There's something about Tebow

“Tim Tebow is everything his critics say he is and everything his fans think he is.”

Why is it that Tim Tebow engenders so much passion from both his detractors and supporters? On the surface what’s not to like? He’s handsome, charismatic, passionate and yes as we are told so often told, he's a winner.

Tebow’s iconoclasm is nothing new, it plays out in every walk of life.Human beings tend to place people in nice neat little boxes. We have an idea of what certain things should look like. Black people listen to rap, white people listen to country. Asian people are smart, etc… (I’d love for my race to have that stereotype)Anytime someone jumps outside of our prepackaged boxes, it is as if the America’s collect brain can’t comprehend it.

Marshall Mathers(could he have a whiter name) better known as Eminem, is as talented as anyone in the rap game, yet he was initially(and still is by some) rejected by hardcore hip hop fans. The same thing happened to Larry Bird. A white man in a black man’s game. It works the other way around too. Why has Tiger Woods become an international icon? Dominance? Jack and Arnie were dominate too. Tiger stands out because he’s a person of color playing the ultimate white man’s game. We are such creatures of habit, slaves to the norm,that we are unable to handle deviations from the status quo.

A bi-product of this phenomenon is that if these men experience success they instantly become superstars. How many nonathletic white guys, who spent their entire childhoods being picked last on the playground and still get schooled at the gym by the “brothers”, lived vicariously through Larry Legend? How many black guys watched Tiger win the masters and felt like it was a blow to Whitey, a pay back for every time they were stopped by police or followed in a store?

Whenever ever someone crosses a genre the people within the genre reject the genre crosser. It’s not just a racial. Singer Jewel recently released a country album. How that work out for her? Tim Tebow is one of the rarest of genre crossers, the running white quarterback. Tebow turns our lazy football paradigms on their head, a white man, in a mostly black sport, playing a white position like a black man.(still with me?) Tebow stirs up emotions, stereotypes and even religion.

After years of expecting white quarterbacks to stand in the pocket like statues and black quarterbacks tap dancing through it like Sammy Davis Jr., no one knows what to make of Tebow.

To add even more fuel to the fire, here comes a lighting bolt from heaven. Tebow is an Evangelicals dream. He doesn’t smoke, drink and is a self professed virgin. If there is a more powerful motivator and argument starter in our society than race, its religion. Tim Tebow is the Christian superman, son of Christian missionaries who two summers ago traveled to the Philippines to help with poor, even circumcising a young child in need. Tebow is manna from heaven for the Christian sports fan. Sports are already superstitious on their own, you add the irrationality that relgion can bring and you have a Category 5 hurricane on your hands.

It doesn’t help that Tebow’s “it” factor is off the charts. He’s everything you want your son to be and your daughter to marry. Except I’d have taught my son how to throw a football. Tim Tebow has undoubtedly always been the biggest, strongest and fastest on the field. He’s similar to his biggest fan Lebron James. The king praised Tebow via Twitter, following his come back win over the Dolphins “Congrats to @TimTebow for that comeback win today. Impressive! He’s just a winner.”

This is not the first time Lebron has used the Twittersphere to stick up for Tebow. Perhaps Lebron sees a bit of himself in Tim. He should. Tim and Lebron are proceeded by such legends as Shaquille O’neal and Wilt chamberlain. Men of immense talent who didn’t get the most out of their god given abilities. In this case with the three basketball players, none of them pushed themselves to improve their weaknesses because their athletic abilities allowed them to coast. Shaq has four titles you say? Can you really picture Shaq winning anything without Kobe or D-Wade.

Tim Tebow learned at a early age that he was bigger,faster and stronger than everyone else. The problem is, athleticism will take you a lot further in basketball than it will in football. Football is a far more technical sport. To make matters worse for Tebow, he plays the most technical position in all of sports.

Lebron, Wilt and Shaq couldn’t shoot but could still average 30 points a night. Tim Tebow can not dominate the NFL on physicality alone.

A quarterback must step into a huddle and reel off incredibly tongue twisting verbiage, step to the line of scrimmage,read the defense, adjust his offense to whatever presnap indicators the defense presents. He must then call out a cadence(one that must vary, lest the defense catch on to it and get a jump on the snap)Next he drops back into the pocket with perfect footwork , all the while going from his pre snap read to his post snap read. Finally he must deliver the ball on time and on target. Oh yeah, he’s supposed to do all of this(from snap to throw) in 1.5 seconds.

The question is why is Tim Tebow, a high school and college All-American is so devoid of the technical skills necessary to make him successful at the NFL level.

One word. Winning.

The win at all cost mentality that is prevalent from college to Pop Warner. At the earliest stages of development coaches now teach systems instead of fundamentals. We don’t need to teach kids how to take a snap and a hand off. We can run the spread option. The result is poor Somewhere along the way a coach had a chance to improve Tebow’s throwing motion. They didn’t, why? Because it would take too much time, it could cost them a game or two. Our society no longer rewards patience and development, even in places where it should.

Tebow is that kid in school who memorized his times tables, and aced math until he tackle to long division, he never learned the basic principles so he struggles. In life, short cuts always catch up to you. For Lebron, and Wilt, the NBA finals was their day of reckoning. For Tim Tebow that day is coming very soon.

Dead men tell no tales.

It’s been nearly twenty years since Charles Barkley’s ground breaking I am not a role model commercial. Chuck caused quite a stir back then but the dirty little secret of the faux controversy was that Charles was right. Maybe the American public is finally ready to listen.

Now yet another role model has been exposed as being…well human. This time it’s Walter Payton who finds himself in the crosshairs of the buildup/tear down media culture. There’s just one problem, Payton isn’t here to defend himself.

Until recently Walter Payton had been a shining example of what an athlete could be. So revered is Payton that the NFL’s man of the year award bears his name. Payton had the good fortune to have played in an era that predated the explosion of ESPN and the internet. That changed last week when Sports Illustrated published an excerpt from Jeff Pearlman’s upcoming book. The book alleges that Sweetness was a drug addicted philandering depressive who spent his final years in misery.

Last Friday on the Dan Patrick radio show, Pearlman confessed his undying love for Payton and was shocked by the blowback from the SI article and impending book. Pearlman’s claim is that his book is really a love letter to his flawed hero. The excerpts were only a small part of the book.

The question I’ve asked myself is why? Why is this being written years after Payton’s death? Who gains from this? Furthermore what’s the point? It would easy to say that this is a money grab. but that conclusion is too easy.

We live in a TMZ, Real housewives, HBO 24/7, Hard knocks world. We feel it’s our right to know everything there is to know about our heroes. There are no secrets; we strip everything away until we see our heroes naked and very ashamed.

Again the question I ask why. Pearlman sounded genuine in his desire to chronicle Payton’s life for the historical record. Excuse me? I’m sorry is Walter Payton now Bill Clinton or JFK? He was an athlete, nothing more nothing less. We worship our athletes, we give them platforms that they are not worthy of and are unprepared for. In the end they are no different than any other powerful man with a bank account full of zeroes.

Sweetness provided us with entertainment, not a cure for cancer or Middle East peace. Why do we need to know about his personal life? The same reason I searched couldn’t find a copy of Time magazine on the newsstands at convenience stores. . We don’t care about substantive things anymore. I couldn’t find an issue of Time, but I was inundated with US Weekly, The Enquirer, and OK magazine. We’ve either become so bored, or stressed that we’d rather follow the lives of the rich and famous than live our own.

I want to know what Sofia Verga looks like naked, but it doesn’t mean I should wait for her to step out of the shower and snap a picture. Pearlman is nothing more than a peeping tom looking into blinds that should stay closed. Worse Pearlman takes a picture while he’s there and posts it on the internet. It’s a violation of privacy and decency and in a truly civil society there wouldn’t be a market for a book of this kind.

Pearlman doesn’t shoulder all of the blame. Pearlman is a product of a voyeuristic culture. Writing, like music is often a reflection of the times an artist lives in. In a world where Snookie and not so real housewives can parlay reality shows into B list stardom, is it any wonder Pearlman would be inspired to write a tell all about Sweetness?

Most disturbing of all these tarnishes Payton’s legacy more than it would the average sports hero. Payton’s legacy is Chicago, his brand as it were, was built on hard work, character, and perseverance. Payton is beloved in Chicago not because of championships but because of the years he slogged on bad teams, turning in heroic performances while surrounded by futility. He’s the everyman who wakes up every day punches the clock, goes home and gets up and does it all over again the next day.

If this were MJ no one would care. In fact this happened to MJ and no one cared. The Jordan legacy is built on accomplishment. Accomplishments can’t be taken away. But you can take away a man’s integrity. You can attack his character by exposing his foibles and failings.

If Pearlman had written this book with Payton’s permission this would be a different story. It would be the tale of a flawed hero reflecting on his life, his triumphs and mistakes. Instead we have a man’s most private moments that he never intended to share. It’s one thing for Hope Solo to appear half naked the cover of a magazine, it’s another to have yourself recorded the way Erin Andrews was.

Pearlman’s claims don’t ring true because he has knew exactly what was going into SI, in fact his claims were so eye popping, it grabbed the cover.. If his true desire was to give a complete portrait of the man, then those quotes would not have been included in SI. Pearlman wants to see his name atop the New York Times best seller list. Seduced by his own self importance he allowed SI to publish an excerpt that he claims is not indicative of the book as a whole.

Pearlman’s pulling a Deon here. During his Hall of Fame speech Prime shielded himself from critics by claiming that all of the criticism that he endured was a byproduct of trying to provide for his mother. Pearlman is no different really; he uses his purported love and admiration for Payton to shield himself from the fact that he robbed a dead man’s grave. Instead of stealing jewels he stole memories, forever tarnishing a man’s name. In the end that’s all any of have left.