WARNER SAYS HE “DEFINITELY” WAS SERIOUS ABOUT JOINING 49ERS

In an interview with KTAR in Phoenix (via SportsRadioInterviews.com) conducted before he met with the media to discuss his new contract, Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner claimed that he “definitely” was interested in joining the San Francisco 49ers. During the interview, Warner said that the 49ers weren’t the best fit “football wise.” Warner also explained that he was considering the possibility of retirement “coming down the stretch,” even though his agent, Mark Bartelstein, previously had said that Warner already had decided to play in 2009. Meanwhile, Warner continued to harp on the notion of receiving “fair market value” for his services, still ignoring the fact that the lack of a market for his services was necessarily determining his value. Interestingly, he justified his quest for top dollar from the team by saying, “I need to have a number from a contract standpoint that I’m comfortable with. [It] doesn’t have to be the top dollar, doesn’t have to be, you know, whatever. It just has to be something that I go in and say, ‘I can come to work, I’m comfortable with this number,’ you know, I’m not gonna be mad because somebody’s making more than me, I’m good right there.” (Emphasis added.) Whoa. Hang on a second. If we didn’t know better, we’d think that the Kurt Warner who operates on a moral plane that doesn’t recognize the time-honored reality of business leverage remains in the moral gutter with the rest of us who are periodically disturbed by time-honored feelings of envy. Frankly, Warner unintentionally has given us a glimpse behind the facade. If Warner was the real thing spiritually, he wouldn’t be “mad” about anyone else’s compensation. He’d be worried only about his own business. But Kurt’s modus operandi is to make us all think that he’s better than the rest of us when it comes to matters of the divine. Indeed, he made sure to remind the world during his press conference that God was still on speed dial while Kurt was attempting to determine whether to take more than $20 million for two year’s work from the 49ers or more than $20 million for two year’s work from the Cardinals. “As you guys know, our faith is the most important thing, so we went into it with the idea, ‘Where does God want us? That’s where we’re going to be,’” Warner said. “No matter what the money is or the situation, that’s where we want to be. Very early in the process in San Francisco, as many good things that are out there and what they’re building and coach [Mike] Singletary -- I had a great time with him and I like what they’re building -- I just knew very quickly, this [Arizona] is where I was supposed to be. “I told my wife probably 45 minutes into it that I just felt God say, ‘You’re supposed to be in Arizona.’ And I told her that. She tried to tell me to stay open [minded] but He just continued to confirm it and that’s why on the way back, I called Mark and said, ‘Hey, let’s get this thing done.’” This is precisely the point we tried to make two weeks ago, when we asked whether God would tell Kurt to leave Arizona after the team opted to apply the franchise tag to Karlos Dansby. At the time, Warner supposedly was waiting for God to tell him to play for the Cardinals or retire. The issue of playing for another team only came up when Warner feared that the two-year, $20 million offer from the Cardinals might cause him to have feelings that fall squarely within the confines of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. So here’s the question. If Warner’s ultimate motivation was driven in part by the possibility that he would be jealous of others making more than his multiple millions, would God really be all that concerned about aiding and abetting desires that are, at their very core, motivated by sinful objectives? Look, we’re not saying that Warner should be villified. We just think, after years of watching and listening to him, that he’s not much different than the Pharisees with whom Jesus constantly squabbled, and we continue to suspect that Warner has allowed his faith to become inextricably intertwined with his own ego.