Dwyane Wade is another well known athlete that has talked about giving tithes to his church (and has made other significant donations) - but yeah, I don't recall any MORmONS claiming him. Maybe it's Brigham Young's fault for that.
Anyway, it does seem that MORmONS think they have a monopoly on things like tithing. Based on the standard elder's quorum answers we used to get - it seems like most MORmONS think that you're either at church on Sunday or else you're out drinking, whoring, and even murdering.
It's ridiculous. The article doesn't even say anything about him being Evangelical Christian. So now many mormons are going to think he's another QB playing in the bay area to be mormon. Until they become the Vegas Raiders of course
If I may wax cynical: Mormons really love "their" star athletes. I was never very good at sports, and always wanted (when younger) to be accepted for what I was. But everybody loves athletes. So that (and a lot of other factors) kind of left me to figure out life for myself. Basically, it was hell.
So how about it, LDS Living? How about an article describing a top LDS herpetologist? Or a top LDS Medieval Literature specialist? Or (horror of horrors!) a drywall installer? We are good people too! But we don't ever get written up. Just not sexy (deliberate choice of words) enough.
I think what makes the article of interest is the large sum of money (not many people pull that kind of paycheck) and that an athlete, generally not a group that's very vocal about religion, is talking about it.
An entire industry and multiple dedicated TV channels exist showcasing these things. I wasn't that good at sports either but let's not fool ourselves into thinking Mormons are the only ones who care about anything coming out of an athlete's mouth.
I think paying tithing is supposed to be a personal and private thing so I imagine most medieval literary specialists wouldn't want articles written about it on any site.
They do talk about the "lower status" people. There is a movie called I'm a Mormon.
Also, I'm not a Mormon and my first thought was... is he Mormon. I have lots of Mormon friends and a lot that are not but tithing is just more commonly talked about and well known among the Mormon faith. not that other faiths don't do it it's just a huge part of the Mormon faith and they talk about it a lot.