurely.

"All flesh," the prophet declared, "is like grass"—impermanent, susceptible to the decay that is the lot of all created things. It doesn't matter whether you are the King of Babylon (the intended target in Isaiah), a baseball Hall-of-Famer, a current NFL star, a college professor, or a humble factory worker. All share the same fate. And this alone should be sufficient to focus the mind on what is of lasting and eternal value.

The Apostle Peter quotes Isaiah 40:6-8 at length to apply the final clause ("the word of the Lord abides forever") to the message about Christ (kyriou is clearly an objective genitive in context, pace J. R. Michaels) embodied in the gospel message (cf. Isa 40:9) that, because it is "living and abiding," serves as the implanted "seed" bringing about the effective regeneration of his readers (1 Pet 1:22-25). What matters ultimately is what is permanent. And nothing is more permanent than the unilateral covenant promises of God. In Isaiah 40-55, the "good news" is the message of God's faithfulness to his promises in bringing Israel and Judah back from exile in a second Exodus. The New Testament authors, Peter included, believed this "gospel" came to fruition in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is this message, when proclaimed or read, that serves as the means by which God in his mercy brings people to faith and gives them the new birth because of which they will never die in the ultimate sense.

My own personal narrative is permeated by references to the sporting events and heroes who have delivered so much pleasure and, yes, pain down through the years. If that is all I had, however, mine would be a very melancholy, pitiful life indeed. Thanks to God for regenerating me through the gospel message, which alone provides coherence to my narrative and makes that life worth living. Soli Deo Gloria!

Some Reflections on the Tim Tebow Phenomenon, Part 2

In Tuesday's post, I introduced the subject of the burgeoning popularity of Denver Broncos' quarterback Tim Tebow among evangelical Christians and their defensive reaction to the skeptical—indeed, critical—response to him by the overwhelming majority of football pundits.

I have nothing personally against Tebow. Indeed, he is a brother in Christ who has, by all accounts, followed St. Paul's injunction to live a life "worthy" of the gospel (Phil 1:27) and has not intentionally drawn attention to himself away from his Lord Jesus Christ. So far, so good. Nevertheless, I have some, albeit minor, concerns about the propriety and effectiveness of how he testifies to his faith publicly, and more substantial problems with how his Christian defenders have responded to perceived and actual slights against him. In this post, I will address the former of these concerns, leaving the latter to a subsequent installment.

The matter of athletes using their fame as a "platform" for Christian witness has been taken up admirably by Tim Gombis over at Faith Improvised (see his posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Without duplicating what Professor Gombis has said, I would like to focus on three matters relevant to the discussion.

First, the type of Christian "witness" exemplified by Tebow's public post game "thanks" to God and John 3:16-highlighted eyeblack trivializes the nature of authentic Christian witness. The most salient factor in understanding Tebow is knowledge of his evangelical background, whose ethos he epitomizes. Evangelical Christianity, by any definition, takes seriously the parting commission Jesus gave his disciples to witness about him and make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:19; Acts 1:8), rightly discerning that this responsibility to "evangelize" falls upon all of Jesus' followers.

However, evangelicalism in its American incarnation, perhaps due to the pervasive cultural influence of advertising, has always fallen victim to, and even promoted, a sloganeering and visible token approach to witness. Nowhere is this more evident than in the "WWJD" craze of the 1990s or in the ubiquitous ichthys (fish) decals found on cars ostensibly operated by Christians—though the effectiveness of such may be questioned when, as happened to me once, the driver of said vehicle flashes a Bronx salute! Or consider a prayer I heard back in my high school days that we Christian students would carry our Bibles to school to witness to the gospel. I would likewise place Tebow's John 3:16 eyeblack in the same category. In all these examples the Christian message is reduced to a slogan and/or is portrayed by a visible token symbolically designed to represent and promote the truth. One might respond that such examples are harmless, and to a certain extent I would agree. Nevertheless, the fundamental question begs asking: Is this what the New Testament writers had in mind when they spoke of Christian witness in the world?

The irony is that this approach to witness bears striking similarity to the behavior of the "scribes and Pharisees" whom Jesus excoriated for "mak[ing] their phylacteries broad and their fringes long" (Matt 23:5, in literal observance of the Mosaic prescript of Deut 6:8), and for "lov[ing] to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners" (Matt 6:5). In contrast to such visible displays of piety, Jesus commands: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Matt 6:6). Reflecting on this verse not long ago, I was reminded of N. T. Wright's dedication of his work The Climax of the Covenant (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991) to his parents for their example of, inter alia, "undemonstrative Christian witness" (xiii). I thought then, as I do now, that this wholly admirable perspective is less intelligible on this side of the pond than it is in England.

Yes, the New Testament enjoins Jesus' followers to evangelize—indeed, always to be ready to provide an answer to the inquirer (1 Pet 3:15). Moreover, I would argue that everything a Christian does must be done as a Christian. This means that the Christian is ultimately building for the kingdom in everything he or she does, and that one's identity and priorities as a Christian must influence how one proceeds in every endeavor, whether as a minister, professor, politician, printer, or athlete. There are truly no closet Christians, and Tebow is to be commended for joining scores of other Christians in the boldness of their faith. What I question is the necessity, or even the propriety, of thus trivializing such witness in visible, contextually-inappropriate ways that, whether designed to or not, serve ultimately to draw attention to oneself.

Second, the type of Christian "witness" exemplified by Tebow's public post game "thanks" to God and John 3:16-highlighted eyeblack trivializes the content of the Christian gospel. This claim opens a whole can of worms, which hopefully I will address in the coming weeks. Indeed, such a claim runs counter to a veritable tradition in evangelical circles that seeks to boil down the gospel mesage to its essence so as not to overly complicate matters. Some 46 years later, I still remember my 4th grade teacher at the local Lutheran grade school, John Kieschnick (who later went on to become a prominent Missouri-Synod Lutheran minister in Houston), say that John 3:16 is "the gospel in a nutshell." That it may be, but what it says must be fleshed out considerably to understand what exactly it is saying. The gospel, as I will argue, is far more than a message of the availability of "fire insurance" through believing in Jesus.

A far greater problem, however, is not limited to Tebow, but is shared by countless Christian athletes who thank God after victory, either explicitly or implicitly attributing the game's outcome to the providential hand of God (Tebow, it must be said, has also thanked God after losses, thus demonstrating keener logic than many others). This raises a question, articulated clearly by the most learned of American sports pundits, Bob Costas, as to whether or not God is in the business of caring, let alone actively deciding, the outcomes of sporting events. The simple answer to this complex question is, from a Calvinist perspective, both "Yes" and "No." Clearly, however, it would be precarious indeed to posit the outcomes of individual games to the workings of God's direct, causative providence, no matter how comprehensive one understands God's sovereign plan or "decree" to be. Thanking God for outcomes of individual games simply trivializes God's sovereignty and, ironically, does little to enhance Christian witness to people in the outside word who, like Costas, don't have to think too hard to dredge up countless counter-examples.

This last point leads to a third and final observation. The type of Christian "witness" exemplified by Tebow's public post game "thanks" to God and John 3:16-highlighted eyeblack is often counterproductive in today's cultural climate. Given the state of the cultural climate in the postmodern West, one common reaction could be characterized thus: "That's great. I'm glad that works for you, but I don't feel that need for myself." More commonly, however—and I say this as one with years of experience on a factory floor—the reaction is cynicism bordering on hostility. Gombis points to Sinclair Lewis's 1927 novel, Elmer Gantry, and I well remember the first time I saw Richard Brooks's 1960 film of the novel, starring Burt Lancaster in an Oscar-winning take on the title character. That is how vocal Christian evangelists are viewed by millions of non-Christians throughout the West, and trivial displays of piety, no matter how well-meaning, are not apt to convince them otherwise. It is very public displays of hypocrisy of this sort, not the theological message of the cross, that have contributed most to the immunity of many to the persuasive power of public displays of piety and would-be witness. We indeed live in a time that is less accepting of overt displays of Christian piety than in previous generations. No one disputes that. But if so, indulging in nostalgia or ignoring the indisputable are futile enterprises. Would it not be wisest to adjust our approach accordingly?

Our Lord, when instructing his disciples in preparation for their short-term missionary foray into Galilee (and, by implication, our post-Easter mission to the world), warned them thus of opposition: "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matt 10:16). My concern is that wisdom is the missing element in much of evangelical witness today. How, then, should we proceed? How, that is, can Christians more effectively demonstrate the truth and power of the Gospel? Proclamation and reasoned argument have a necessary role, to be sure—but in the proper contexts. Just as important are the individual lives of Christ's followers as they "adorn" the message of the gospel with their good works (e.g., Tit 1:10). "Faith without works" is as deleterious to Christian mission as it is futile in the matter of one's individual justification.

Most important of all, however, is what Francis Schaeffer once called "The Mark of the Christian," namely, the love each of us is to show for other believers in the Lord (John 13:35). The question we need to ask ourselves is this: how zealous are we as Christians to manifest the love toward our brothers and sisters that Jesus said would be the mark of his followers? And if we are not thus zealous, why aren't we? And have we given due consideration to the unintended consequences of this failure on the progress of Christian mission?

Some Reflections on the Tim Tebow Phenomenon, Part 1

Yesterday's stunning overtime playoff victory by the Denver Broncos over the heavily-favored Pittsburgh Steelers revived a phenomenon I had thought was in danger of going into eclipse, namely, the cult of Tim Tebow. Not surprisingly, most of the devotees of this cult self-identify as evangelical, "born again" Christians, who—at least in America—are wont to consider themselves to be a minority religious group oppressed and disrespected by the "liberal" forces at work in the wider culture. Thus when a high-profile professional athlete comes along who openly proclaims his faith, demonstrates it visibly by adopting a prayerful posture after plays ("Tebowing"), and participates in an anti-abortion ad (here), it is to be expected that many Christians would wish him well and even begin rooting for the Broncos if they had no former gridiron allegiance. Precedent for this may be found in the Dallas Cowboys of the 1970s, whose coach Tom Landry and quarterback Roger Staubach were shrewdly used by marketing genius Tex Schramm to forge the image of what became known as "America's Team" (much to the chagrin and gastrointestinal discomfort of Eagles fans like myself).


Nevertheless, the extent to which allegiance to Tebow has grown to cult status is, to my mind, unprecedented in my fifty years of following sports. Critics of Tebow, such as Boomer Esiason (here), are assumed to base their criticism less on his play than on his overt religious faith. Indeed, many accuse his critics of hostility based solely on this criterion, thereby feeding the flock's sense of undeserved cultural marginalization. Some, such as Fox's Jen Engel (here), have even opined that Tebow wouldn't be treated in this fashion were he a Muslim.  Positively, some even have pointed to Tebow's 316 passing yards in yesterday's game as divine vindication in light of his once having been barred from painting John 3:16 into his eye black (here).


Quite apart from the irrelevance—indeed, silliness—of this last observation, one must look seriously at the basis for the near-unanimous panning of Tebow by football experts. Is it due to the experts' disdain for Christianity? In a word, the answer is "No." I am not questioning the probability that Tebow's outspoken faith rubs many critics the wrong way. However, if this is the real basis of their "hostility," this is certainly a new direction in football punditry. The fact of the matter is that Tebow is not the first, nor is he the only current, star athlete to be a very public Christian. One thinks of Bobby Jones, the star basketball player in the '70s and '80s for the North Carolina Tarheels and Philadelphia 76ers. Or Orel Hershiser, the former Dodger World Series hero and winner of 204 big league games. Or Yankee stars Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera, the latter of whom is my choice as the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history. Or "The Minister of Defense," the late Reggie White, he of the 199.5 sacks and arguably the greatest defensive lineman in NFL history. Or—even most to the point—Brian Dawkins, Tebow's teammate and former Eagles All-Pro safety. Every one of these players was lauded by friend and foe alike both for their athletic prowess and Christian lifestyle. Once again, perhaps the culture has shifted to the point where using athletic events as a platform for verbal Christian witness is less accepted than in the past. If so, we Christians will have to adjust accordingly.


The real reason, however, for the skepticism surrounding Tebow is that, to be frank, his mechanics are terrible, he is an inaccurate passer, and he is not even close to being a top-tier NFL quarterback. I have followed the game for fifty years and have seen all the greats—from Unitas and Starr to Tarkenton and Staubach to Montana and Marino to Elway and Favre to Manning and Brady to Rodgers and Brees. Tebow simply cannot be mentioned in the same breath with players such as these. I will gladly acknowledge that his unorthodox style and prowess with a non-standard NFL offense may have led to some skepticism and consequent underrating. His size and running ability have caused many to compare him to former Bears quarterback Bobby Douglass. This is unfair to Tebow, however, for, as poor a passer as Tebow is—his 72.9 passer rating this year is well below average—Douglass was far worse, as is attested by his career 48.5 rating. He also may be better than Vince Young, another star college quarterback whose contribution to the 2011 Eagles included a four-interception performance against Seattle that likely kept the team out of the playoffs. But he has a long way to go before he can be mentioned in the same breath with Steve Young, to whose standard Tebow should aspire.


In my next post I will look at some biblical perspectives to analyze the Tebow phenomenon. Before I do that, however, I would like to ask my Christian readers two questions for them to ponder. First, Why is it that so many Christians in America have taken up the Tim Tebow banner when they have not done so for players like Rivera, White, and Dawkins, all of whom are far superior performers at their respective sports? Second, How would they respond to a prominent Muslim athlete who ostentatiously took out a prayer rug every game and gave praise to Allah after every victory? I have some suspicions about how the first question would best be answered, but I have no doubt about the answer to the second question. You see, I remember well the public conversions to Islam of two of the greatest athletes in my lifetime, Cassius Clay and Lew Alcindor. More to the point, I remember full well the reaction of mainstream America to these conversions, not least that of the Christians among whom I lived and worshipped. If indeed most Christians answer this latter question honestly, they have very shaky ground upon which to criticize those who dislike Tebow for similar reasons.