I am by nature an extremely passionate sports fan.\u00a0 The kind of fan who often can\u2019t distinguish the difference between an NFL football game and one of my kid\u2019s high school sporting events, because I see it all as competition.\u00a0 Typically, I will hate my rival teams and their stars with as much vigor as I love the teams I support.\u00a0 Based on that criterion, I really had no reason to hate Tim Tebow.\u00a0 As a Big Ten football guy, Florida and their quarterback should have never been an issue.\u00a0 But of all the people associated with college sports that I have despised over the years, Lou Holtz, Danny Ainge, Steve Spurrier, just to name a few, Tim Tebow rose above them all.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even tell you why, he just did.\u00a0 While I still dislike everyone on that short list, Tebow is beginning to grow on me.<\/p>\n
I think it started with his appearance on Jimmy Fallon.\u00a0 It was then I realized that while his spirituality was very important to him, he also had the ability to laugh at himself.\u00a0 That maybe he didn\u2019t take himself too seriously after all.\u00a0 During his press conference he was answering questions as if he were Nuke Laloosh, mentored by Crash Davis, right out of Bull Durham.\u00a0 But he was hit with some sticky questions. The Tweet by Antonio Cromartie saying the Jets did not need Tebow, the reports that Mark Sanchez was not taking the move all that well, and he answered them all with class, style, and humor.\u00a0 He smiled, he was humble, gracious, and damn it, he was downright lovable.\u00a0 It was so easy before, because I hated him. I didn\u2019t want the Jets to sign him and when they did, like many Jets fans, I was out of mind with anger and confusion.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I can\u2019t help but finding myself looking forward to the season and rooting for him to do great things for us.<\/p>\n
The reality of the football situation has not changed.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t think he is or will ever develop into a starting quarterback in the NFL.\u00a0 I don\u2019t particularly like him as a back-up either.\u00a0 He is still going to create a huge media blitz which will inevitably be a distraction in camp. And while he may make Sanchez better, he certainly won\u2019t make life easy for him.\u00a0 The irony is I truly believe \u201cthe Tebow brand\u201d believes all that too and that\u2019s why he will be wearing green and white this year.\u00a0 Tim Tebow is no dummy.\u00a0 He knows opportunity is fleeting and he is going to milk this ride for all its worth.\u00a0 Why labor in Jacksonville when you can collect big bucks on Madison Avenue?\u00a0 Community members of New York and New Jersey, under privileged children, people with challenges of any kind are going to benefit enormously from the arrival of Tim Tebow.\u00a0 Because while he will benefit financially from his time in New York, it is my guess that he will be about as philanthropic as any athlete ever, and that can\u2019t be a bad thing for the area or the image of the New York Jets.<\/p>\n
While I like to think of myself as a positive person, I am anything but when I take on the persona of a New York Jets fan.\u00a0 If you are reading this, then you may be the kind of fan who just waits for things to go badly, as most Jets fans do.\u00a0 Past, present, and probably also in the future; we as Jets fans will have plenty to bang our heads against a wall about.\u00a0 By comparison, this is not the worst thing that could have happened to our beloved team.\u00a0 The arrival of a highly spiritual, super competitive, hardworking, and extremely generous football player has to garner some positive results.\u00a0 So I for one am choosing to be excited about his infiltration of our JetNation.com family<\/a>.\u00a0 There has been enough negativity swirling around this franchise and I for one am ready to embrace some positive vibes.\u00a0 It appears Tebow is already having an influence on me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am by nature an extremely passionate sports fan.\u00a0 The kind of fan who often can\u2019t distinguish the difference between an NFL football game and one of my kid\u2019s high school sporting events, because I see it all as competition.\u00a0 Typically, I will hate my rival teams and their stars with as much vigor as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-featured-editorials"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-34C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11818"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11827,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11818\/revisions\/11827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}