-By Warner Todd Huston
As former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow makes his astonishing debut as a Major League Baseball player with the opening of the New York Mets’ spring training at First Data Field in Port St. Lucie, Florida, ESPN immediately attacked him as a “failure” and a “pretend baseball player” before he made his first play.
For liberal ESPN, sportswriter David Fleming slammed Tim Tebow as engaging in a “relentless pursuit of failure” for daring to try for a second professional sports career after leaving the NFL.
Without question, Tebow had a short NFL career as a quarterback, but during that career, he was the constant butt of jokes and vitriol by the liberal sports media because he is a steadfast Christian who did not shy from expressing his beliefs on the field, in interviews, or with as his off-field philanthropy.
Clearly, Tebow’s religion still sticks in ESPN reporter Fleming’s craw as the player takes a shot at rekindling his college and high school pursuit of baseball. Whatever Fleming’s problem, he is certainly filled with hate and venom for Tebow as a person.
The hate Fleming exhibits for Tebow is thick. Indeed, he calls Tebow a name in nearly every paragraph of his extremely long hit piece. In the article Fleming calls Tebow a “grifter,” says the player is only engaging in his “latest feat of athletic failure,” is an “embarrassment,” is “idiotic,” has “profited from the art of failure,” and his “brand” is “failure incorporated.” And on and on it goes.
As far as Fleming is concerned, Tim Tebow has never once earned the attention he’s gotten in any sport at all. He has never been a contender and has been a “failure” since day one, regardless.
In contrast, Fleming was never negative for the NFL’s “first gay player,” Michael Sam, a player who was praised unanimously by the media but whose career lasted literally months instead of years.
In July of 2014, for instance, Fleming uncorked another extremely long piece, this one on how wonderfully the gay player fit in with his teammates in the team shower room.
Nowhere in the article was any doomsaying about Sam’s completely failed NFL career — one shorter than Tebow’s by years, not months. Fleming did not waste a single word noting how unworthy Sam was to trod the gridiron next to “real” football players.
ESPN later voiced “regret” over publishing Fleming’s showing piece saying they “collectively failed to meet the standards we have set in reporting on LGBT-related topics in sports.”
The reception to Fleming’s absurdist showering article featuring Michael Sam, though, was a perfect example of how the sports media walked on eggshells over Sam’s homosexuality. Sam was treated with kid gloves and his actual play ignored in favor of playing up his sexual proclivities.
Meanwhile, Tebow was and is the target of constant attack because he is a Christian and Fleming’s vitriolic attack on Tebow’s attempt to become a pro baseball player will not likely draw any “regrets” by ESPN or any attacks by anyone in the sports media.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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