Tim Tebow, Religion, and Sports: Is God Really Influencing Football Games?

Anyone who has spent some portion of their life watching a sporting event has seen it in the past. Whether it has come in the wake of a scoring play, a postgame comment, or a fumble that apparently cost the game for a non-believing running back, it has been demonstrated on the field of play. Thanking the Almighty for a team’s positive outcome.

I’ve never claimed to be a religious person. Whenever I heard an athlete praising the Lord, I just assumed they were big Hawaii Five-O fans and they were paying homage to Jack Lord. How was I supposed to know that there was a guy with a snowy white beard and sandals who had more panache than Jack did?

Perhaps you have inadvertently done it yourself: dropping down onto one knee to tie a pesky shoelace, or to pick up a shiny penny. Apparently, there is a name for this. Tebowing. It’s become so prevalent throughout the Broncos’ season, I almost thought I saw a poor schlub Tebowing alongside the road recently when, on closer inspection, he was changing a spare tire.

Tim Tebow’s rise as an NFL quarterback has been so newsworthy and polarizing a topic, that this is the second article I’ve written on the subject. (Well, that, and I ran out of things to write about.) Watch a Tebow narrative for five minutes and perhaps the only Peter, Paul and Mary you won’t hear about is the folk group.

After a stunning upset over the weekend against Pittsburgh, Tim is only a matter of three wins away from canonization in Denver or, barring that, the nomination for the Republican candidate as President. After all, it didn’t take long for someone to note the correlation between his 316 passing yards on Sunday and John (Elway) 3:16. I believe the passage goes something like, “Let he who is without Demaryius Thomas be eliminated in the wild card round of the playoffs.”

However, Tim Tebow is by no means the only athlete who has been heard giving credit to the man upstairs: well, the one who has a better view than the defensive coordinator. It’s always been kind of odd to hear it associated with sports. One would think that, if the Almighty had a list of pressing concerns, whether Stanford kicker Jordan Williamson made or missed his two field goals to lose the Fiesta Bowl would be pretty low on that list behind eradicating pestilence, poverty, and those played-out Geico and Progressive Insurance commercials. (Sorry, Flo, no one gets that excited about car insurance.)

Yet, more often than not you will notice an athlete crossing the goal line, finish line, or home plate and point straight up to the heavens as if they were responding to a question about where might the moon be found on any given night. The catch-22 about thanking the Almighty after a momentous victory is: What about the other guys? How does one explain that? Did they run afoul of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Morgan Freeman, et al.? Did the losing team worship false idols prior to kickoff? Say, a honey badger? Perhaps LSU should re-watch The Ten Commandments where the scene with the golden calf (in place of a crystal football) might give them an idea or two about why they lost.

Football fans will remember Hall of Famer Reggie White, who earned himself the nickname Minister of Defense not only because of his on-the-field prowess but also because he was an ordained Evangelical minister, which had nothing to do with the number of quarterbacks he collared. Certainly, Reggie was in a class of his own but his outward devotion was, by no means, unique. If you remember last year’s BCS National Championship Game, when Auburn defeated Oregon, it was almost as if Ned Flanders had hijacked the postgame press conference. Tigers head coach Gene Chizik and quarterback Cam Newton pointed to how such a win proves how His Holiness works wonders. Oregon might have angered someone with their choice of chartreuse uniform that evening but I doubt the product of the folks over at Phil Knight, Inc. warranted a metaphorical lightning bolt (plus the roof was closed that night, so it would have been unusual in more ways than one).

A skeptic — ahem — may look at all of this and say that’s it not really fair the Almighty gets credit for always picking the winning team. How come no one knows ahead of time, perhaps allowing me to win on one of my ten-team parlays for once? You may remember the Buffalo Bills’ Stevie Johnson throwing the Good Book at his Creator on Twitter in 2010, when a dropped pass in a game against the Steelers led him to write, “I praise you 24/7!!! And this how you do me!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How??? I’ll never forget this!!! Ever!! Thx Tho.” To say nothing of Stevie’s gratuitous use of exclamation points and question marks, this is pretty harsh — and I know something about 5000 years of grudges. No need to get too angry, man, the King of Kings might be all-knowing but some people call him ‘The Big Cheese’, I think, because he’s a Packer fan. Maybe he just turned the channel for that brief second.

Of course, talk of the G-word is not just limited to action on the field. There have been numerous occasions where the camera cuts away to fans in the stands with hands clasped, and you can just imagine what they’re thinking. “I’m praying for world peace and for World Peace to finally make a stinking three-point shot.” (Probably not in that order.)

Going back to Tebow, it is very difficult for a mere sportswriter to attempt to win over the Benny Hinn set on this topic. If Tebow wins, it’s divine intervention. If he loses, he’s Job. Hey, for my money, Tom Brady is the Chosen One. He’s an NFL quarterback, with a supermodel wife, millions of dollars in the bank, three Super Bowl rings, and two MVP trophies. Also, he’s got the odds and home field advantage on his side this weekend. If the Broncos do find a way to win this weekend however, you may hear me utter, “Holy crap!”