{"id":2800,"date":"2011-10-21T10:43:04","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T16:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=2800"},"modified":"2011-10-21T10:43:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T16:43:04","slug":"tim-tebow-football-anti-christian-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=2800","title":{"rendered":"Tim Tebow, Football & Anti-Christian Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

For football fans and even for some non-football fans, say the name Tim Tebow\u00a0and you are sure to start a “discussion” that will be anything but mild.\u00a0 Tebow,perhaps unlike any other athlete in professional sports, engenders strong feelings.\u00a0 There seems to be no middle ground when it comes to evaluating Tim Tebow\u00a0— the football player and the person.\u00a0 From the talking heads on ESPN (see yours truly quoted in an ESPN The Magazine<\/em> article here<\/a>), the NFL Network, Fox Sports, CBS Sports, and the local media in Denver, everyone has an opinion about Tim Tebow.\u00a0 Sadly,\u00a0many of those opinions are rooted in what can only be explained as anti-Christian bias.<\/p>\n

Most\u00a0“analysts”\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0try to\u00a0hide their religious bias when it comes to Tebow, but there are a few who\u00a0are\u00a0open (and seemingly proud) of their terribly skewed opinions.\u00a0 For all the Boomer Esiason’s\u00a0<\/a>and Jim Mora, Jr’s.,\u00a0who hide their disdain for Tebow\u00a0by offering up\u00a0their daughters in marriage, there are the Jason Whitlock’s of the\u00a0sports’ world who openly disparage not only Tim Tebow, but anyone foolish enough to\u00a0even give the young man a chance to fail or succeed on his own.\u00a0 I guess\u00a0Tebow\u00a0would get a fairer shake from Whitlock and others if, as Chris Collinsworth\u00a0pointed out\u00a0on\u00a0a recent edition of Inside the NFL, he was out carousing at all hours of the night instead of spending time\u00a0doing missions work in Asia.\u00a0 One can only imagine the break Tebow would get if he was a reformed dog killer!<\/p>\n

Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock, whose claim to fame seems to be\u00a0as an offensive lineman on Jeff George’s high school football team, recently\u00a0wrote a scathing article\u00a0on\u00a0the Denver Quarterback entitled, “Don’t let Tebow hype fool you.”<\/a>\u00a0 Using the word “fool” in his article was appropriate, but not for the reasons that Whitlock might have originally intended.<\/p>\n

If Whitlock was trying to hide his religious bias — which he seems to think he is doing — he did about as poor a job as one could imagine.\u00a0 His opening paragraphs telegraph exactly where the article would head and, it would be all downhill.\u00a0 Writes Whitlock:<\/p>\n

I hope I don\u2019t get struck by lightning or my Tebow-loving, FOXSports.com colleague Jen Engel for writing that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not for or against Touchdown Timmy. I\u2019m a Kansas City-fed, Show Me State, fence-sitting skeptic when it comes to the religious symbol\/Broncos<\/a>\u00a0quarterback. You have to show me more than a 4-of-10, 79-yard passing half to get my heart racing about a Tebow Era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I will not disagree with Whitlock when he says that he is “Kansas City-fed”<\/em>\u00a0(apparently quite well-fed by looking at his picture), but his own words which follow clearly contradict his contention of being some type of objective, “fence-siting skeptic” when it comes to Tim Tebow.\u00a0 Even if that were true (which I don’t believe), I’m not sure there is a fence big enough to hold Mr. Whitlock while he makes up his mind about Tim Tebow.<\/p>\n

In the very next paragraph, Whitlock\u00a0feigns shock at\u00a0Coach Tony Dungy’s\u00a0positive words directed at Tim Tebow\u00a0and\u00a0his belief that\u00a0Denver Coach John Fox needed to start the former Florida Gator in their\u00a0next game in Miami.\u00a0 But, when Whitlock calls Dungy a “religious zealot”<\/em> who has caught “Tebow religion”<\/em> and has “fallen for the hype”<\/em>\u00a0surrounding Tebow, then all pretense of impartiality\u00a0flies out the window.\u00a0 Tony Dungy\u00a0maybe many things,\u00a0including being zealous for his faith (since when is that a bad thing), but to imply that Coach Dungy\u00a0is a fool for falling for the Tebow thing is clear evidence of an anti-Christian bias on the part of Whitlock.\u00a0 Can you imagine him writing something similar if the football player in question were a Muslim?\u00a0 Me neither.<\/p>\n

Fools like Whitlock will continue to spout nonsense.\u00a0 Whether they understand the “Tebow\u00a0thing” or not, many in the sports’ world will never accept Tim Tebow as an NFL quarterback, no matter what he might do on the football field.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan once quipped that “facts are stubborn things.”<\/em>\u00a0 The facts surrounding Tim Tebow\u00a0are that he\u00a0has been a proven winner — with the stats (including passing)\u00a0to back it up — at every level that he has ever played the game of football.\u00a0 At the University of Florida, he led his team to two National Championships, the last of which was against a Sam Bradford-led Oklahoma team in the very stadium that Tebow will return to on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Broncos have never beaten the Dolphins in Miami.\u00a0 On Sunday, they will be led by Tim Tebow, one of the most exciting and successful quarterbacks to ever play at the college level.\u00a0 I can’t\u00a0see into\u00a0the future, but it is often said that the past is one of the best predictors of the future.\u00a0 If that is the case, then look for Tim Tebow and the 2011 Denver Broncos to do what no other Denver quarterback or team has ever done — win in South Florida.<\/p>\n

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For football fans and even for some non-football fans, say the name Tim Tebow\u00a0and you are sure to start a “discussion” that will be anything but mild.\u00a0 Tebow,perhaps unlike any other athlete in professional sports, engenders strong feelings.\u00a0 There seems to be no middle ground when it comes to evaluating Tim Tebow\u00a0— the football player…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,35,38],"tags":[1451,173,1452,3370,1449,1448,1233,701,722,1450,3392,3394,985,991],"class_list":["post-2800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-religion","category-sports","tag-anit-christian-bias","tag-boomer-esiason","tag-chris-collinsworth","tag-christianity","tag-fox-sports","tag-jason-whitlock","tag-john-fox","tag-national-football-league","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-network","tag-religion","tag-sports","tag-tim-tebow","tag-tony-dungy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-Ja","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2800"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2806,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800\/revisions\/2806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}