Denver Broncos QB Tim Tebow Will Always Be Controversy Waiting to Happen

Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is no stranger to controversy. From quarterback roster drama, to the Focus on the Family commercial he shot with his parents which aired during the Super Bowl, even to when he would be picked in the 2010 draft, very few players in the league have generated so much controversy and conversation than Tebow in the last 18 months.

A source of much of this talk surrounds Tebow's Christianity and the way he chooses to express his faith. An Evangelical Christian, Tebow believes one of the responsibilities of his faith is to promote it. As an NFL quarterback, he is given a rare platform upon which to do this.

Religion and the NFL are not strange bedfellows; just read any football player's Twitter feed and you will find many references to faith. The difference with Tebow is not that he is just a religious man, it is that he believes one of the duties of his faith is to promote it. Religion has been a lightning rod for centuries, and those who take up the mantle of their faith in a public manner are setting themselves up for comment, both good and bad.

For example, CBSSports.com's Gregg Doyle. Doyle published a column on August 6 entitled, "Unbelievable—Tebow believes faith equates to starting in NFL," wherein he accuses Tebow of blasphemy:

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Tebow has been a great billboard for Christianity—just as Muhammad Ali has been a great billboard for Islam, and Sandy Koufax a great billboard for Judaism—but that doesn't mean he will be rewarded with a starting job in the NFL. Maybe deep inside his heart Tebow knows that, but from the outside it doesn't look that way. From the outside it looks like Tebow equates his love for God in heaven with tangible rewards here on earth.

And that's more than wrong.

It's blasphemy.

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Predictably, the column has earned Doyle a fair share of hate mail. Ignoring whether or not Doyle has a good handle on the definition of "blasphemy," let us examine whether Doyle was inappropriate in invoking Tebow's faith as a way to critique him as a quarterback and football player.

Beyond the (effective, if not heavy-handed) rhetoric above, the real crux of Doyle's article can be found in this passage:

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[H]is faith baffles me, or at least the way he expresses his faith, because it never allows for personal failure—and that's not the world we live in.

Confidence is one thing, OK? Confidence is mandatory for a professional athlete, even confidence that pushes the bounds of reality. Despite limitations seen by others, Tim Tebow exudes the confidence of a future star in the NFL, and that's normal. It's mandatory.

But his confidence isn't only in himself. It's in his God. Tebow has basically said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "I'll be a starter in this league because God loves me that much."

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Doyle is basically saying that, of course, an NFL player, let alone a quarterback, let alone a quarterback who has had unparalleled success in both high school and college, should have confidence in his abilities to be a great player, a starter, a champion. But for him to say that his faith, and not his skills and drive, has the final say in the matter is a bit shortsighted.

Tebow's comments do border on the delusional—not because of his religion, but because he believes that intangible things (not the Jon Gruden-variety of intangibles, in this case) have more control over his football career than he or his coaches have. It is akin to me saying that I can only succeed at writing if a west wind is blowing.

A more realistic approach would be to say that knowing there is a west wind helps me believe I can write well. Or, if I am Tebow, it would be to say that knowing I have faith will get me through, regardless of how far my physical and mental abilities do or do not take me.

In one sense, Tebow's comments are little more than the run-of-the-mill superstition that many professional athletes have. But because they invoke religion, everyone feels more compelled to comment.

NFL players, by the very nature of their high-profile positions, are always open to critical discussion. Tebow's faith-on-his-sleeve approach to his personal beliefs, therefore, makes both him as a player and him as an Christian open to criticism.

It is easier to discuss (and to criticize) Tebow within the framework of his faith, and as long as it remains a very public part of his identity, the public is not going to stop taking the easy route. It won't stop happening, and it won't stop fans and writers from taking low blows at his football abilities via his religious beliefs—no matter how inappropriate or irrelevant those low blows are.

In many ways, Tebow's Christianity is far more polarizing than Michael Vick's dogfighting conviction. Dogfighting, the vast majority of us know, is intrinsically wrong. Religion—any religion—and one's expression of it elicits responses across the board from acrimony to high praise. It never lacks controversy.

And thus, neither will Tim Tebow.