Brunt on Tebow: Some Tim in Tom Brady
Posted December 16, 2011 11:18 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
People want to believe. It is the nature of the species. We want miracles. We want the fantastic.
There are sound rational explanations for nearly everything that happens, and there are armies of smart folks out there whose job it is to explain it all, to fill in the blanks, to boil life experience down to numbers, to a formula, to a logarithm.
But still we pine for kismet, for chance, for fluke, for random occurrence, for that which cannot be reduced to an equation, for something romantic, something extraordinary, something magical that proves all of those wise men and women wrong, at least on rare occasion.
That’s true in life, that’s true in the subset that is sport, and that’s why the legend of Tim Tebow strikes such a chord, why Sunday’s game between his Denver Broncos and Tom Brady’s New England Patriots is going to push Tebowmania to even crazier heights.
Of course, there’s a logical flaw here. Tebow is in fact extraordinarily gifted, part of that tiny fraction of the population (including nearly all professional athletes) that was lucky enough to have won the genetic lottery. Before coming to the National Football League, he captured two national championships at a big money football powerhouse, the University of Florida, and won the Heisman Trophy as the best player in American college football. He was then drafted by the Denver Broncos in the first round.
The enormous obstacles Tebow was forced to overcome? Skepticism among some of the football cognoscenti because of his messy throwing mechanics, and the fact that his great running skills were undervalued because as a rule, NFL teams don’t like its quarterbacks to run.
That’s hardly The Little Engine That Could.
But logic be damned. And alternate explanations for the Broncos’ six game, comeback-laden winning streak (opponent miscues, a stellar Denver defence led by the player who may well actually be their best rookie, Von Miller, the universal truth that sometimes, stuff just happens) be damned.
This is one of those miracles, wrought by The Quarterback Nobody Wanted (well, actually somebody wanted him enough to draft him 25th among all of the players eligible), who is driven by religious beliefs that he opts to put on public display, a former Big Man On Campus who has pledged to save himself for marriage, a big, smiling galoot who has a tendency to stink out the joint for three quarters and then lead his team to crazy, unlikely victories.
You take that story and throw it into the echo chamber which is sports media in all of its many 24/7 permutations, and what’s going to come out on the other end is pure, unadulterated myth. You get a world divided between believers and non-believers, with each passing week and each win shifting more from one camp to the other. You get a lost-cause presidential candidate, Rick Perry, announcing that he’s going to beat back the skeptics and win – just like Tim Tebow.
You get an extremely powerful, seductive brand.
Watch it on Sportnset: The highly-anticipated Tim Tebow vs. Tom Brady game can be seen Sunday on Sportsnet East (4:15 p.m. ET) | Check full schedule
Meanwhile, there is the great satisfaction of watching armies of NFL insiders and analysts and coaches-killing-time-on-television proved wrong. Who doesn’t enjoy it when the smartest guy in the room is revealed to be not so smart? (Or Mel Kiper Jr. is made to look downright dumb) There’s no fighting it. There’s no use right now theorizing that it’s still possible Tebow is really not the second coming. And it’s always a mug’s game arguing against the value of faith, and “character” and the various other qualities and intangibles that are routinely ascribed to successful athletes. That genie is out of the bottle, and apparently no number of failed “role models” is going to force it back.
But it is okay to at least enjoy a small irony.
That other quarterback on Sunday? The one with the glamour boy looks, who is married to a supermodel, who has won three Super Bowls as part of the most successful organization in the modern NFL, who throws the ball perfectly, who at his best seems to direct an offence in which all of those X’s and O’x wind up exactly where they’re supposed to be?
When Brady went to the University of Michigan, he was seventh on the Wolverines’ quarterback depth chart, and had to fight his way to a starting role. The Patriots hemmed and hawed before drafting him in the sixth and second-last round of the NFL draft.
He barely clung to a roster spot as a rookie, when the Pats made the unusual move of holding on to four quarterbacks. Brady was the fourth of those four – two slots behind former CFL mediocrity Michael Bishop.
And today, he is spoken of in the same sentence as Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas and a very short list of NFL quarterbacks considered the best of all time. Yep, the truth is, Tom Brady is more Tebow than Tebow.
