The main stream sports media has mostly ignored the real story of redemption in the NFL this season. While they beat-up stories about divine intervention around Tim Tebow, and whipped wing-nut fans into a frenzy with religious hyperbole, San Francisco Forty Niner QB Alex Smith was quietly finding redemption of true Biblical proportions. On Sunday he came down from the cross to live on in 49er hearts forever.
Not that he would mention it. Smith is what we used to call a mensch. Despite seven offense coordinators over 8 years, numerous head coaches, two of which were rookies and legions of fans wishing we had drafted Aaron Rogers insead, he never complained. Well, once he a had a go at Mike Nolan after the former head coach called him soft while he played with a broken shoulder. Where is Nolan now we wonder, certainly not in the play off picture. Maybe at home studying x-rays of broken shoulders.
I have nothing against Tim Tebow, a nice young man who does the world a lot of good. I do have problems with using your celebrity, and lets face it professional athletes are celebrities, to proselytize others to your religious or political beliefs. Which is what the Christian right and Tim Tebow are doing. The Family Research Council ad depicting children reciting John 3:16, which ran during the Broncos-Patriots game, and not during any other play-off games over the weekend, is a testament to their, well, blatant propagandizing of their cause using Tebow’s celebrity. Imagine the outcry had it been a pro Muslim, Gay or Abortion ad. Perhaps that ad would not aired at all in the land of the free?
But I digress, the real story of redemption this season, if we are to use religious analogies, doesn’t lie in media darling Tim Tebow, but with a quiet warrior who overcame much more than media embellishment (which Tebow handles admirably) to lead his team to their first NFC championship game in nine years.
He rarely blows his own horn, quietly conducts valuable charity, and keeps his own counsel, on and off the field. Alex Smith is truly the kind of role model professional sports really needs today, but whose story is rarely told.
