Tony Dungy Is The Worst Kind Of Christian

Maybe You Can Shut Up Now, Tony

An aside: long-time readers of the blog know my steadfast appre- ciation and respect for the Shooter Mom. She's better than me at picking games against the spread, competes effectively in fantasy football, might be the hardest working person I know, and so on, and so on.

But there's something else about her. She's the best kind of Christian.

I've got a relative who has been down all kinds of bad road in the last decade. I won't get into the details, but he's done time, and has made many people in my family wonder if the best and safest move would be to get some distance from him. Mom didn't do that. She was never a doormat for his poor choices, but she also never stopped giving him chances. Something about seven time seventy goes here, for those of you familiar with Scripture. (Me, I just remember stuff.) He's gotten his life together and has had a much better year, and while I wouldn't bet the farm on his continued recovery, the difference is night and day, and so is the amount of relief in the family from this.

Now, I have no idea if Mom's support and involvement made any impact here. No one can know, really. But she inspires me, and loads more people, too, really, to be better. To have more charity, while not putting myself or my family at risk.

And now, we can compare this good woman to one of the nation's most public Christians, ex-Colts and Bucs football coach Tony Dungy.

Today, in a relative media vacuum, Dungy decided that what the world really needed was to hear his opinion about the NFL's first openly gay player, 7th round Rams DL Michael Sam. And his opinion was that he would not have picked Sam if he was still coaching. Not because he doesn't think Sam is talented, not because he thinks he shouldn't have the opportunity, but because it's not going to go smooth.

Now, it would be in poor taste to note that Dungy, an evangelical  and the national spokesman for the fatherhood program "All Pro Dad", had a 18-year-old son who hung himself from a ceiling fan. With more than a little evidence pointing to the fact that said son was gay, and probably didn't feel very supported by his father in that affiliation.

And maybe that, too, isn't very smooth.

So maybe, just maybe, he's not the right person to ask about Michael Sam. Or a man that should have media report his opinion about this sort of thing out of any kind of respect for the dead, since he doesn't seem to have even a semblance of taste or tact.

But let's just leave that aside.

You know what else didn't go smoothly? The first black player in any league. Or the first Jew, Latino, Arab, and if you go back far enough, Italian or Irishman.

That's the deal with being first. It's not smooth. Frontiers are not known for their smoothness.

They are, however, known for the high nosed people who stand on the sidelines and crap on those that go on. Like, say, the people who emigrated to the New World, or who packed up and went West, or who tried to work out a new way of life in any place where just doing the same thing wasn't enough for them.

Because that's the real issue here with Dungy. Crapping on Sam, and subtly making the case that anyone who drafts him isn't as smart and moral as you, isn't Christian at all. Regardless of where you stand on whether or not Sam can make the grade, or if you feel that he's only a celebrity due to a political agenda, rooting against pioneers makes you a piece of crap.

And un-American, too.