After the last heavy post , I think we could use some levity, although if you don't follow sports I don't know how light you will find the first part. The second part will be about a guy who I think is a role model. So read that if you are a fan of good examples and stories of never giving up. Also click the links in blue for a better appreciation . I.
First of all just know that nobody expected the Arizona Cardinals to be playing this Sunday. Experts and fans alike just bewildered by this turn of events. I have my own original conspiracy theory
About halfway through the season the Cardinals as a whole said to themselves in complete secrecy : " Hey! This division is so weak , let's treat the remainder of the schedule like the exhibition season. You know win just enough to take this sorry ass division. We will get back home field after we win the first two road games. These wins will be cemented because in the back of their heads our opponents will think they are here by default. "
Have any better ideas?
II .
Seriously, one of the real reasons why Arizona is turning heads is because of the guts, perseverance, talent, determination, faith and positive outlook of a guy called Kurt Warner. You can say this is deja vu all over again.Have any better ideas?
II .
Back in 1999 when he was making his first run with the St. Louis Rams everybody said the same thing: " if this guy's story was a script you would throw it out for being too corny". In fact since 2001 Kurt was not always the dominant quarterback in his team. But instead of sulking and being jealous at whoever young hotshot the coaches put out on the field, Kurt was there like an older brother and constantly helping and offering insight. Of course he kept his brain and his body ready for the inevitable opportunity to do it himself.
Watching a lot of sports over the years and also proclaiming to have some faith in a higher power, I am usually turned off by athletes public declaration of religious beliefs. Maybe because of that parable of Jesus , the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. But because I know their story , Tim Tebow gets a pass and so does Kurt.
And that's what makes Kurt worthy of me putting in front of you. He is not selfish, he is a team player and a consummate professional. His Rocky Balboa like story I will leave for the links to tell you.
Ed
October 18, 1999
Holy Smokes
Rams quarterback Kurt Warner is lighting up the NFL, thanks largely to an unwavering faith that has been tested time and again
Michael Silver
The music blared, the crowd went wild, and St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner stood in the middle of it all, a heavy dose of rapture rushing through his veins. Then Warner, the hottest player in pro football, raised his hands and pointed triumphantly to the heavens. Virtually no one noticed. Though Warner is St. Louis's biggest football sensation since Jim Hart, he and the 300 other worshipers at the St. Louis Family Church last Friday night were preoccupied with praising a truly supreme being. "I love you. Jesus!" a college-aged woman across the aisle from Warner yelled as a five-piece band kicked its upbeat groove to a cacophonous climax. Onstage six singers belted out the chorus as Warner and the rest of the congregation joined in: "All things are possible! All things are possible!"
It was a mantra that might have borne repeating 40 hours later by a much larger but no less fervent gathering at the Trans World Dome. With 65,872 fans screeching their approval, Warner and the Rams continued to defy conventional football wisdom, this time with a 42-20 victory over the San Francisco 49ers that reverberated throughout the NFL. Not only did the 4-0 Rams end a 17-game losing streak to the Niners, their longtime NFC West tormenters, but St. Louis—St. Louis!—also ended the day as the league's lone unbeaten team. Warner, the 28-year-old Arena Football League emigrant, continued to embarrass scouts everywhere by setting new standards for a first-year starter, among them a heretofore unheard of 14 touchdown passes in his first four games, two more than the Rams threw all last year.
On Sunday, Warner threw for 177 yards and three touchdowns—in the first quarter. His final stats were surreal: 20 completions in 23 attempts for 323 yards and five scores, boosting his league-leading quarterback rating to an astronomical 136.0. Yet there's no way to quantify Warner's commanding pocket presence, his ability to release the ball just before the rush arrives or the amazing array of passes he can throw with chilling accuracy. Somehow Warner, a player so lightly regarded that the Rams exposed him in last February's expansion draft, is playing like a natural-born thriller. "He's in a zone, and I've never been around anybody who's this hot," Dick Vermeil, the Rams' 62-year-old coach, said after the game. "[Rams owner] Georgia Frontiere believes in astrology; maybe that's the only way to explain it."
To Warner it's far less mysterious. "I've been doing all these interviews lately, and people are looking for the secret to my success," he says. "I tell them it's my faith in Jesus Christ, and they don't want to hear that. So they ask me the same question, again and again, even though they've already gotten the answer. The Lord has something special in mind for this team, and I'm really excited to be a part of it."
Such proclamations serve as a red flag for even the mildest of cynics, but once you meet Warner and hear his story, it's awfully tough to question his faith. He is as grounded and solid as a redwood, and it's certainly no accident that he has emerged as the anti-Ryan Leaf, a quiet leader who exudes maturity, was handed nothing and is grateful to be earning a '99 salary of $250,000, the league minimum for a second-year player. By overcoming doubt and adversity at every turn, he has also earned the right to have his faith taken at face value.
Faith has guided Warner along his unlikely path to football prominence, from his lone year (1993) as a starter at Division I-AA Northern Iowa to his three years with the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League to a 1998 stint for NFL Europe's franchise in Amsterdam, where he walked each night through the city's red-light district on his way to church. He clung to his dream of playing in the NFL, even when it seemed he didn't have a prayer. After being cut by the Green Bay Packers in the summer of '94, Warner returned to Cedar Falls, Iowa, and got a job at a 24-hour supermarket. He worked out at his old college practice field by day and stocked shelves by night, without much sleep in between. "That was obviously a very humbling experience," Warner says. "I was making $5.50 an hour—and I was darn happy to get it. I'd tell the other guys at the store, 'I'll be playing football again someday,' and they'd look at me like I was some guy who just couldn't let go."
If that had been the low point for Warner, his story would be compelling enough. But the word "struggle" is a relative term in the Warner household. Kurt's 10-year-old adopted son, Zachary, suffered brain damage and has been blind since his biological father dropped him accidentally during his infancy. In April 1996 Zachary's mother, Brenda, whom Kurt was dating at the time, lost both her parents when their house in Mountain View, Ark., was leveled by a tornado. You want a low point? Imagine Brenda and her two young children (daughter Jesse is three years Zach's junior) sitting in the stands of a Barnstormers game that spring while a typically rowdy Arena League crowd ragged on Kurt for serving up interceptions. "There was a lot of drinking in those crowds, and Kurt was struggling," Brenda recalls. "No one knew he had been dealing with a tragedy. I'd say, 'Could you please try to watch the profanity? I have kids here.' Sometimes they'd listen; sometimes they wouldn't. We heard every word in the book."
At that point Kurt, who was raised Catholic, got deeper and deeper into fundamentalist Christianity. He and Brenda married in 1997—his elaborate proposal included a house strewn with rose petals and an electric WILL YOU MARRY ME? sign across the backyard fence—and he adopted Zachary and Jesse soon thereafter. Warner starred for the Barnstormers in '97, yet his quest for better opportunities seemed snakebit, or at least spider-bit: While honeymooning with Brenda in Jamaica, Kurt awoke one morning to find that the elbow of his throwing arm had swelled to the size of a baseball, thanks to a voracious arachnid. As a result the Chicago Bears canceled a tryout upon his return. Warner then completed what he considered a "horrible" workout for the Rams, but he had fans in the organization, chiefly personnel director Charley Armey and assistant coach Mike White, who persuaded the team to sign him. St. Louis then sent him to play for the Amsterdam Admirals. After leading NFL Europe in passing yardage and touchdowns in the spring of '98, Warner earned a job as the third-string quarterback for the 4-12 Rams last season. He appeared in one game, completing four passes in 11 attempts for 39 yards.
He moved into the backup role this summer, and when starter Trent Green suffered a season-ending knee injury in an Aug. 28 exhibition game, the Rams put their season in Warner's hands. "I thought he could be a solid backup, a guy we could get by with," Vermeil says. "When Trent went down, I told our team we could win with Kurt. I didn't expect him to play well enough that we'd win because of him."
Outsiders were aghast. Warner was worse than a no-name—he was often confused with Curt Warner, a standout running back for Penn State and the Seattle Seahawks whose pro career ended with the Los Angeles Rams in 1990. Last year Kurt got a call from the office of his own agent, Mark Bartelstein, asking if he could appear on a radio talk show to discuss the 1983 Sugar Bowl. Hello? Warner called Bartelstein and cracked, "Sure, I'd love to. I was 12 at the time, and I remember watching it on TV."
Six weeks after Green's injury everyone is getting hip to Warner's name, as well as his game. Highly drafted quarterbacks typically don't shine until their third season, if ever, but Warner, with all his minor league seasoning, burst onto the scene like an old pro. His accuracy is uncanny, and he shows poise, toughness and an aptitude for reading defenses in a hurry. Playing Arena ball, with its condensed field and wide-open style, helped Warner perfect the art of making quick, decisive throws. "A lot of young quarterbacks struggle to adjust to the speed of the game," says Vermeil. "That's something you can't glean from watching them practice. This kid slows the game down a little bit, and part of that's because of what he went through in the Arena League."
Warner's size (6'2", 220 pounds) and speed are unexceptional, but his arm strength is impressive, and the touch on his passes is as soft as fleece. He can make all the throws, as he proved with his touchdown passes against the Niners: a hard, 13-yard slant to wideout Isaac Bruce after freezing the safeties with a pump fake; a willowy, five-yard fade to Bruce in the back left corner of the end zone; a crisp underneath pass to Bruce that the brilliant receiver caught in stride and turned into a 45-yard score; an airtight, 22-yard strike to well-covered tight end Jeff Robinson in the middle of the end zone; and a picturesque, 42-yard toss to Bruce along the right sideline.
San Francisco threw a variety of blitzes at Warner, but he never flinched—which wasn't surprising to his teammates. The Rams witnessed Warner's calm under fire each day during training camp, as offensive coordinator Mike Martz made a point of chewing him out as loudly as possible. "When Trent was healthy, Kurt was the whipping boy," Bruce says. "[Martz] would communicate with Trent through Kurt. Now [third-stringer] Joe Germaine is the whipping boy." Says Martz, "We made a conscious effort to put pressure on Kurt. I would just wear him out, but none of it fazed him."
Warner's unflappable demeanor is aided by the perspective he gets at home. Zachary, after all, is a walking miracle: Doctors initially told Brenda, who was working as an intelligence officer in the Marines at the time of his accident, that her son would probably not survive, and if he did, would be lucky to ever sit up. Brenda got divorced shortly after Jesse was born, enrolled in nursing school and met Kurt at a country-music dance club in Cedar Falls. At the end of the night she told him she had two children and added, "I understand if you never want to see me again."
Now flash forward to last Friday evening, as the Warner family, which now includes Kurt and Brenda's one-year-old son, Kade, dined at a pizzeria near their church. Zachary, who attends elementary school and can see some objects from extremely close range, held up a crayon the color of artificial turf and joked, "Look, Dad, it's a Trent Green crayon." As Jesse, now seven, patiently served her older brother cheese sticks and french fries, a waiter brought a complimentary sampler plate for Kurt, the city's sudden celebrity.
The Warners are refreshingly rattled by the hoopla: Their phone number was listed until they changed it last week. If endorsements are in Kurt's future, you can exclude headwear ("I look terrible in caps," he says), tools ("He's the world's worst handyman," says Brenda) and razors. Warner, who has what backup quarterback Paul Justin calls "an 11 o'clock shadow," refuses to shave, relying instead on a beard trimmer to reduce his perpetual scruff. "People ask me all the time, 'When is your son going to shave?' " says Kurt's mother, Sue. "The answer, Fm afraid, is never."
The more you watch Warner interact with his family—and reaffirm his faith—the less stunning his phenomenal ascent seems. He appears to be sincere, unabashed and unspoiled. "Kurt's the most grounded person you'll ever meet," says Rams cornerback Todd Lyght. "Even though he's off the Richter scale right now, there's no way he'll let this go to his head."
Though the Rams and Bartelstein are talking about adjusting Warner's contract, he says any raise he receives for 1999 will be donated to Camp Barnabus, a Christian retreat in Purdy, Mo., for special-needs children and their siblings. Last week, during an interview with ESPN, Warner broke into tears three times. "On the football field I keep my emotions tied up inside," he says, "but when Fm with my family, I let them out. Zach has been such a blessing to me. He falls down, really hard, about 10 times a day, but he gets up and just exudes pure joy. He couldn't care less about football, but he touches my life so much."
At church last Friday pastor Jeff Perry gave a sermon that touched Warner to his core. "Mordecai said to Queen Esther when she had to save the Jews, 'You have been brought into the kingdom for a time such as this,' " Perry told the rapt congregation. "That could apply to everyone here." When the sermon ended, Perry called Warner to the front of the stage and uttered a special blessing for Sunday's game: "Lord, give him sharpness and clarity. Let him be bold and perform beyond the realm of his skills."
Warner buried his prickly face into his hands, then closed his eyes and smiled. Perry was preaching to the choir.
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Links:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/2003/janfeb/12.14.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-59120157.html
http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/journal/item/398/Its_so_easy_to_do_when_everyone_is_watching_
http://www.jesuscentral.com/ji/jesus-parables-teachings/jesus-teachings/jesus-humility.php
http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/Capon_3705.htm
http://bible.cc/luke/18-13.htm
http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/journal/item/500/National_Champion_Tebow_Could_Have_Been_Aborted_in_Makati_
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