More Words about Tim Tebow, Some from Fran Tarkenton, Star QB of Yesteryear

Fran Tarkenton was a quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, then the New York Giants, and back again to us in Vikingland.  He ‘visited’ the Super Bowl three times, losing all three.    He was a wildcat quarterback of his day, creative, bright, athletic, clever and quick enough with his body and mind   to stay alive for another play and another day at a time when destroying quarterbacks was a regular strategy.   

My God was he exciting to watch in action!    He was born to be a wildcat, and played like one.    He was allowed to do just that in the days before all quarterbacks are stripped of themselves to be squeezed into the mold of today’s  stand-up  pocket quarter back mold.  

Tim Tebow, although a heavy weight in the ring compared to Fran, seems to be another wildcat.  

Brett Favre was  the  Brett Favre, the GREAT, because he spent his life using his native creativity and other native wildcat  abilities  making him the magician on the football that he so often was playing the game to win and have fun doing it.   During his early years ‘guiding’ the Green Bay Packers he wouldn’t and couldn’t remember the plays.    He had no discipline.   His coach, Mike Holmgren, tried hard to corral the Mustang, but never won the battle.   Instead he smartly gave his star enough room to do what he felt he had to , but in the mean time, in between time, the  coached  trained him enough  to follow general game  strategies  laid out for him as often as the quarterback could.

Like so many things in modern life, politicians, reporters,  coaches, teachers, fans in the know and the know-nothings, ad people, Hollywood,  cultural and religious norms, some Black, others White dictate molds into which all human activity must be reduced.   Our universities in the social science business are the worst of all institutions creating automatons.

Today’s Viking’s team has a back up quarterback , Joe Webb, with  Fran Takenton’s  exceptional  physical and quick thinking abilities, but is bigger by a score or so  pounds, incredibly speedy, taller by five inches,  naturally sly and elusive, very powerfully balanced, and can throw the ball nearly 70 yards….. fairly  accurately.   

Viking coaches are training this star before his time to be a pocket quarterback rather than to groom some around his native ‘wildcat’ talents like  Fran Tarkenton of yesteryear, or Brett Favre of yesterday.

 Fran Tarkenton has written a letter to the Wall Street Journal worth our attention whether we love professional football or not.    In America, c. 2012, it is the greatest show in town.   Fran writes about Tim and pro football:

Does God Care Who Wins Football Games?

After a moment of devotion, our team would all shout in unison,

‘Now let’s go kill those S.O.B.’s!’

By FRAN TARKENTON

On Sunday, when Denver Bronco wide receiver Demaryius Thomas caught a pass from Tim Tebow on the first play of overtime and ran it all the way for a game-winning touchdown, the stadium erupted. At once, people cried that it was a miracle, and Mr. Tebow went down to pray on one knee in his signature pose. Millions of viewers already knew the first words he would say whenever a reporter caught up to him for a postgame interview: “First of all, I want to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”

Tim Tebow is not unique. Even on his own team, there are notably devout players like safety Brian Dawkins. In fact, the NFL has had a number of players who were outspoken in their faith. Think of quarterback Kurt Warner, who famously went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to a pair of league most-valuable-player awards and three Super Bowl appearances. Or Reggie White, one of the greatest defensive linemen of all time, who was also an ordained minister, nicknamed the “Minister of Defense.” The list goes on.

Religion certainly played a role in the game when I played. I grew up the son of a Pentecostal Holiness minister—we were charismatic before charismatic was cool. I was in church Wednesday night, Friday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night—every week of my childhood. I was there at the first-ever national camp for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, in Estes Park, Co., in 1956, along with everyone from legendary NFL quarterback Otto Graham to a young Don Meredith (although fellow quarterback Don and I didn’t make it to many of the meetings). When I went to the NFL, I needed special dispensation from the church to play on Sundays.

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ReutersDenver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow prays after the Broncos defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Denver on Sunday.

As a player, though, I never understood why God would care who won a game between my team and another. It seemed like there were many far more important things going on in the world. There were religious guys on both teams. If God gets credit for the win, does he also take blame for defeat?

For what it’s worth, my forays into hoping for divine intervention didn’t work out. I prayed fervently before each of the three Super Bowls we Minnesota Vikings played in. We played against the Dolphins, the Steelers and the Raiders. I don’t know about the first two games, but I was sure God would be on our side for the game against the Raiders! After all, they were the villains of the league, and it was hard to believe they had more Christians on their team than on our saintly Vikings. We lost.

Faith had a place in every locker room I was in. When I played for the New York Giants, team owner Wellington Mara, a devout Catholic, invited half the priests in New York City into the locker room before games. Sometimes it was hard to find my teammates among all the priests. I’m sure Mara hoped it would somehow help the team win, but it was never enough to get us into the playoffs.

Before every game, no matter what team I was on at the time, the coach would always ask the most devout player to say a prayer. This would happen after we’d already been out warming up—so we’d all seen the crowd, we were in full uniform (complete with eye black doubling as war paint), and the intensity of the week had built up to a near frenzy in the locker room.

The prayer was always pretty much for the same thing: Let there not be any injuries, let everybody play a good game—anything except to win the game. No one ever asked to win the game, probably for fear that God would punish us for asking. After this moment of devotion, the team would all shout in unison, “Now let’s go kill those S.O.B.’s!”

We often attribute supernatural origins to football success, from Roger Staubach’s 1975 “Hail Mary” pass to Franco Harris’s “Immaculate Reception” in 1972, and we enshrine plays with names like the “Holy Roller” in 1978 and the “Music City Miracle” in 2000.

Although faith has been a part of football so long, a player like Mr. Tebow can still be extremely controversial among fans and pundits. But seriously, isn’t it refreshing that the chatter around the NFL is about a great athlete with great character who says and does all the right things and is a relentless leader for his team—and not about more arrests and bad behavior from our presumptive “heroes”?

Tim Tebow is the story of this football season, and a great story it is.

Obama’s Marxist Effort to Control Religion Defeated by U.S. Supreme Court

Hosannas for the Court

A unanimous ruling for religious freedom, and a rebuke to Obama.

 Opinion page at the Wall Street Journal, sent by Mark Waldeland:

 

 ”It was a banner day for religious freedom yesterday as the Supreme Court ruled that government can’t tell religious institutions whom they can hire and fire as “ministers.” The unanimous decision was a crushing rebuke to the Obama Administration, which had taken the radical position that churches are little different from any other employer in job disputes.

In the High Court’s latest support for the First Amendment, all nine Justices upheld what’s known as the “ministerial exception” in employment disputes, recognizing a healthy degree of autonomy for churches, synagogues and other houses of worship.

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Cheryl Perich had worked as a religiously affiliated or “called” teacher at the Lutheran school, teaching math and music as well as leading students in prayer. In 2004, she took a medical leave for narcolepsy, a sleep disorder. When she sought to return, the school declined, and she was eventually voted out by the church congregation. Ms. Perich and the federal EEOC sued for backpay, reinstatement and damages.Writing for the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that the Constitution’s Free Exercise and Establishment clauses both bar the government from interfering with a church’s decision to fire a minister. To do so, he writes, “intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs” as well as “the right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments.”

The Court rejected the EEOC’s argument that in order to qualify as a minister, an employee should have to spend a certain amount of her time on religious duties. Under such a system, church employees would presumably be required to clock in and out of different responsibilities within their jobs, lending an artificial and secular overlay on the nature of their work.

The Justices also didn’t spare their disdain for the position advanced by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department argued that the same First Amendment analysis should apply to churches as to social clubs. The Court called that argument “hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations. We cannot accept the remarkable view that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.” Ouch.Also notable is a concurring opinion written by the unlikely duo of Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan—think judicial cats and dogs living together—who add their belief that religious organizations should be protected in staffing decisions regardless of whether or not those groups “ordain” their ministers under the traditional understanding of that practice.

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a separate concurrence arguing for an even broader interpretation of the ministerial designation than is suggested by Justice Roberts’s opinion. Justice Thomas reasonably argues that no outside body should be given power to overrule the church on any grounds in designating ministers.

The decision closes off new avenues for employment lawsuits that would have been opened by Ms. Perich’s position. All 12 federal appellate-court circuits have adopted some form of ministerial exception over the years, but that failed to dissuade the Justice Department from claiming that giving churches discretion in hiring decisions would undermine the Americans with Disabilities Act.

As in so many of its policies, the Obama Administration’s position reflected both its default preference for government control and its secular indifference to American religious sensibilities. This has become obvious in the contraceptive and surgical sterilization mandates the Administration is trying to impose on Catholic charities and hospitals. In this case the Justice Department’s opinion was so radical that it might have provoked the broad and unanimous Court ruling.

Hosanna-Tabor is an important reminder that the core religious freedoms guarded by the First Amendment were not to protect the public from religion, but to protect religion from government. The case is arguably among the most important religious liberty cases in a half century, and the concurrence of Justices across the ideological spectrum will be felt for years. Hallelujah.”