Taking a knee with Tea Party Tim

Tim Tebow’s overt religiosity annoys me only a little more than Clay Matthews’ hair.  Neither has anything to do with how well they play football, so what do I really care?  Matthews’ hair is a little easier for me to put up with because I like the Packers, that’s all.  (I’m told he grooms his mane during games with Gatorade. Is this good for it?)  Anyway, they’re pro athletes and pro athletes are generally a show-offy and eccentric breed.

What really annoys me is that the Media is trying to sell Tebow as a great quarterback before he’s had the chance to prove he’s even a good one.  They did the same thing with Eli Manning who, going by the press hype, was on his way to being a greater star than his brother with his first completion.  The difference between the two hypings is the intended audience.  Manning was being sold to a more generic sort of football fan.  I suspect Tebow is being sold to what I imagine the marketers imagine is a “conservative” fan base.  Apparently they think pro football doesn’t appeal to enough middle-aged, conservative Christian, Southern and Midwestern white people.

It’s not Tebow’s fault---at least not primarily---but he ought to be known as Tea Party Tim.

Photo by Eric Lars Bakke, courtesy of the Denver Broncos.

___________________

Updated in the final seconds, another Tim Tebow miracle:

Scott Raab defends Tebow whom he believes is “sincere in his delusions.”  Includes a funny story about former Cleveland Cavalier Drew Gooden.  What happens in Toronto, stays on the runway in Toronto.

___________________

Updated in overtime:

Missed this one. Scott Lemieux analyzes Tebow’s miracle defeat of the Bears Sunday in The Most Clutch Player There Ever Was.

Comments

[minstrel hussain boy]

there's a great sideline story about tebow. it seems that their great cornerback champ bailey had just made an interception and when he went to sidelines he saw tebow kneeling, with his eyes closed.

champ asked him what exactly the fuck he was doing besides playing a professional football game.

tebow said "i'm just talking to the man upstairs."

champ said "next time use the phone to talk to the offensive co-ordinator."

[Sherri]

Eli Manning at least had the potential to become a decent NFL quarterback. Tebow is a terrible NFL quarterback who wouldn't have gotten a chance it if weren't for the hype. How do you get into a position for 4th quarter comebacks? Have a good defense and be terrible for the first three quarters.

[Morzer]

I agree that the whole Tebow religumositarianism thing is extremely tedious and that he isn't much of a quarterback, as opposed to a rather promising running back with a strange habit of throwing wounded duck passes. That said, I think your last line is a bit ungenerous -uncharacteristically so. It's hardly Tebow's fault that every mouth-foaming fake Christian GOP-slobbering crank in a thousand mile radius has rushed to make him into some sort of bizarre icon of martyred Christianity triumphing despite the heathen hordes.
.
There is, however, some slight consolation when one sees John Elway's obvious embarrassment at this bizarre spectacle.

[actor212]

Morzer, it didn't help that he featured himself prominently in a Super Bowl halftime commercial against abortion. That's practically asking to be Jesusfied.

Look, the man is 7-1 this year. Unless you want to chalk that up to divine intervention (and the more Tebow gets ridiculed, the more that imagery will take hold) you have to acknowledge that he's at least good enough.

[C. Adolph]

He's a proselytizer. That's what offers the ridicule. Sure, he's a leader, infuses optimism in his fellow players, but the guy should be chased with pitchforks and torches with that throwing motion. The Broncos defense is what won those games. When they play a decent team (the Jets should have destroyed them and, essentially, did if not for Sanchez's ineptness) you will see the inherent difference between an ersatz jeebus and a QB who can actually win games at that level. Wait until they fall behind by more than 14 points and he has to throw to catch up. The AFC West is a joke.
Let alone the idea of a god and his minions.