Can quarterback Tim Tebow guide the Broncos to the Super Bowl? (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
Jesus as played by Jason Sudeikis paid Tim Tebow a visit on Saturday Night Live and there were laughs all around. For many this morning, those laughs have been replaced by a smug sense of self-satisfaction after the New England Patriots hammered Tebow and the Denver Broncos 41-23 in one of the most highly-anticipated regular-season NFL games in years.
As has been chronicled elsewhere, the Broncos' loss wasn't all on Tebow. He had a left hand in it, to be sure, but mostly it was poor defence and sloppy decision making and penalties that conspired to ruin the story-line. Oh yes: and Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, too.
But a word to the wise: Tebow's next opponents are the woeful Buffalo Bills at Ralph Wilson Stadium on Christmas Eve. Talk about gift-wrapped. And maybe now that Tebow is just another guy found wanting against the Patriots, it's time to sit back and offer the observation that the NFL has bigger problems than trying to force him into a cookie-cutter mould or figuring out what place religion has in the most over-the-top sport in the world.
In Chicago, a wide receiver named Sam Hurd has been arrested on federal drug distribution charges for buying huge quantities of marijuana and cocaine for distribution and has indicated he isn't the only NFL player involved in the scheme. Hurd's arrest and the chatter that has resulted has, we're told, sent a chill through the game at its highest levels. That's telling, since the NFL is a league that routinely faces a myriad of issues created by dodgy off-field behaviour.
Yet NFL fans have always been able to square off-field criminal activity on the part of larger than life athletes and, by extension, so has society.
Tebow is a different story because he defies convention. As one of the most confounding individuals in sports, it should be almost impossible to dislike him; a quarterback whose half-baked, quirky throwing motion and knack for pulling out late second victories defies opponents' best-laid plans in the most over-coached and over-analyzed sport in the world. No other professional league treats its athletes as pieces of meat in the manner of the NFL. Contracts aren't guaranteed and the post-career road is littered with shattered bodies and souls.
Yet it is Tebow's image as culture warrior that has made him a lightning rod. Athletes in every sport have been crossing themselves and pointing to the sky for decades, and not all of them are Bible Belters. Javier Hernandez, the injured forward for Manchester United, drops to his knees in the centre of the pitch for a full half-minute before the start of each match and holds up his hands palms up in prayer. The German national team and Real Madrid stalwart Mesut Ozil stands on the field, holds open his hands and recites a prayer from the Quran before each match. Yet none of these have been openly mocked by opponents in games the way Tebow has been mocked. When the Detroit Lions beat him earlier this season, players saluted successful plays by dropping to a knee and putting their fist on bowed forehead.
But then, few athletes have been as open about their back-story: the child of missionaries who claims his mother was advised to abort him due to complications during pregnancy. And while it would stand to make sense that well-paid athletes would have as much if not more of a right-wing political bent than other well-paid members of society – nobody much likes taxes, right? – few would consider filming an anti-abortion commercial funded by Focus On The Family for play during the Super Bowl broadcast.
Words fail to describe Tebow's style of play, but his act of prayer is a verb and noun: it is called the 'Te-bow,' its act described as 'Te-bowing.' It is a part of modern and pop culture, and while they'll never be making instructional videos of his throwing motion, 'Te-bowing' is a You Tube sensation.
Tebow showed again on Sunday that he is perfectly imperfect. "Six or seven weeks ago, people said that he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn," his head coach, John Fox, said Sunday. "Well, he can do that."
Tebow the person may not be your cup of tea, but if you are one of us who don't look for anything spiritual in an athletic event or don't see sports as a metaphor for anything, it's easy to celebrate what he brings to the field. In a society that too often goes out of its way to avoid being challenged and looks for the soft, mushy middle at each turn, there's something to be said for throwing a spanner into the works.
After a weekend in which the Green Bay Packers found themselves no longer undefeated and the Indianapolis Colts found themselves no longer without a win – and suspecting what lies around the corner in Hurd's drug case – there's still something to be said for Tim Tebow.