God’s had a pretty big NFL season this year. I don’t know if he was on strike last year, but this year, he’s all over the place.
“Tebowing,” the act of bending down on one knee to pray like Tim Tebow, became a trend.
Saturday Night Live did a skit in which Jesus visited the Denver Broncos locker room.
Media headlines credited or discredited God for NFL victories or losses. (Sunday’s Broncos game for instance. Tebow threw for 316 yards. Hellooooo John 3:16 comparisons.)
The Denver Broncos quarterback — a fervid evangelical with more devotion than downfield passing skills — took 11 seconds to rip off the longest overtime touchdown pass in the shortest overtime in playoff history Sunday night, lofting his team into the second round of the NFL playoffs.
Now, Tebow talk has swept the nation.
•His against-all-odds heroics brought CBS a mind-blowing 25.9 overnight rating, the best for a wild card football game in almost 25 years.
By Barry Gutierrez, AP
U.S. Marines ‘Tebow’ before the start of the New York Jets and Denver Broncos’ game on Nov. 17.
•Sports websites staggered under an onslaught of hits. NFL.com reported views of videos in the hour after the game up 385% over Wild Card Sunday last year.
•Tebow hit more than 1 million mentions on Twitter. Sunday night, the rate of tweets announcing the victory hit 9,420 per second. The all-time record was set last month when a TV screening of Japanese movie drew 25,088 tweets-per-second. But Tebow still beats the 8,868 tweets-per-second rate reached when Beyoncé announced her pregnancy during the 2011 MTV Music Awards.
•Both Tebow and his favorite Bible verse, John 3:16 (proclaiming Jesus’ promise of salvation), were in the top three Google Trends throughout most of Monday. Many people noted he threw for exactly 316 yards, an unintentional allusion to the Bible verse he etched into his eye back while winning national championships at the University of Florida.
•NFL sales of Tebow’s No. 15 Broncos jersey are second only to those for Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers, who won the Super Bowl last year.
I think He cares about your faith. He cares about where your heart is. And if you can live your faith out on the football field then yes, God cares about football because He cares about you. He sent His son Jesus to die for us so we could live for Him. That’s why we’re here. But see, it’s not just on the football field; we’ve got to honor Him in our relationships, our respect for authority, in the classroom, and when you’re at home alone surfing the internet.
Point being, God reaches our hearts through whatever he can find. If it’s death, hunger, blindness, or football probably makes very little difference in the scheme of things.
