THE CAM WHO FELL TO EARTH.
Shot:
Cam Newton may be the best player in football, but as a man he has a lot of learning to do. He needs to study the virtue called humility.
Newton is a braggart, a showboat and a clown. He says things like, “Hear me out. I’m just saying that so much of my talents have not been seen in one person.” (“Just”!) He does elaborate end-zone dances right in the faces of opposing players. (“If you don’t like it, keep me out of the end zone,” he later said.) Even getting a simple first down inspires him to strike a pose. He named his son “Chosen,” he says, because he didn’t want the kid to carry the awful burden of being known as Cam Newton Jr. Apparently those were the only two options. “Saint” was already taken.
After Sunday’s game, win or lose, a remarkable event will occur in the vicinity of Peyton Manning: Opposing players will line up to shake hands with him. That’s the respect that comes with not only being a legendary player but a good man. Manning never humiliated his opponents, never trash-talked them, never forgot the value of sportsmanship. He is the only player ever to win five MVP awards and the only one to beat Tom Brady three times in the postseason. Yet he never acts like he is The Man because he never forgets that he is a man. No one calls him arrogant.
Manning knows the importance of humility.
Humility is good sportsmanship. It increases your value as a celebrity endorser, and it is simply a smart move in the rough-justice subculture of the NFL, in which a respected player simply gets pushed out of bounds but one who has angered the other team can find his knees being taken out instead. Ex-Chicago Bears defensive end Richard Dent, a Hall of Famer and MVP of Super Bowl XX, said if he was playing against Newton today, “I’m going to knock your ass out of the game. That would’ve been my approach.”
—“Cam Newton, Donald Trump and the lost virtue of humility,” Kyle Smith, the New York Post, Saturday, February 6th.
Chaser:
THIS IS HOW IT ENDS, NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: CAM NEWTON’S PRESS CONFERENCE IN FULL
[On losing the Super Bowl]: They just played better than us. I don’t know what you want me to say. They made more plays than us, and that’s what it came down to. We had our opportunities.
There wasn’t nothing special that they did. We dropped balls. We turned the ball over, gave up sacks, threw errant passes. That’s it. They scored more points than we did.
[His message to fans]: We’ll be back.
[On the difference in Panther’s playing style]: They outplayed us.
[On the halftime talk from Coach Rivera]: He told us a lot of things.
[Asked if Denver did anything different defensively]: Nothing different.
[Asked if he can put his disappointment into words]: We lost.
[Asked if the Panthers did anything different to stop Denver running the ball]: No.
—“‘Sore loser’ Cam Newton comes under fire for STORMING OUT of press conference after losing the Super Bowl and throwing on-field tantrums once he realized he would lose,” the London Daily Mail, today.
Related: “An MVP coaching performance: Wade Phillips finally kicks down that door.”