I find this hard to accept at face value. Not saying it isn’t true, just an Occam’s Razor thing. But, I bet we can all guess what group of people will find it very easy to accept:
Sporting News: NFL — The “cult-like following” and “media frenzy” are intertwined. Tebow’s huge popularity after his college success and stature as a good human won him legions of followers. And as a result, a coach told Silver he would consider signing Tebow, “But it’s just not worth dealing with all the stuff that comes with it.”
Does anyone really think any coach or manager anywhere in the NFL wouldn’t find a great player and his resulting stardom “worth dealing with” if they thought he could help them win games? It seems like there’s been plenty of NFL stars over the years that came and went with way heavier fandom and personal baggage than Tim Tebow.
But the evangelical right latches onto stuff like this faster than a hungry gator on a fallen baby bird. In those communities it is near Gospel that the most powerful, wealthiest, religion, representing virtually every branch of government at the highest levels are, in reality, the most suppressed martyrs that have ever walked on earth in its entire 9,000 year history. Combine it with the IRS reportedly targeting the tax status of Teaparty political groups and as far as they’re concerned you might as well have Nero incarnate lighting up the human torches.
FWIW on the latter, they should go out of their way to not target opposition groups unless it’s applied equally and them some. There’s more fudging going on there than in a Walmart bakery and, if indeed the Teaparty is being unduly singled out, it looks terrible for the WH no matter who did what.
Tebow isn’t being blackballed. He’s just a low skill player and a showoff which isn’t an easy combination to sell.
All I can say is Michael Vick. If he could bounce back from his baggage, Tebow’s would be a cake walk. If he had the skills to make it worth it.
Most NFL coaches would sign a member of the Manson Family if they could score touchdowns. I’m more inclined to believe that coaches don’t want him because he really is a shitty quarterback who never lived up to the hype built up around him.
Yah as a football fan I can confirm this is a skill problem. He’s very athletic and by all accounts he tries hard. The problem is he can’t throw very accurately or consistently. One of the biggest differences between college and pro football is the speed of defensive players. In the pros, speed goes up dramatically. Defensive speed means much less effectiveness from running plays and it means coverage on receivers is tighter. This requires a QB to be relied on to pass more often and to do so accurately.
Tebow doesn’t have that accuracy, which means he can’t pass the ball reliably, which means defenses can blitz him more often (as he won’t burn them with a completion most likely), which means more sacks or hurried passes which will be even worse.
BTW, as much as I don’t like the guy, I feel bad that the Jets viciously screwed him. He’s done for good now.
Tebow is a bad quarterback. He’s so bad that last year he didn’t start a single game in place of another bad quarterback, Mark Sanchez. He’s likely to be cut by the Jets and no other NFL team has expressed any interest in picking Tebow up, not even teams like Oakland, Jacksonville and Cleveland who desperately need a quarterback. Lots of his fans say that Tebow is being dissed because he’s a Christian. In reality, his problem with the NFL is not that he showboats his religion but that he’s just a godawful quarterback.
I see Tebow having a new career in Arena Football, a place where his running ability might even do him some good.
I agree with d.c.wilson, there are very few coaches that care in the least about controversy and baggage as long as the player can get it done…and Tebow can’t.
I’m on the fence as to whether Silver embellished / revised what some coach said or whether he found one coach that was willing to say something that absurd (which is deceptive by misrepresenting the majority).
Good clip there – LOL. Cheers.
If they find that certain groups have a pattern of tax evasion, they ought to be targeted, no? It would be a waste of resources to go after generally clean groups just for the sake of appearance (especially as the
TeaChristian Libertarian Party is going to call persecution no matter what).I’ve never seen that. Being a good human and a fundie xian death cultist are quite often mutually exclusive. It takes more than screaming jesus a lot and telling people they are going to hell.
Tebow and his family were in the Philippines as missionaries.
They were targeting and converting Catholics. The Philippines has been heavily xian for centuries. Catholics are Fake xians in their fundie cult world and Tebow’s father is an anti-Catholic bigot.
Too bad Tebow’s the only Christian in the NFL….
ummm, what’s a WH?
@8: Yeah…it’s not like after each and every game there’s not a prayer circle or anything. Or prayers in the locker room beforehand and at halftime. Now, if there were more Christians doing that sort of thing in the NFL (hell, in public school and university programs), then Tebow might be accepted.
Too bad he’s the lone Christian in the entire football playing universe.
WH=White House. He shifted gears to an IRS investigation of Tea Party groups.
I think a lot of people will remember Reggie White, almost as much an evangelical Christian as Tebow. Every time he tackled someone, he’d tell them, “Jesus loves you.” He was also a reverend, and was working on his own translation of the bible from the earliest extant texts he could access after he retired from football, before his tragically early death.
If I recall correctly, no one blackballed him for being ostentatiously Christian. No one cared about that, because he was a hell of a player. Tim Tebow isn’t getting any more chances because he’s not a good quarterback, and he’s refusing to play any of the positions he might actually have a shot being good at. So much for humility.
The reason why baggage and controversy might be the difference with Tebow is that Tebow is a project. He has athleticism that should be able to translate somehow into being a useful NFL player, but it would take at least a year to get him to the point of usefulness. If Tebow could accept not being a starting quarterback and didn’t have hordes of crazy fans screaming for him to start then he would likely be worth signing to a league minimum contract for some team, and he’d certainly make a practice squad if he wanted to. The potential benefits of signing Tebow are purely speculative, delayed, and difficult to measure, while the downside of signing him is easy for anyone to see.
Good comments guys thanks. It’s amazing what you can learn if you shut up, don’t bridle when someone says something that slightly disagrees with you, and read what they actually wrote. I’ve been trying to teach this to the new gen of new media folks but they — Get Off My Yard You Meddling Kids!
Jugswang
RW was a really decent human being. He never hid his religion, often mentioned it, but never once with the “I’m better than you are” attitude that extrudes from Tebow (whom I am willing to cut a little slack because he is very young and has been very sheltered and was raised by a raving nutball).
Tebow was a successful college athlete who might have done fine (though probably not spectacularly) as a pro if he had spent some time on the bench to start with and worked his way into a position. Or maybe not. Recruiters and coaches are pretty good at choosing the ones who can make the transition, but every single year they get some wrong and dozens of young men find out that they just don’t have the qualities it takes to play pro ball.
Think he’ll have the humility to spend that time on the bench now? Or will he decide he can make more money talking about how the evil overlords hated him because he is a Christian like they hated Reggie White?
oh, wait……
The bench is satan.
I always felt for the guy. His “style” or what you want to call it worked great in College, but was not translated well in the Pros – everyone knew this and was saying it. But I think he was a good player, and had he been given time in the right environment, I’m sure he could have adapted well.
A lot of the problems I think came from this crazy media hype over him. The whole genuflecting and bible verses on the face were ridiculous yeah, and I mean FUCK okay let’s make fun of it if we have to and then move on or you know reference it in passing or something. It got to the point where people were wanting this guy to fail.
And I mean yeah the ultra-religious thing was lame as fuck, but the dude was a really nice guy. Took all that shit with class; handled it lot better than a lot of other players who have done a lot worse,
Considering that every NFL team has pre-game christian prayers in the locker room AND on the field, and half the players are spewing “god” every time you turn around, one cannot say there is “discrimination against christianity”. A poor musicion blames his instrument, and a lousy quarterback blames his teams.
The reality is Florida Gator quarterbacks are worse than Houston Cougar quarterbacks when it comes to washing out of the NFL. They can’t play worth spit.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/791559-top-10-gator-qbs-of-the-past-50-years
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/665691-florida-gator-quarterbacks-through-the-years
Tebow is big, strong and fast enough to play another position, but he gets concussions so easily that he can’t switch. He can’t throw and he can’t take a hit, so he’s useless to NFL teams unless he learns how to kick or something. And even if he could take a hit, he’s too egotistical to change positions. His name is Tim MEbow, after all.
Holy crap, Fallon can sing pretty well!
Christians – Boycotting NFL ? – > Because of ANTI-CHRIST Purge of “TOO VISIBLE FOR CHRIST – CHRISTIAN NFL QB Tim Tebow – Being effectively BLACKBALLED FROM NFL –
NO NFL QB – Fair Try – WILL BE ALLOWED – NOT! AN OPTION FOR TIM TEBOW !
NFL $ Controllers: TIM TEBOW IS TOO CHRISTIAN FOR THEM –
HE HAS EXCEEDED THEIR PERMISSIBLE “CHRISTIAN VISIBILITY” LIMITS!
THUS – HE WILL BE Effectively BLACKBALLED FROM NFL – NO Fair Try At NFL QB FOR HIM !
(JUST AN OPTION FOR LIES, MISREPRESENTATIONS AND ABUSE AS DEMONSTRATED BY DARK SIDE – “COACH” REX RYAN…)