Before every game, no matter what team I was on at the time, the coach would always ask the most devout player to say a prayer. This would happen after we’d already been out warming up—so we’d all seen the crowd, we were in full uniform (complete with eye black doubling as war paint), and the intensity of the week had built up to a near frenzy in the locker room.

The prayer was always pretty much for the same thing: Let there not be any injuries, let everybody play a good game—anything except to win the game. No one ever asked to win the game, probably for fear that God would punish us for asking. After this moment of devotion, the team would all shout in unison, “Now let’s go kill those S.O.B.’s!”…

Although faith has been a part of football so long, a player like Mr. Tebow can still be extremely controversial among fans and pundits. But seriously, isn’t it refreshing that the chatter around the NFL is about a great athlete with great character who says and does all the right things and is a relentless leader for his team—and not about more arrests and bad behavior from our presumptive “heroes”?