Not going to lie, I’ve got Tebowmania.
I’ll be rooting for the Broncos when they play the Patriots in the NFL playoffs this weekend. Naturally, I’ll root against them if they should play my Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, but that’s a post for another time.
But, yes, I’ve got a case of Tebowmania.
Why, you ask?
Well, I’ve rooted for Tim Tebow ever since I had dinner with him and his mom while he was still in high school (photo below). I was doing PR for an organization that was awarding Tim for his accomplishments as a high school quarterback. While my religious beliefs don’t match up to those of the Tebow family, I respected their conviction, apparent honesty and determination to do the right thing. (We can debate what the “right thing” is, but if you sit down with him for any length of time, you can see that he feels what is right for him and will do it. I can respect that.)
So, he’s a good kid from a nice family.
But there’s so much more to it.
I have Tebowmania because he has blown-up the notion of how an NFL team can win.
The Denver Broncos have just won. Their offensive stats aren’t great. Tebow is NOT a prototypical NFL passer. But the Broncos have found ways to win. And the NFL is about wins and losses.
General Managers can fret over Tebow’s passing yards, completion percentage, points scored – but the ONLY stat that truly matters in this league is wins. If you win more than you lose, you’re a success.
The Broncos – and Tebow – have taken advantage of situations to make sure that at the end of the game, they have more points than the other team.
The notion of “god” wanting Tebow and the Broncos to win is just laughable, but I do really like the idea of a team winning in an unorthodox manner (see what I did there?).
Tebow has captured the imagination of people – I read recently that he is currently the most popular athlete in America.
If he guides the Broncos to victory this weekend over the Patriots, Tebowmania will continue to explode.
(Mar…
I'd like to echo Jesse's comment, certainly in the first paragraph. Denver is getting a lot of attention now because they are in the playoffs - not necessarily that they are any good. Do they make good plays? Sure, but every team does. The fact of the matter is that his career record is 9-6 (7-4 for the 2011 regular season). That's not great. Better than average, sure, but he's not that good.
Maybe it's because I'm a Bills fan, but I get skeptical when people get excited about good performance in recent history. For comparison's sake, the Bills went 4-0 at the beginning of the season, including a major win over the Patriots. Compare that to last season, when they went 4-12. People (including myself) were ecstatic over the performance of the Bills and especially Fitzpatrick, whose value to the team was dubbed, "Fitzmagic." And then what happened? They placed fourth in their division by the end of the regular season.
Until the Broncos get kicked out of the playoffs (which seems likely given their competition), I can't help but feel that this is far too similar.
Time will tell with Tebow, but I wish that he wasn't talked about so much that he's considered underrated after every win but overrated after every loss. That's ridiculous.
(You know... there was a maligned "can-run/can't throw" QB who completed only 50% of his passes, but came off the bench following a rough start to lead his team to an 8-8 record and earned a Pro Bowl spot in his rookie year. A year later, his team finished 10-6 and qualified as a wild card. In his third season, another Pro Bowl year, he went 8-2 before succumbing to injury. It's been all downhill since then for Vince Young.)