Leading OFF
Serving higher purpose served Warner quite well
A gold jacket punctuates the greatest story in NFL history. Kurt Warner is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, proving that no dream is too big and no star out of reach.
But if you believe he’s a fairy tale, you’re missing the point.
“I didn’t corner the market on great stories,” Warner said. “I’m not the only one who can do something like work at a grocery store and then win a Super Bowl. Other people can do it. You hope people will see that and say, ‘Hey, that will be me.’ They’re going to chase after it like I did. And they’re going to be the next one.”
As much as any athlete in history, Warner is defined by his faith. His religious conviction shaped his career in many wonderful ways. He was one of the best clutch performers in history partly because he wasn’t suffocated by external pressure, the need for individual achievement or the fear of criticism.
He always believed he was serving a higher purpose, where success and failure were equal tests of his character. He was liberated from performance anxiety on the football field because he never believed he was serving himself.
He pitched the equivalent of a perfect game during a playoff win against the Green Bay Packers, throwing more touchdown passes than incompletions. Before Tom Brady’s epic game against the Atlanta Falcons in February, Warner owned the top three performances for most passing yards in a Super Bowl. He finished his career with a single championship ring but gave his team a fourthquarter lead in all three championship games he played.
His most impressive moments were never borne from triumph and rarely seen on a football field. When his career bottomed out with the New York Giants, Warner remained fully supportive of Tom Coughlin’s decision to bench him in favor of Eli Manning. When he was stripped of his starting job with the Arizona Cardi- nals, he never took his frustrations out on Matt Leinart, continuing to mentor the young quarterback with an open heart.
“At the end of the day, it’s not about starting a game in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl or getting to the Hall of Fame,” Warner said. “It’s about representing yourself in a way that represents your faith. There were many moments that were tough to overcome, where the person inside of you is battling the faith aspect of things, where you think, ‘Here’s what I want to do, but here’s what I need to do because I’m representing something much bigger than myself.’ ”
Warner’s story is almost too good to be true. He made you feel good about the NFL, a league that doesn’t always employ role models or showcase morality. He made you feel good about professional sports, where great athletes aren’t always great people.
Warner never won a championship in Arizona. But he guided one of the worst franchises in history to the Super Bowl.
His faith became our faith, turning a tepid fan base into one of the more rabid gatherings in the NFL.
After drafting Leinart in 2006, former Cardinals coach Dennis Green called the former Southern California quarterback “a gift from heaven.” The description is far more suited for Warner, who changed what it meant to be a football fan in Arizona. Finally, a tale you might not have heard:
When Trent Green was injured in the 1999 preseason, thenSt. Louis Rams president John Shaw was ready to throw in the towel. Hope was lost. His team was 4-12 the previous season and about to hand the keys to an undrafted free agent who starred in the Arena League.
He met with team owner Georgia Frontiere, a socialite, who was deeply entrenched in astrology. According to legend, she wouldn’t sign off on any business if Mercury was in retrograde. But she saw something in the stars when it came to Warner and told Shaw he might be the next Johnny Unitas.
It’s another great story in a career full of them, from stocking grocery store shelves to playing football in Europe. But don’t get it twisted. Warner was not a gift from the football gods. He made his own magic.
He just happened to be a better person. And few athletes ever looked better wearing a gold jacket.