There is no shortage of media criticism of professional athletes, but David Fleming’s ESPN.com attack on Tim Tebow has re-written the standards of mean-spiritedness. In a post dripping with malice, sarcasm and anti-Christian bigotry, “Tim Tebow’s relentless pursuit of failure,” Fleming has taken Tebow Derangement Syndrome to a level not previously thought attainable.
Tebow is currently working out in the New York Mets’ spring training camp in Port St. Lucie, as a minor leaguer. Fleming calls it a “publicity stunt” and insults Tebow as a “pretend baseball player” and a “grifter.” An Internet dictionary defines “grifter” as “someone who cheats others out of money. Grifters are also known as chiselers, defrauders, gougers, scammers, swindlers, and flim-flam men.”
Tebow has been criticized for batting only .194 in the 2016 Arizona Fall League. But as ESPN.com elsewhere points out:
Tebow seemed to make strides at the plate as the AFL season progressed, especially in terms of catching up to fastballs. He repeatedly was rolling over and sending weak grounders to the right side of the infield during the opening week. In fact, excluding an 0-for-13 start, Tebow hit .245 the rest of the way in the league.
But Fleming also derides Tebow for heroism. While in Arizona, the former Heisman Trophy winner saved the life of a fan in the stands. If Colin Kaepernick had saved someone’s life, it would be headlines for an extended news cycle.
The attack extended well beyond ESPN. Numerous websites ran the ESPN diatribe, which includes Fleming's analysis of "Tebow's latest, greatest feat of athletic failure. It was a declaration that Tebow seemed prepared to handle better than any curveball he has faced.” Fleming uses the word “failure” 25 times to describe Tebow and claims the former Florida Gator enjoys profiting from failure.
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The ESPN hate-monger even criticized Tebow for expressing humility and exhibiting determination over the fact that hitting a baseball is very difficult: “If I fall flat on my face, then guess what, I’m going to get right back up again.” Maybe the angry writer would find spring training more to his liking if he was treated to the daily surliness of former sluggers like Barry Bonds or Jim Rice.
Tebow is not to be admired, but faulted for exploiting people, the hyper-critical Fleming writes:
It’s a mantra that has sustained Tebow over the past five years. On Jan. 9, 2012, Tebow threw for 319 yards in a stunning 29-23 overtime win against an injury-depleted Pittsburgh defense (emphasis added) in the AFC wild-card playoffs. Since then, though he has grifted his way to untold riches and largely unearned opportunities with five franchises in two professions while barely bothering to alter his act. First, NFL quarterback was the dream he would relentlessly pursue, then – nope, hold up, wait a minute – it was actually baseball the entire time. In both sports, he has benefitted from the same viral coverage to cloak his shortcomings, co-opted the same kind of devout ‘experts’ to vouch for his authenticity, shown the same lack of humility and understanding of the challenges he faced, and, worst of all, exploited the same needs and dreams of fans in both sports.
What continues to make him one of the most puzzling and compelling athletes of his era, though, is not the long string of embarrassments, but rather, what seems to be Tebow’s absolute fearlessness in the face of Mets spring training, a challenge that is almost certainly going to be his greatest most public humiliation yet.
“People will say, ‘What if you fail? What if you don’t make it?’” Tebow said at the beginning of this process. “Guess what? I don’t have to live with regret. I did everything I could. I pushed it. And I would rather be someone who can live with peace and no regret than being so scared I didn’t make the effort.”
Whether you think that’s enlightenment or idiotic is up to you.
It’s not at all idiotic. New York is just another sports team looking at someone who might be able to help the ball club. Nobody held Mets’ management at gunpoint to force Tebow’s baseball tryout on Tebow haters. Besides, wasn’t Michael Sam a long-shot to make the Rams? Wasn’t Ann Meyers a light years-longshot to make the Pacers? Did you call their efforts exercises in failure and dishonesty? And how many teams gave Dennis Rodman one more shot because they thought he just might be able to help them?
Fleming also claims Tebow is taking the spot of another baseball player on the Mets’ minor league roster. Strangely, I haven’t seen any restrictions on the number of players allowed at minor league baseball camps. What does it matter in a team has 150 players at minor league camp … or 151?
Fleming says the bottom line in the “latest chapter of our ongoing infatuation with Tebow is the utterly unsettling way he has embraced, perfected and, yes, profited from the art of failure.”
According to Fleming, Tebow is not just a poor athlete and, but also a moron.
Since the 2012 NFL playoffs, Tebow’s business as a pro athlete has been failure – and business has been good. After a brief, brilliant flash of success, the Broncos grew tired of his terrible throwing mechanics and struggles with the cognitive side of the game, and Tebow agreed to a trade to the absolute worst possible spot for a developing quarterback: the New York Jets.
This is a revision of history. The Broncos had a shot at landing future Hall of Famer Peyton Manning, and made a smart move because he helped them reach two Super Bowls. Many of the NFL’s quarterbacks would have been pushed to the side to make room for Manning. The truth of the matter is that Denver gave Tebow a chance and he led the team to an impressive winning streak and a huge playoff upset. The coach loved his leadership.
Then Fleming wrote, “Tebow’s act of self-sabotage resulted in him completing just six passes behind Mark Sanchez and Greg McElroy before being cut by Rex Ryan.” This statement bears further review, too. The Jets did not give Tebow a chance to start or play a full game at QB. But those six completions came in only eight attempts, and a 75-percent completion rate is pretty good, no matter the number of attempts. For the season, Tebow led the Jets with an 84.9 passer rating – better than Sanchez and McElroy.
Fleming is convinced that nothing Tebow has done as a professional matters. “In fact, it only helped Tebow develop his brand: Failure Incorporated,” he wrote. And Tebow’s faith proves he’s a loser.
In parting ways with the Patriots, Tebow tweeted 2 Corinthians 12:0, which says, in part, that “power is perfected in weakness” and, therefore, the best way to have Christ’s power dwell inside you is by boasting of your weakness. This seems to be the moment where Tebow was able to meld his rapidly dwindling prospects as an NFL quarterback with the universal connection to, and the spiritual rewards of, failing with honor and purpose – sometimes over and over and over again.
The peace Tebow exudes in the face of his imminent diamond disaster comes from his belief that none of the past five years can be considered a failure if they helped develop and spread his faith by even the tiniest degree.
The horror. After the Philadelphia Eagles cut Tebow in camp, Fleming writes …
Tebow must have seen the writing on the wall, because less than a year later, he published “Shaken: Discovering Your True Identity in the Midst of Life’s Storms.” Even as a national champion and Heisman Trophy winner at Florida who went on to earn millions in salary and endorsements in the NFL, Tebow was still able to hit the New York Times bestseller list with a ministry for the masses based on the life lessons he was able to glean from his setbacks in the NFL. At this point all Tebow had to do was change the name of his book to “Failure: An American Success Story,” and his athletic career would have officially morphed into a plot line from the final episode of “Parks and Rec.”
Continuing the nasty attack, Fleming says Tebow embodies the idea that “moral character and good old-fashioned hard work can compensate for any lack of talent or execution. It can’t, by the way. But maybe that’s why we’re willing to indulge Tebow’s latest and most ridiculous sports fantasy.”
So it’s up to liberal sports-writers to allow Tebow to try out for a professional baseball job? They’ve really sacrificed by indulging it.
Colin Kaepernick did not endure this kind of vitriol for calling cops “pigs” and encouraging a high school football team to lie on the ground during the national anthem. Neither have athletes who raised their fist at the flag or beat up their wives. If any athlete embodied failure, it was Jason Collins, the scorer of 3.6 points per game over 12 long NBA seasons. But he was praised to the hilt for announcing he was homosexual before retiring.
“There’s no denying he remains a one-of-a-kind marketing talent,” Fleming says of Tebow’s “endless pursuit of failure.” “Whether purposeful or not, he’s a genius at exploiting the myths, margins and moral vacuums in pro sports like a modern-day traveling tent-revival preacher: selling his gospel of earnest failure and emptying our pockets until his shtick gets old and he moves on to another sport, just in the nick of time.”
There are plenty of moral vacuums in pro sports. And this insidious attack on a role model worthy of emulation is an example of a moral vacuum in journalism.
