Thanks largely to social media sleuths, the public noticed what NBC shamefully did after Stroud walked off the field January 13 after leading his team to a 45-14 trouncing of the Cleveland Browns to send the Texans to the next round of the NFL playoffs.
Stroud, a rookie quarterback, passed for 274 yards and three touchdown passes. He could have thanked his throwing arm, or his wide receivers, or the offensive line, but like Stroud has done in the past, he put God first when NBC Kathryn Tappen stuck a microphone in front of him.
“What does this moment mean?” Tappen asked.
“I mean, first and foremost,” Stroud replied, “I just want to give all glory to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
But when NBC posted that interview on social media, it edited Stroud’s comments about his faith and went straight to him thanking Houston’s fans.
“I mean, it's been amazing being in this city,” he tells Tappen in the online version sanitized of Christianity.
A comparison of the two versions can be viewed here on X, formerly Twitter, thanks to Citizen Free Press.
Reacting to the editing job, Ed Vitagliano of the American Family Association says NBC’s decision to cut Shroud’s comments should not be ignored by the public.
“It might seem like a small thing for NBC to edit out a quarterback’s praise to Jesus Christ,” he says, “but it's simply another symptom of an underlying disease that is rotting away the strength of our nation.”
AFA and Vitagliano believe the “disease” rotting away the nation is post-modernism and humanism, which have rejected God and religious faith as antiquated and irrelevant. If that is the mindset among the executives at NBC, a young NFL quarterback in the prime of his career reminded them that many do not share that secular belief.
Stroud, Vitagliano says, is not the only elite athlete to talk about their religious faith.
“We see a lot of athletes who are bold in their faith,” he says. “We see a lot of young people who are bold in their faith.”
American Family Association is the parent organization of American Family News.
