Just Win Baby

If Tim Tebow never plays another down as an NFL Quarterback it won’t be because he can’t. It will be because they say he can’t.

I don’t even say “because they think he can’t,” since thinking — actually assessing the data they have in front of them — hasn’t been much involved here.

And the bottom line of that data, the evidence people so often claim they “need” before they can “know” what to do, is that when Tim Tebow plays, his teams win.

This has been the flat out facts since before high school for the man, who’s now approaching five years out of college.

But because he doesn’t play what and how they think he should play, and they are in charge, they will continue to ignore those facts.

Despite our vaunted “rugged individualism” and supposed belief in bootstraps and quality, we people actually have a long and hoary history of living as if might makes right, and that whoever is in nominal, verifiable, and visible charge possesses that might.

And is therefore right.

I don’t suggest any kind of concerted effort to deny Tebow. I say simply that we see what we want to see, we don’t see what we don’t want to see, and when we see or don’t see either, our beliefs (really they are our expectations, or suspicions) are confirmed.

Again.

So if the New England Patriots — who just plucked the young man out of oblivion — play him in a different role it will be seen as vindicating that pre-conceived, pre-judged (i.e. prejudiced), and unproven notion, that he can’t play quarterback.

Some news stories indicated that Tebow would now be open to playing a new position, where he had in previous instances apparently declined this.

Perhaps he was committed to what he wanted, to what he believed was the correct and only way to do something, and perhaps to a fault. But now fullback or tight end seems open again.

And he may get the chance: Last week, we heard police want to talk to a Patriots receiver; he’s entering some legal trouble, which would hinder his availability to play football. A second pass-catcher if oft-injured.

Perhaps that was the team’s idea all along, since they surely would have known such a need was beginning to churn. Training for a new season, they’d seek someone who knows how to play the game.

Tebow was in Nowheresville.

The team was hedging bets.

He’d become available.

A match was made.

So Tom Brady may be throwing to Tim Tebow — in the same division as the New York Jets and the same Conference as the Broncos. And the Patriots have epic rivalries with both.

Recent reports have indicated tight end is not an option. But when the Patriots signed Tebow, someone asked Coach Bill Belichick what position he’d play. His response was, “We’ll see.”

A more likely scenario has Tim Tebow available at the right price — no guaranteed cash and the league minimum for two years if he makes the team — simply to bolster their quarterback ranks.

Meantime the Jets jerked Tebow around all last season. They may be paying for that one — and in more was than one — for the next couple years.

But undeniably, we live in interesting football times, my friends.

In fact, interesting times are commonly a result when one’s cherished pre-conceptions don’t jibe with truth. As Zig Ziglar used to say, we’re like a cross-eyed discuss thrower: we don’t set many records but we do keep the crowd alert.

We’ll have to endure the crowing by the naysayers, convinced they were right about Tim Tebow — when they had decided beforehand, stacked the deck against him, refused the plain proof, and now may have the opportunity to say, “We told you so.”

But we’ve endured worse.

And Tebow has lived in it.

And anyway, it will be fun to see a situation develop where what’s actually happening is what’s been said all along: that Tebow can play, and should play, and will win if he does. Because that, exactly, is what has happened when a team actually, you know, tries it.

In the little ebook I wrote when Tebow was producing the proof while playing for the Broncos, one point was that Tebow would pick up somewhere, with somebody, that could, somehow, see this — and know what no one else would even look at: the simple bottom line results that when Tebow was allowed to play by the powers-that-be, he certainly could play professional football, and his teams won.

And this is a team sport, right?

Here it is in the form of a proof:

When Tim Tebow plays, his teams win.
His team is the New England Patriots.
If they let him play, they will win, too.

Even if it’s not what anybody thought it would look like in the end.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Ensamples

Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via

Read More »

Lipstick

Pig is revelation. Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen. It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see. + Key is it’s here. Problem is we don’t see it. Action

Read More »

Not For Teacher

There’s an unfortunate instructor-y thing where the guy on stage [I’ve found it’s usually a male doing this] asks a question he already knows the answer to, one of the people in the audience … err, classroom … is the target, the answer given is wrong, and the stagehand just goes and gives the answer

Read More »

Diminishing Me

You’d think a guy’d remember if it was the first time he’d seen a body but I didn’t not at first. [Hadda chance to graduate from college into one of our acceptable wars but didn’t, into the war that is, and no shot at a medical profession: left HS Chem as it had only 28

Read More »

Random

Forget What?

Today is the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Poking around, I found this short item, from the Fictional Newswire New York (FN) — Eleven years after the World Trade Center attacks here in September 2001, most haven’t forgotten … they just don’t know why they were supposed to remember. “Uh, I’m pretty

Read More »

Too Old For This

You know the line. Usually spoken by an ersatz Bruce Willis type, it is well past cliché, sliding in safely but awkwardly beyond its years to self-parody, as predictable as the pablum in which it appears. [And note, I like every other Die Hard movie.] And yet, here I am: Too old for this. I

Read More »

The Amazing Amazingness of Amazing Stuff

Amazing. Did it creep up on you as well? This overuse of the word “amazing” just sort of … appeared. Amazing. Here I was just a moment ago trying to read about the Dodgers, and Don Mattingly wanting more instant replay — they’d lost recently to the Brewers on a questionable call to end the

Read More »

Pumpkin Eater

Alex Rodriguez cheated. Took the easy way. Lied. And if he really does have faith, as he said after the Red Sox game Sunday, he knows he’s right out of Pinocchio. His lawyer, however, appears to have no idea what a gigantic donkey he himself is. To recap — Ryan Dempster missed Rodriguez with his

Read More »

Related

Total Recall

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one … There was a woman who claimed to talk with God — not to Him, but with Him. The tale was well-told around town, in which there was also a priest. The priest one day after Mass asked to speak with the woman and when they’d settled

Read More »

Pumpkin Eater

Alex Rodriguez cheated. Took the easy way. Lied. And if he really does have faith, as he said after the Red Sox game Sunday, he knows he’s right out of Pinocchio. His lawyer, however, appears to have no idea what a gigantic donkey he himself is. To recap — Ryan Dempster missed Rodriguez with his

Read More »

Lyric Lent

Mostly I gave up meat for Lent. Or to put it another way, I gave up meat (mostly) for Lent. And this is how Lent often goes and the difference I think isn’t usually that it doesn’t go that way but that it’s OK when it does. Not that it’s OK to give our word

Read More »

For M

The great story is the search by the lover for the beloved. I love M. I am in love with M. [angry as well; in love and in pain, simul.] To love as Christ loves. (ask, seek, knock). God pursues. Christ stands. Spirit groans. I am he. I seek her even if she will not

Read More »