Tim Tebow (White House photo, Wikimedia Commons)
The traditional media are agog over professional football player Tim Tebow. After he quarterbacked his team to another late comeback victory last week, the ESPN website's headline blared: How does he do it? The implication was that Tebow's athletic success somehow is unusual or surprising, and because Tebow very publicly displays his deep religious beliefs, his success on the field somehow makes him a miracle worker, if not himself a miracle. Strange as it is, Tebow's religious beliefs have become the most prominent aspect of the reporting and commentary on his success at winning football games, and given how publicly and ostentatiously he flaunts those beliefs, that's obviously by intentional design. People love him for it or hate him for it. Strange as it is, many in the traditional media hype Tebow's overt religious devotion as correlative if not causal of his athletic success, but the traditional media in this country seem to have a reflexive need to infuse religion into just about
everything, so they must consider Tebow their very special gift. But stepping back from the hyperbolic shrill, all it takes is a quick perusal of the careers and lives of some other talented and successful athletes to reveal something more obvious working where some prefer to see their interpretations of intimations of the divine.
Among the professional quarterbacks of the past decades we find a wide mix of football backgrounds and approaches to life. For example, Terry Bradshaw and Troy Aikman both were the number one picks in the first rounds of their years' college drafts, and both had Hall of Fame careers while leading their respective teams to multiple Super Bowl championships, but neither was overtly religious. How did they do it? Jeff George and Tim Couch also were the top picks in their years' respective drafts and they both went on to have forgettable pro careers. Would it have made a difference if they'd been publicly devout?
One of the themes behind the Tebow religious hype is that he is exceeding expectations, which reinforces the theme that his religion may be at least part of the reason for it. But is he really exceeding expectations, and if so could there be other explanations for it? Let's consider some examples of quarterbacks who clearly did exceed expectations.
- Shy with the media and his religion never a topic of conversation, Joe Montana's college football career was highlighted by his leading a series of seemingly miraculous comeback victories, but he was considered to lack the size and arm strength to be a professional star. He had to wait until the third round to be drafted into pro football but went on to lead his team to four Super Bowl titles, and his Hall of Fame career came to be defined by an unflappable cool under pressure that saw him direct 31 late come-from-behind victories, including in his first League Championship game and his third Super Bowl. How did he do it?
- A hard partier who went on to become known for winning games in dramatic fashion, even while hung over, the young Brett Favre was not even offered a scholarship to a major college football program. He was successful enough at the only university that did offer him a scholarship, and he was drafted into the pros, but not until the second round. And early in his career he was diagnosed with a degenerative disease of the hip that some felt would quickly make him physically incapable of playing. But his professional career lasted two decades, he started every game for an incredible seventeen consecutive years, he was one of the most prolific passers in league history, he was the first player ever to win three league MVP awards, and he led his team to its first Super Bowl title in nearly three decades. How did he do it?
- Tom Brady has had gracious things to say about Tebow, but is not himself outwardly or even apparently religious. Beyond football, he is known mostly as a ladies' man, having dated actresses before marrying a supermodel. Despite having a successful college career, Brady's professional potential was considered so questionable that he wasn't drafted until the sixth round. He has won three Super Bowls and two league MVPs, and his team once again is contending to win it all. How does he do it?
- Aaron Rodgers is actually very religious, but he very deliberately chooses not to talk about it unless asked. He doesn't make great public displays of his beliefs, which seems in line with the Christian gospel verses Matthew 6:5 and 6:6:
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Coming out of college, Rodgers was expected to be a high draft pick, but fell almost to the end of the first round. He started his pro career as Favre's backup, missed most of his second season due to a broken foot, and only became a starter in his fourth season, after Favre retired. Last year, in his sixth season, Rodgers quarterbacked the Super Bowl champions. With the current regular season nearing its end, he has thus far led his team to a perfect record. Still in his prime, he has the best passer rating ever. How does he do it?
Unlike all these quarterbacks, whose professional credentials seemed at first questionable, Tim Tebow's success is not actually a great surprise. Although some doubted his professional potential when he came out of college, former Super Bowl champion coaches Jon Gruden and Tony Dungy were among those who predicted he would become a major star. And why wouldn't he? Tebow is a physical specimen, built like a linebacker and as fleet as a running back. Although home schooled as a child, Tebow was able to play organized high school football, and when he entered college he was considered one of the top recruits in the nation. He ended up at one of the country's elite football programs, and over his career led it to two national championships. In a different season, he became the first underclassman to be awarded the Heisman Trophy, as the nation's best college player. Unlike so many future professional superstars, Tebow entered the pros already a legend. By any measure, he was one of the greatest college players ever.
How does Tebow do it? It's not complicated and it's not mysterious and it's not mystical. It is, in fact, no different than with any other successful football player. Tim Tebow is a phenomenal athlete. He may turn out to be one of those unusual talents who takes a little longer for opposing coaches to figure out how defend, and despite his great athleticism his career in professional football still may end up pedestrian or worse. He also may turn out to be a Hall of Famer, with a record comparable to those mentioned above. We don't yet know. We do know that Tebow is supremely gifted, hard working, and self-disciplined. Those qualities are the keys to his athletic success. They're the keys to most athletic success. Tebow's overt religiosity is no more responsible for his athletic skills than were Terry Bradshaw's struggles with depression, Brett Favre's hard-partying, or Joe Montana's diffident determination to keep his off-field personal life mostly private. Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers win without flaunting their religious beliefs. Tebow thus far has been winning while flaunting his. Not only is there no causal or even correlational relationship, there isn't even a pattern.
There are plenty of religiously devout athletes in the world who never succeed beyond playing with friends and family. In the past several decades, perhaps the greatest athletes in team sports in the United States were Wayne Gretzky, Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan and Bill Russell. Each was supremely gifted, hard working, and self-disciplined. None was or is overtly religious. The most successful coach in professional basketball history was Phil Jackson, whose coaching career seems to have been delayed because team owners for a long time were reluctant to hire a man known as a bit of a hippie. An overt involvement with counterculture is treated a bit differently than is an overt involvement with traditional forms of religion.
If there is a theistic deity, and if that theistic deity pays close attention to and directly influences the doings of humans, that theistic deity has a lot of complex decisions to make. Humans have an almost unfathomable capacity to create disasters for themselves. They are destroying the very climate and environment they have been gifted to inhabit. They instigate endless wars for the pettiest and most surreal of rationales, and they massacre each other by the millions. They concoct and proliferate weapons of destructive power capable of killing every one of them. They somehow manage to allow people of incomprehensible greed and selfishness and bigotry and cruelty and violence to control most of the world's human power and wealth while hundreds of millions if not billions of people struggle simply to feed themselves and find relatively safe shelter. There are also natural disasters and pandemic diseases capable of devastating entire populations. Anyone who believes that a theistic deity pays such close attention to the doings of humans as to direct the success of one man in one form of athletics that is popular in one country while allowing everything else to resolve itself so continuously catastrophically has a very strange conception of that deity's values. To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Xenophanes: to a horse, God looks like a horse.
Tim Tebow is a great athlete, and he has been enjoying great success playing professional football. He enjoyed great success playing college football. He enjoyed great success playing high school football. Tim Tebow's athletic prowess is no great mystery, and his athletic success requires no divine explanations. He is a great athlete. Sometimes a horse is just a horse. Sometimes a great athlete is just a great athlete.
