Kurt Warner's football exploits are great, but compared to what?

Originally published in STLtoday, February 9, 2010

In St. Louis we first knew Kurt Warner as the “nothing” backup quarterback to Trent Green.Then Green was injured in a 1999 preseason game, effectively ending, we thought, the Rams’ season.

But Warner, the obscure arena football QB, went on to ignite “The Greatest Show on Turf” for the next three seasons, throwing for 4,353 yards and leading the Rams to two Super Bowls.

A decade later he would also lead the perpetually hapless Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl, becoming only the second quarterback in history to take two different teams there.

But from his earliest NFL days, Warner, a fiercely driven competitor, made clear that football was not the most important thing in his life. During that astounding 1999 season he told the New York Daily News, “Things that are important are not throwing a bunch of touchdown passes. We hang our hat on family and faith. Whether I continue to thrive on the football field, it’s not what shapes who I am and who the family is.”

Warner had recently married Brenda Carney, a hard-luck divorced woman with two children, daughter Jesse and son Zach, who was legally blind and significantly brain damaged. Over the next several years the Warners would together have several more children.

They would also found the Christian “First Things First Foundation” to help those in need and encourage people that “all things are possible when we seek to put first things first”.

Compared to all the other acclaim Warner has received for his play and his character, perhaps the most significant comes from his adopted daughter, Jesse, who left home for college in 2009. She wrote the forward to her mom and dad’s book, First Things First.

One excerpt from her foreword, “People in the spotlight often are unfairly credited with perfection when in reality, they’re as normal as everyone else. Our living room is flooded with toys, and odds are, one of the twins didn’t flush the toilet. I’ve wiped one little brother’s vomit off another little brother; and my dad is a pro at cleaning poop off any surface. We argue, we disagree, and we love each other, just like any other family. We’re normal.”

Another excerpt, “My parents have exhibited what it means to love the people around us. We have had the amazing opportunity to spend our Christmases at orphanages and our Thanksgivings at local food shelters to serve God through serving his people. These opportunities have given us perspective that we will carry for the rest of our lives.”

And one more comment from Jesse, “My father has done an exceptional job of teaching his children to lead lives of honor and excellence, and he has done so mostly through example. He doesn’t need to tell my brothers how to treat their wives when they grow up, because they’ve already seen firsthand how to do it.”

How can the public acclaim of three Super Bowls, a Super Bowl Championship, two NFL MVPs, a Super Bowl MVP, four Pro Bowl selections, several major NFL playoff records, and Hall of Fame induction possibly compare with that?

Reprinted from stltoday… originally published February 9, 2010