The winner of the 2024-2025 College Football Playoffs may not be known for several more weeks, but many players have already decided who the real MVP of the tournament is.
Throughout the past few days, players from various teams have taken the time to praise Jesus Christ for the impact He’s made on their respective athletic careers. Following his team’s Thursday win (23-10) over the Georgia Bulldogs, for example, Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard used his postgame interview to glorify his Lord and Savior for putting the Fighting Irish in a position to advance to the semifinals of the playoffs.
“First of all, I just want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Without Him, I wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be here as a whole group,” Leonard said. “I’m just so grateful for this opportunity. This is a beautiful thing, and a dream come true.”
The Notre Dame quarterback threw for 90 yards and one touchdown pass during Thursday’s Sugar Bowl. He was subsequently namedOffensive MVP of the game for his performance.
Leonard wasn’t the only player to give the glory to Christ during his playoff postgame interview, however.
Ohio State quarterback Will Howard took the time to praise Jesus following the Buckeyes’ dominating Wednesday victory (41-21) over the Oregon Ducks. Howard threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, ending the game with a total quarterback rating of 97.7.
“First and foremost, I got to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving me this opportunity to be on this stage and here in the Rose Bowl,” Howard said.
Christ’s presence was also felt during Wednesday’s matchup between the Texas Longhorns and Arizona State Sun Devils.
In the aftermath of the former’s overtime victory (39-31), Longhorns running back Nik Sanders joined Sun Devils running back Cam Skattebo in kneeling for a postgame prayer. Skattebo was namedOffensive MVP of the Peach Bowl, racking up 143 rushing yards, 99 receiving yards, 42 passing yards, two rushing touchdowns, a passing touchdown, and a two-point conversion.
Even in defeat, Boise State Broncos personnel eulogized Christ following the team’s Tuesday loss (31-14) to the Penn State Nittany Lions. Broncos head coach Spencer Danielson told media in a postgame press conference, “No matter what — win, lose or draw — I’m going to always give Jesus the glory.”
“I’m so blessed to be the head coach here, and we do serve a champion. And I do know God never says oops,” he said. “As hard as tonight is, as a competitor and as a coach, I do believe we learn and grow from everything.”
Danielson notably gave Jesus “all the glory” after his team defeated the UNLV Rebels to secure the Mountain West Conference championship and first-round playoff bye last month. His profession of faith has seemingly rubbed off on some of his players, one of whom thanked Danielson for bringing him to Christ following Tuesday’s loss to Penn State.
“Coach D, you changed my life. You changed my life,” Broncos defensive end Ahmed Hassanein told Danielson during Tuesday’s postgame presser. “I did not know God until I got to Boise State.”
Doesn’t it felt great to be able to praise GOD in front of the whole world, and not fear punishment?! Unfortunately, we don’t know how long this will last.
In the wake of the New Orleans terror attack that claimed the lives of 14 innocent people and injured dozens more, it’s worth remembering two things: First, what the alleged terrorist was thinking before he launched the attack, and second, what the world’s most diabolical Islamic terrorist organizations have lying in wait for the United States, according to one intelligence analyst.
What we know about Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the terrorist in the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street, is this: The 42-year-old reportedly flew the Islamic State group flag from the back of his rented pickup truck and pledged allegiance to the terrorist group, according to The New York Times.
For their part, most in the media are downplaying any religious aspect in the attack. The Times quoted his brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, saying that the two were raised Christian but his bother converted to Islam — which he insisted had nothing to do with this.
“As far as I know he was a Muslim for most of his life,” he said. “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”
Of course, this is to insinuate that radicalization and religion are two different things. With almost any other religion, nobody would bother making the distinction; consider the fact the establishment media scarcely batted an eye when traditional Catholics were targeted by the FBI as potential extremists. Instead, this time, everyone seems to be focused on the unstable life of the alleged terrorist
And, lo and behold, it turns out that this part doesn’t exactly hold water. According to the New York Post, Shamsud-Din Jabbar had “a bomb-making workbench in his ramshackle Texas trailer home — where a Quran was left open on a page about ‘slaying’ in the name of Allah, exclusive photos obtained by The Post show.”
“Jabbar’s north Houston home was filled with chemical residue and chemical bottles, while an inventory of items seized by the FBI — left behind by investigators who raided his house on Wednesday — included a long list of compounds used in bomb-making,” the Thursday report read.
“His Quran was propped atop a bookshelf, a centerpiece in his living room, and open to a passage reading, ‘They fight in Allah’s cause, and slay and are slain; a promise binding …’”
The passage mentioned is Surah 9:111: “Allah has indeed purchased from the believers their lives and wealth in exchange for Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah and kill or are killed. This is a true promise binding on Him in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran. And whose promise is truer than Allah’s? So rejoice in the exchange you have made with Him. That is ‘truly’ the ultimate triumph,” a full English translation of the passage from Quran.com read.
Now, of course, Surah 9:111 is to be read in the context of the full book, known most widely as “At-Tawbah,” which has to deal with Islamic repentance, as well as proscriptions upon certain behaviors in Islamic lands by the unrepentant — including pagans, Jews, and Christians.
I’m probably not the ideal individual to do any sort of summation of it, nor would this be the place to do it, but in TL;DR version: very little of it can be read as “kill the infidels and paradise is yours,” and only if you’re willing to ignore plenty of context.
That being said, the Islamic State group — as well as numerous other extremist religious terror organizations that happen to be Islamic, as well — are especially good at ignoring this context and using these parts of the Quran to justify unspeakable acts more often than, say, those perfidious Roman Catholic extremists who had a Bible in their bomb-making lab open to Exodus 2:11-12, the two verses where Moses kills an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, assumedly as a context-denuded excuse for whatever act of terror they were going to carry out. (It’s worth noting that the FBI, from what we know, seems to have found none of these people and bomb labs, despite their focus on traditional Catholics.)
And it’s also worth noting that even though Shamsud-Din Jabbar was a U.S.-born American citizen; many who want to do harm to the United States aren’t — in particular, those who either belong to al-Qaida, Iran’s state-backed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or some other extremist outfit that doesn’t encourage as much “lone wolf” terrorism from those inside America.
The problem, as one intelligence analyst pointed out: Thanks to our porous border under this current administration, there could be thousands of these people inside America right now.
In the middle of last month, popular podcaster and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan interviewed former CIA officer and counterterrorism analyst Sarah Adams, who alleged that at least 1,000 fighters trained by al-Qaida had worked their way into the United States, potentially coordinating for an attack mirroring — or even more deadly than — the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
“The thousand is all of them, so we’re calling it — it’s an al-Qaida-planned attack,” Adams added. “But within those thousand terrorists, some of them are ISIS.”
“The terrorists might have their goal as they’re gonna attack the metro in [Washington] D.C., right? But remember, some of these terrorists are gonna be ISIS. And remember they can change locations,” she continued.
“So the ISIS guy might go down [to] the metro and say, ‘There’s not many people down here. I’ll kill 20. But there’s [an] event going on. I’m gonna go up there,’ right? Because ISIS is a little different. ISIS just wants mass casualties.”
If you have almost two hours to spare, the full interview is here:
This, of course, all sounds eerily prescient other than the fact that this man is U.S.-born and has been living here for his entire life.
Otherwise, the warning holds true — “lone wolf” terrorism, al-Qaida-sponsored terrorism, or IRGC-sponsored terrorism is still terrorism, and the warning that over 1,000 of individuals connected to these groups, disparate yet still with tenuous links, could be in America should worry every one of us. And even if this attack can’t be blamed on the porous border, that should clue us into just how dangerous it will be in the future. source
Yes – we do indeed need to know what we are up against.
