kurt warner, the great unknowable freak of the nfl

What a great headline. The whole article by Will Leitch, about Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, is here. I'd be interested to know whether it's interesting/fun for a non-NFL fan. It's very zesty. Warner's storybook storyline is that no one wanted him as a young player, he stacked shelves, he sort of hung around for years as a backup, and in his first season he was the NFL's most valuable player. This is the Sports Illustrated cover from a few weeks into that season. Friends of mine will instantly see why I love it:



As the article hyperbolyses, Kurt Warner

exploded into the public consciousness more than a decade ago, the most cliched and therefore most true of unlikely stories, then essentially disappeared for seven years, before re-emerging to lead the NFL's worst franchise to the Super Bowl. Whatever your thoughts on the man, it is impossible that he exists. He has no comparables: He is his own species.

This is because he is unreally unflappable. He is the anti-Brett Favre, who is a brilliant but ridiculous diva-esque hype magnet who I enjoy.

My further thought is this: Warner says that his faith is central ('What were you thinking about during that climactic final drive' 'I was thinking about God') and when I read this, my instant thought was of Jonathan Edwards. This is a ridiculous, unfair thought based simply on the fact that they are both sportsmen who gave God a lot of credit and they look a tiny bit similar.

And then Edwards, afterwards, had time to think. When he did, he decided he didn't believe in God. He explained that his belief was a very useful thing to have when competing, because it was an anchor. When I read the rest of the article, what I thought, entirely unfairly to Warner, was that he is getting from his faith exactly what Edwards got from his, and I wonder if he will think differently about it when he has stopped playing. I repeat: I know this is unfair.