The football season is almost upon us, so it is time for all serious sports fans to start making fun of Tim Tebow, the quarterback known for his love of ostentatious displays of religiosity whenever he does something noteworthy on the football field.
This pose has come to be known as ‘the Tebow’ and has even coined verb spin-offs such as ‘Tebowing’ (which is defined as “to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different”) or ‘Tebowed’. It is becoming quite the rage.
His bigger problem may be that although he had a stellar career as a college football quarterback, serious doubts exist about his ability to function in professional football where he seems to have difficulty locating his receivers when under pressure.
However, The Onion reports that with his new team the Jets, he has found a new favorite target that he is hitting with remarkable consistency.
So far in the football preseason, only one NFL team has yet to score a touchdown: Teebow’s Jets.
Maybe Timmy is praying to the wrong god.
I still don’t understand why he bothers to show up to practice. Isn’t every hour at practice one less hour praying? If he spent all his time praying, just imagine what a player he’d be then!!
I wasn’t able to find Tebow’s stats for the first 3 exhibition games so I can’t comment on his completion percentage. However, if he doesn’t produce in the first regular season game or two, he will be headed to the bench.
If he’s really that pious, why does he work on a Sunday?
I’m pretty sure he’s starting off on the bench anyway — Mark Sanchez is still the Jets’ starting QB as far as I know. Tebow might get used as a kick returner, or in some wildcat formation plays.
A while back, a Christian acquaintance who didn’t know about my atheism asked me what I thought about Tim Tebow. I said, “Tim Tebow makes me want to go to a game wearing face paint and a rainbow wig, holding up a cardboard sign that says ‘Matt. 6:5’.”
The poor Christian stood there nervously before admitting that he didn’t know that verse. I said, “That’s the one that says not to be like the hypocrites praying on the street corner, for they have their reward.”
You should never be so cruel to Christians as to quote any verse of the Bible than John 3:16 because that is usually the limit of their knowledge!
I’m a fan of Mixed Martial Arts and am constantly amused at how many fighters say that they have prepared and trained incredibly hard for a fight and now it’s all up to God whether they win or lose.
I’m more open to solo athletes giving all the credit to “God” than team players. At least the performance of soloists can be excised from anything to do with other people at time of performance. When people playing on teams say it, I want their teammates to take lots and lots of credit for themselves as human agents.
That said, I think it would be amusing to see “god of (insert religion here)” in record books with a little asterisk of the human that it was acting through. Such long and storied careers would result for them~
Actually, “For they have their reward” is probably my favorite Bible quote. (It comes up earlier in Matt. 6:3, regarding ostentatious charity.) It’s so incredibly snarky and cruel and hilarious.
The first six verses of Matthew are the second funniest bits of sacred holy scripture, after the first chapter of Lin Ye-tang’s translation of Chuang-Tzu.
Thanks for posting this. Otherwise, I was going to look up the chapter/verse again. I always think of this when Tebow comes up, but I’m terrible at remembering biblical citations.
I had to look it up before posting. I knew it was Matthew 6, and it came before the Lord’s Prayer, but I couldn’t remember the verse number.
Blame my incomplete religious education.
Still, way back in the 1970s, when I was going through my transition, this verse gave me more trouble than anything in the OT Pentateuch.
Star quarterbacks in college rarely become pro stars. Brett Favre is the last one I can think of and that was 20 years ago. Local U of Texas star Vince Young has been a washout in the pros.
The Houston Texans switched from a college hot shot to a tired old man second stringer quarterback and did much better. Then Schaub got taken out last year and they switched to some insane third stringer who took them to the playoffs.
It’s been 20 years since a major college star has made it in the pros, and I don’t think that many of the star QB’s I saw in the 70’s and 80’s were college stars.
Nobody boos their players sooner than NY fans.
It’s been 20 years since a major college star has made it in the pros
Peyton Manning has been around that long? My, how time flies ….
Oh, wait, you’re dissing the Volunteers (they’re not really a “major college”). Nicely played.
No offense intended, but this makes it seem like you don’t really watch football. Cam Newton was the 2010 Heisman Trophy winner and just had one of the best rookie seasons ever. Drew Brees was a huge star at Purdue, breaking almost every Big Ten passing record. Aaron Rodgers was a Heisman candidate. Looking down the list of NFL passing yardage from last year, out of the top 6 guys, only Tom Brady wasn’t a huge star in college, and he was still a two year starter at Michigan.
Perhaps you only follow very local teams or something?
Click the tebowing.com link and look and the link to their twitter feed. It’s the Twitter bird, tebowing adorably.
The “book of Matthew” is where the “sermon on the mount” is written down, the big preach where the mythical jesus tells his followers how to live. Despite claiming to “walk with jesus”, you can’t read a page of Matthew without finding a christian disobeying it or being hypocritical.
Other good quotes to use from Matthew:
5:22, whenever christians blather about atheists being “fools”
5:25, if a christian is engaged in unethical or illegal financing
6:2, charity should be anonymous, not to make yourself look good
7:1, to the self-righteous hypocrites
7:9, for those who say the poor “chose” to be poor and starve
19:21 makes it clear: “sell everything and give all your money to the poor”
There are plenty more that christians blithely and blindly ignore.
We could be taking cheap shots at some of the players who abuse woman, rape, use and sell drugs and shoot ourselves at night clubs. But, that might actually serve a purpose. Naw, let’s make fun of a guy who prays. The jokes on you. He’s got millions and lots of adoring females. Sounds like his God is taking care of him.