To bet on the Patriots at the Broncos today, you will need to give 7.5 points. For those not regularly familiar with betting on football – that is a lot of points.

That is the same amount that the Giants are favored at home against the (4-9) Redskins.

It is more than the Saints are favored at the (2-11) Vikings.

Even the winless Colts are only 7 point underdogs to the Titans.

Did I mention the Broncos have a record of 8-5, lead the AFC West, have won 6 straight and are at home?

In short – you are insane to bet on the Patriots.

I admit that there is a chance that the Patriots blow out the Broncos. Just look at what the Lions did several weeks ago. The prevailing theory is that the Lions game is the blueprint of what a high-scoring offense can do to the Broncos.

But a lot of things have changed since that game.

The first and most important is that the ever evolving Broncos offense. Back on October 30^th, John Fox and Mike McCoy tried to run a traditional offense in Tim Tebow’s 2^nd start this season. It was a failure, and between turnovers and 3-and-outs the Broncos defense never stood a chance.

In the intervening weeks, the Broncos have constantly evolved their offense, from a spread option to a conservative but traditional running game. Each week has brought a different attack so not even Belichick is really sure what he will see today.

Unless, of course, he has reverted to his Spy Gate approach.

Can the Broncos slow the high scoring Patriots defense? They won’t stop them but they can hope to contain them. With one of the 5 best pass rushing tandems to put pressure on Brady without blitzing, little concern for an anemic Pats running game, and 2 veteran quarterbacks (with a history of success versus Brady) they should be able to at least keep the Patriots under their average, high scoring ways.

And that may be enough with an offense that should score more than it has the last few weeks.

The key to stopping Tebow’s passing game is tight coverage. He is just not accurate enough or confident enough to put the ball in tight windows. It is more than a coincidence that there have been 2 situations in which Tebow has thrown well.

1 – Late in games, when teams protecting a lead, drop into a prevent defense to preclude the long pass. With suddenly more space between his receivers and defenders Tebow gains the confidence he had when his receivers at UF ran wide open against inferiors opponents.

2 – Against a Vikings secondary that was so awful I entertained myself all afternoon by comparing Tebow to M. Night Shymalan, because the Vikings inspired me to think that Tebow was seeing dead people. With a secondary that bad, Eric Decker and Demaryious Thomas easily got open and Tebow could put the ball close enough for them to make plays.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Patriots secondary is pretty bad. The Pats are giving up 308 yards per game, good enough for dead last in the NFL.

Tebow should be able to complete passes, keep the ball moving and allow the running game to roll.

The Patriots will score points, I don’t doubt that. But so will the Broncos. And do you really want to have money against Tebow late in a close game?

Between a frenzied Mile High crowd and the inexplicable power of Tebow, there is little doubt the Broncos can keep within 7 points of the Patriots. Having won 6 straight games, none of which made any logical sense, why think the Broncos would suddenly get blown out?

For me, gambling on football comes down to figuring out which games are Gimmes and which games are Traps. The Broncos sure look like a Gimme to me.  

The only ones that can really think that laying 7. 5points on the Pats at Denver is a Gimme are the same folks that wrote an article before the last baseball season that the 2011 Red Sox might be one of the greatest teams ever.

ESPN has declared 2011, “The Year of the Quarterback”. Quarterbacks are the most popular athletes in the country, so it is a smart move to pre-emptively frame an entire football season to drive as much as interest as possible. You can both cater to hard core fans (see: new QBR stat) and the larger number of casual fans at the same time (see Brady and Tebow hagiographies), all in the name of reporting the news.

While ESPN has used this as a way to drive ratings (as they do with all decisions), they have also affected the perception of how we watch football and over-inflated the importance of this position relative to reality. But ESPN is used to deciding what is news and how we should look at it.

ESPN has recently come under deserved attack for their decision to not pursue a story of much greater significance than a guy who sticks his hand under another guys’ bum. In this case it is important to remember the key fallacy underpinning whatever defense ESPN puts forth – ESPN doesn’t just report the news it shapes what becomes news.

When you develop a de facto monopoly on being the sports news source for millions of people, you shape the news. If you lead with a story, it is NEWS. If you ignore it is, just a crazy conspiracy theory on par with aliens and Elvis sightings.

I don’t mean this to be an attack on ESPN’s questionable journalistic ethics – when you run a business that tries to market a product while at the same time act as independent journalists reporting on the same product your ethics are always going to be about as clear as tax laws.

Rather it is an attack on a foundation underpinning their entire ‘Year of the Quarterback’ marketing push. In the NFL, there is no doubt the quarterback is the key to a team’s success (see: Colts, Indianapolis). However in the college game it just isn’t the case.

College quarterback may be the most overrated position in sports.

Look at the national champions of the last decade. Every team that has won a title over the last decade has done so with only one of two quarterback types under center: Superman or Jimmy Olsen. The teams that have Clark Kent inevitably fail.

To clarify.

The Supermen are the rare individual that can put a team on its back and single-handedly, through sheer physical attributes, leadership and desire win the national title for their teams. Tim Tebow, Vince Young and Cam Newton exemplify Supermen. You can point to games that were won by Superman almost wholly by himself; either the national title game itself or a pivotal game on the way to the title game.  While being the most exhilarating, decorated players, and the ones that are most likely go on to be legends, Supermen are also the most rare.

The Jimmy Olsen is the care-taker who is simply in place to not make mistakes and let the players around him win games for him. His goal is to not lose the game. Make the right decisions. No interceptions. No fumbles. Get the ball to better players and let them win it. Greg McElroy, Matt Flynn, Matt Mauck, Craig Krenzel. All have national titles on their resumes yet none would have been considered one of the 5 best quarterbacks in the country in their title winning year.

The most dangerous quarterback to have on your team and the one that nearly guarantees disappointment is the Clark Kent. This is a talented player, who shows flashes of being a Superman but in the end can’t do it by themselves. Fanbases laud these players in the pre-season and NFL teams drool over their talent; yet as talented as they may be they don’t have a cape on underneath that uniform. They are the perennial tease. Their team’s fans and their own teammates want them to become Supermen but they can’t quite do it. Sam Bradford, Mark Sanchez, Troy Smith, Colt McCoy even Andrew Luck and Landry Jones are all seen as nearly Supermen by their boosters and fellow teammates. Yet none have or will win a national title. Their team is too reliant on them but alas they are mere mortals.

Arguably there are 2 players that could be called Clark Kents that did win national titles since Y2k: Ken Dorsey and Matt Leinart, but I would say that hindsight (and their subsequent pro-careers) have defined them as talented Jimmy Olsens with other-worldly talent around them.

It should be no surprise then this year that the BCS title game will (apparently) feature quarterbacks on both offenses that are simply asked to not screw it up. Jarrett Lee was the quintessential Jimmy Olsen; continuing a long line of Jimmy Olsens at LSU (with his only differentiating factor that he didn’t have the first name Matt) until he made the cardinal sin of making mistakes. 2 interceptions against Alabama and Lee was sent to the bench and in stepped Jordan Jefferson, who may make mistakes at bars but not on the football field. For Alabama, Greg McElroy has given way to AJ MaCarron, whose turnover against LSU may have cost his team the game.

(Though, in the nonsensical world of the BCS had no impact on Bama playing for the national title).

All of the teams with better known and higher profile QBs have slipped up this season. There is no shame in being a mere mortal – most of us are – but when you carry the burden of a team’s expectations it is hard to stay perfect for an entire season.

The Supermen of college football become legends who will be discussed for decades. But the pursuit and false pre-emptive deification of Clark Kents is the fastest route to disappointment.

For a team in search of a national title, it is a much safer route to find a smart quarterback that doesn’t make mistakes and instead focus on putting playmakers around him and a stout defense opposite him.

Yes, I fell for ESPN’s marketing hype as much as anyone in my pre-season prognostications. But it is never too late to learn.

Next year, I am picking the team with the best defensive tackle.

Over the last couple of years I have examined the Tim Tebow experience from every possible angle. Intellectual. Emotional. Historical.  Hysterical.

Being a Florida State Alum that watched Tebow tear my team apart for four years while building a media following second only to Brett Favre and being a Bronco fan now expected to accept and cheer for Him, I found myself as conflicted as a Log Cabin Republican. To deal with and try to understand this internal torment I became one of the leading amateur Tebowologists in the country.

But that now ends. There will be no more analysis, because I had an epiphany last night.

Trying to analyze Tebow is a waste of time. Analysis just doesn’t work for him. He is beyond analysis.

After Matt Prater kicked his game-winning overtime field goal for the Broncos last night in San Diego, pushing Tebow’s record as a starter this year to 5-1, I tweeted:

This is officially the end of rational thought. It is all feelings and beliefs from here on out.

And that is how I truly feel when it comes to the Broncos. Nothing can be explained with rational thought.

Should Tebow’s presence under center inspire the defense to allow 8 fewer points per game? No. But it has.

Should Tebow’s presence under center have taught the offensive line how to hold blocks for so long that Tebow actually gets visibly uncomfortable when they previously couldn’t block a pack of teenagers looking for an autograph? No. But it has.

There are no explanations. No analysis. Whether you are by-nature a Tebow supporter or Tebow hater, there is no point in waving stats in the air to support your argument. Statistics have nothing to do with it. Tebow’s stats don’t matter.

Tebow has transcended analysis.

In the sea of opinion lapping at the shores of the world wide web, there is someone espousing every possible point of view. One of the more interesting (to me) and popular ways of differentiating yourself is to intellectualize sports. Whether by going big picture and answering ‘what does it all mean’ or by slicing and dicing data to find the ‘true meaning’ of statistics, entire genres of sports analysis have been born.

I admittedly try to hang with the big boys in the ‘what does it all mean’ camp but can only go so far (state school y’all). Whether equating Brett Favre’s 3^rd down passing attempts to the late career works of Clyfford Still or developing a new Moneyball stat that revolutionizes how the game is played, my pseudo-intellectualism only goes so far.

But Tebow defies either category. No stat can ever quantify what he does – other than wins and losses. There might be a larger story to define him but in the case of Tebow that feels too trite.

It is easy to fall back on religious comparison when talking about Tebow – he even does it himself. But saying Tebow’s piety is the reason for his play opens the same arguments as debating religion in the first place.  It’s just best not to go there because religion can’t be debated. It is faith and faith is something you either have or you don’t.

Which brings us back to Tebow. We can debate him all day, every day, but his play comes down to one simple thing as well. Faith.

Yesterday afternoon, the Broncos trailed the Chargers 13-10 with 5:27 to play in the 4^th quarter and the ball on their own 26 yard line. It says something that as the Broncos took the field, there was not a doubt in my mind the Broncos would march down the field and, at a minimum, tie the game. None. Based on my Twitter timeline, I wasn’t alone in this.

It took an amazing diving catch by Eric Decker on a 3^rd down and Dante Rosario tip-toeing the sideline but those are almost a given at this point.

Yes, the Broncos had to go to Overtime, overcome a decision by John Fox to not go for it on 4^th and less than a yard and a missed Charger field goal but would we expect anything less?

I was always a supporter of Kyle Orton and desperately wanted him to succeed here but I never once would have had the confidence in Orton that he would win a game like yesterday.

I will never be able to explain why or how, but the absolute confidence in the Broncos is something I haven’t felt in about 12 years.

I felt it. I can never rationalize or intellectualize it. But I believed.

At the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one of his tests to reach the room that holds the Holy Grail is a Leap of Faith – stepping off a ledge into a seemingly bottomless cavern with only a belief in a higher power to protect him.

Yesterday was the day I stepped off that ledge. There may be some rock-hard camouflaged pathway that explains why I didn’t plunge into unknown depths but I couldn’t see it then and I still can’t.

I chose wisely.

When the Miami Dolphins trotted out the Wildcat offense with Ronnie Brown taking a direct snap in 2008 it shocked and surprised the Patriots defense, led the Dolphins to the playoffs and inspired an entire league of copycat formations. But much like Segway, it was less a revolution and more a half-thought out sham with the shelf-life of tuna sandwich.

By the following year, every team had a wildcat package and beside the basic set-up (running back taking a direct snap), they also had something else in common.

They no longer worked.  

The Wildcat is only effective if it is a surprise. When everyone on defense, in the stands, at home and on the International Space Station knows that a team is going to call a running play the moment that #twenty-something jersey lines up behind center, it ceases to be effective. Defenses adjust, key the quarterback and crush the play. NFL defenses are just too fast and smart (well, except for Channing Crowder) to continuously fall for the same gimmick.

And that, in a nutshell is Tim Tebow’s problem.

While some countries try to find a way to avoid bankruptcy and others try to keep their capital from floating away, America is caught up debating 2 of issues of great importance: first, did Kris Humphries marry Kim Kardashian for the E! money or to spend time with an L.A. Laker and second, is Tebow the worst quarterback to ever play the position or merely the New Coke of  NFL quarterbacks (a fairly uninspiring product that failed due more to too much hype than any inherent flaw).

As any previous visitor to this site will tell you, it is somewhat shocking to hear but, I think the derision of Tebow has actually gone too far (though, strangely, jokes about his relationship with Riley Cooper have not gone nearly far enough).

The internet seems to be falling into two camps when it comes to Tebow: those convinced he is not only bad but irredeemable and actually getting worse by the game and those that believe he hasn’t played enough and that comparably he is pretty good.

I think they are both wrong.

The first camp is exemplified by the NFL Sunday Countdown crew on ESPN that last night in debating Tebow (after a Monday Night Football game that wasn’t exactly Exhibit A in how to play quarterback in the NFL, despite what Jon Gruden says) used their fancy QBR to demonstrate how Tebow is getting worse by game and driving it home with a graphic that practically equated Tebow’s performance to the stock price of Lehman Brothers.

Of course this is the same stat that once identified Matt Schaub as having one of the best seasons of the last decade.

While I won’t argue that their new fancy stat is wrong (who am I to argue with something rolled out in a primetime TV special – amiright LeBron?), what they don’t seem to understand is that Tebow doesn’t play in a vacuum.

Just maybe the teams he was playing had something to do with his performance.

Likewise, those people that are comparing him to all-time greats and saying that over 5 games his stats are comparable are missing a key point. While potentially true, it doesn’t change the fact that starting quarterbacks generally improve over time or they are no longer starters. For a small sample, it isn’t the aggregate stats that matter, it is the trend line.

In each of his 2 seasons, the more games Tebow has played, the worse he has gotten. While a MENSA member like Keyshawn Johnson may think this means Tebow is getting worse – like Benjamin Button growing in reverse or Elaine Benes getting dumber without sex – it doesn’t mean that at all.

It means defenses are improving against him faster than he is improving.

Tebow has had success in the NFL by surprising defenses. Three weeks ago, the Chargers prepared all week to face Kyle Orton, a guy who can barely cross the street before the light turns. They didn’t build a game plan around stopping a quarterback that would rather run than pass. Thus, Tebow was able to peel off several long runs and scramble for minutes at a time before completing passes downfield.

The next week, the Dolphins knew what they were facing and, for 55 minutes, Tebow was ineffective until the defense went into prevent mode and, this being the Dolphins, allowed the Broncos to come back and pull off the improbable victory.

This week, the Lions knew exactly what they were facing and built a defensive philosophy around shutting it down faster than the Chinese internet authority shuts down free speech.

The element of surprise is gone for Tebow. Teams know exactly what he does now and are prepared to defend it. It is time, as the anthropologists say, for Tebow to adapt or die.

Tebow will never be an in-the-pocket, straight drop-back quarterback. That removes the very ‘Tebow-essence’ from his game and would be like asking him to go to Vegas for the weekend with Pacman Jones.

But he needs to find a way to adapt his skills to the NFL or he will fade away to become a passing curiosity only to be found on the dusty pages of Wikipedia.

Sort of like the Wildcat offense.

There are fans of Tim Tebow that will claim to love him because they see him as an embodiment of another time. The flat top, the no-cursing-awe-shucks-yes-Mrs.-Cleaver personality makes him seem like he was transplanted straight out of an idealized black-and-white 1950’s that probably never existed.

While it’s true that Tebow plays quarterback more like someone from the 50’s, he could never be from another era; in reality he is the perfect representative of right now.

In any other day and age, Tebow would be a wildly successful college quarterback, mildly successful pro quarterback and otherwise dull and non-newsworthy human.

But it turns out Nuno and his bandmates were 20 years too early because today is really the time of Extreme. In today’s extreme world, where only opinions at the extreme end of a spectrum hold anyone’s attention, Tebow is the ultimate extreme.

In politics, extremism has become such a norm that centrism is now seen only as the home of cowards or the soon-to-be-unemployed.

The two most successful political ‘movements’ in recent memory have been Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. One favors a forced redistribution of wealth so that all are equal (most charitably called social justice, most extremely called communism) while the other favors the elimination of government (most charitably called libertarianism, most extremely called anarchy).

These new attitudes not only require an extreme position, but also the extreme unwillingness to bend or compromise. Fox News’ entire business model is built on the demonization of people with which it disagrees.

Of course religion has always held a portion of zealots who can’t tolerate those with differing views. Christians, Muslims and Jews have fought wars for millennia based solely on the belief that those that are different are wrong.

Today, we have Muslim extremists committing suicide so as to kill others and declaring war on cartoonists. We have Christian groups picketing the funerals of homosexuals and soliders. Anyone that doesn’t align with the narrow definition of what is right, is to be attacked.

This pervasive attitude has even seeped into sports.

Sports TV is now populated by morons whose best attribute is their willingness to yell their opinions louder than others. But volume isn’t the only attribute that brings success. Extreme points of view do as well.

Bob Stoops single-handedly revived an Oklahoma program stuck in years of mediocrity after Barry Switzer’s almost fully legal ways ran it into the ground. Yet, after a shocking OU loss this weekend, professional jackass Skip Bayless declared Stoops should be fired. Skip, who has no redeeming qualities outside of his willingness to state any opinion no matter how ridiculous (and that is only a redeeming quality to the brass at ESPN that like him) was apparently too busy snorting coke with Michael Irvin in the 1990s to notice how bad OU was prior to Stoops’ arrival.

Into this cacophony of meaningless noise steps Tebow, a man literally bred to divide opinion. To call Tebow slightly polarizing is like saying that there might be more than one way to spell Mohamar Khaddafi’s last name.

Tebow is the perfect divider in this day and age because regardless of your point of view he forces you to take a side.

You think intangibles and leadership are more important than physical attributes? You believe Tebow will always succeed through sheer force of will.

You think a strong arm and perfect mechanics make a great quarterback? You become nauseous watching Tebow throw.

You believe that Christians have a duty to profess their faith and convert the non-believers? You love Tebow.

You believe religion should be a private matter or believe religion has historically done more harm than good? You hate Tebow and all that Tebow stands for.

You believe that numbers are the key to understanding sports? You think Tebow sucks

You believe that numbers don’t tell the story and certain players transcend stats? You think Tebow can’t lose.

You think that the sports media should focus their coverage on the few stories that they think we care most about? You love the non-stop coverage of Tebow.

You think that the media doesn’t focus their coverage on what they think we want, rather they focus on what they want us to think? Tebow ranks only a ½ step behind Brett Favre and the Red Sox/Yankees in the amount of unwarranted publicity received.

You think there is a defined and rigid path for success as an NFL quarterback? You know Tebow will fail.

You think that the NFL is filled with sheep incapable of thinking outside of the box? You see Tebow as a new and unknown quantity.

You find it silly that a 23-year old would write a autobiography? You shutter at the thought of what the guy whose most famous speech is this did to the English language.

You believe Tebow’s story is important and could help people? You already have a box of Through My Eyes books waiting to go under the Christmas tree.

Even Tebow’s play forces extreme reactions. Pre-disposed to declare him a failure and you point to the first 53 minutes of the Dolphins game. Pre-disposed to see him as successes and you have the final 7 minutes.

Much like most other arenas in which extremism has become the default starting point, few of us sit consistently at one extreme or the other on the Tebow Continuum. If you took my answers to the above questions and plotted them on a line stretching from Broncogator.com at one extreme to Merrill Hoge at the other, it would be more erratic than Tebow’s throws in the first 3 quarters yesterday.  

Centrism is a dying quality in the world today. There is no faster way to irrelevancy than being uncontroversial.

Christian Ponder graduated from FSU in 2.5 years. He had a good but not great college career battling injuries but compiling a 22 –13 career record. The Vikings didn’t move up or trade anything and took him with the 12^th pick in the draft last spring.

After the team started 1-5 and Donovan McNabb showed little signs of his former Pro Bowler self, Ponder was allowed the play the 2^nd half of last week’s blowout loss to the Bears and then declared starter for yesterday’s game against the Packers.

His stats for 1.5 games as a rookie: 22 of 49 for 318 yards passing, 39 yards rushing, 2 sacks, 2 TDs and 2 INTs

Tebow’s stats for 1.5 games as a 2^nd year player: 17 of 37 for 240 yards passing, 102 yards rushing, 7 sacks, 3 TDs and 0 INTs

Ponder obviously shows promise and I am sure that Vikings fans are thrilled to finally have a legitimate quarterback under the age of 35. But Ponder will never get the same amount of publicity (warranted or unwarranted) as Tebow.

It has nothing to do with Ponder’s game. It has everything to do with the extreme world we live in and the feelings and emotions that Tebow elicits in everyone.

More than words, indeed.

With John Fox finally succumbing to the intense external pressure to make an already-long-lost Broncos season at least interesting by starting Tim Tebow, the irrational, border-line psychotic, 17-miles past the border-line pathetic love of Tebow has reached unprecedented new heights.

The Denver Post has officially abandoned all pretense of being an objective news gathering organization and has turned its office into an adjunct of the Tebow Foundation – including both literally and figuratively turning their paper into all-Tebow, all the time.

But a newspaper abandoning all journalistic ethics and pathetically pandering to the feelings of their readers in a sad attempt to make some money and stave off irrelevancy is not news. That is just the state of the newspaper business today.

Rather I am more interested in a simple question – why Tebow?

Denver welcomed an athlete with similar pedigree recently, yet the difference between how the two are treated is shocking.

In 2003, the Nuggets owned the 3^rd pick in the NBA draft. With freak of nature LeBron James going to his hometown Cavaliers and the Pistons making the 2^nd worst draft mistake of all–time in reaching for Darko Milicic, Carmelo Anthony fell into the Nuggets laps.

Much like Tebow, Carmelo was a couple months removed from being a college legend – leading perennial bridesmaid Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse Orangemen to a national title as a true freshman.

Much like Tebow, he arrived at a team mired in a decade of mediocrity and irrelevancy.

Much like Tebow, Melo’s game wasn’t built on being the most complete player on the court, but rather it was using unique gifts to come through when it mattered most.  

Unlike Tebow, Carmelo dominated the NBA from the moment he arrived, being named to the NBA All-Rookie team, winning 6 consecutive Western Conference Rookie of the Month awards and leading a mediocre Nuggets team back to the playoffs.

After several years of playoff disappointments and the arrival of Chauncey Billups to provide veteran experience, Melo and the Nuggets advanced to the 2009 Western Conference finals before losing in 6-heart breaking games to the eventual champion L.A. Lakers.

Yet, after playing just 3.5 games and winning just one, Tebow is already more beloved and popular with the general Denver sports public than Melo ever was.

Why?

There are easy answers of course: first and foremost Tebow plays for the Broncos. Denver always was and always will be a football town before anything else.

There is an occasional flirtation with baseball when the Rockies actually harness some of their limitless ‘potential’. There was a crush on hockey when it arrived in 1996 and brought the city its first professional sports title. That Melo-Chauncey team briefly infatuated the city like a cute new barista at your local coffee shop but that was more about the feel-good story of local-boy Billups returning home than any love for Melo.

But those are just infidelities for Denver sports fans. The Broncos are a marriage, and a new quarterback is like new lingerie – bringing some spice back into an already stale relationship. Tebow is that nightie – which is ironic on a lot of levels.

There is also another easy answer for why Tebow is more loved than Melo for those who tend to belittle and stereo-type sports fans but I hope/think Denver sports fans are better than that (at least most of them).

The most interesting answer is that sports fans lie to themselves. We say we want our sports heroes to be human. To demonstrate some chink in the armor that proves that they are ‘just like us’. But that isn’t true. Just ask Tiger Woods.

A successful college career, a quiet, polite public persona and a level of earnestness not seen since Beaver Cleaver left daytime TV have allowed Tebow’s fans and adoring press to build Tebow beyond a football player. He has become a myth.

But in the end, what do we know about him?

I don’t think there is anything Tiger Woods-esque sinister or dark lurking below that flat-top but it sure would be more interesting if there were.

Is Tebow really just a quiet guy who spends all day, every day thinking of football or God and nothing else? Is there really any 24 year old in the country that focused? Does he not like to grab a beer with the boys? Play video games? Does he read espionage books? Does he go to R-rated movies? Does he try to meet women? Meet men? Anything?

We don’t know and there is a large group of folks that don’t want to know.

By remaining passive in his own creation myth, Tebow has allowed his acolytes to paint a story on him like he is blank canvas. And that story is now impossibly bigger than any reality that could ever sit behind it.

Melo on the other hand was always human. He let frustrations show. He spoke his mind. He made mistakes (marijuana possession, DUI, appearing in an apparently anti-police video). He met, got pregnant and married an openly ambitious former MTV VJ. He hung out with celebrities. He bought extravagant houses.

In short, he acted like a young guy suddenly thrust into a world of money and inordinate attention.

You know, like you or I would in the same situation.

Yet, despite all of the standard pleas that we want our athletic heroes to act human, nothing ever endeared him to Denver sports fans. In fact, every mistake alienated him more.

Always held at arm’s-length in Denver, it was only a matter of time until Melo’s attention-hungry wife and a craving for a city more in line with his east-coast sensibilities sent him packing. Now, she has her own VH-1 show and he gets to play on the biggest stage in the NBA.

Can Tebow live up to the expectations that have been piled on him? Probably not. Just because Orton now sits on the bench doesn’t change the fact that the offensive line struggles to stop a cold. It doesn’t make the defense play any better.

Will Tebow’s disciples dismiss every error of a young, raw player as a mistake by someone else? For a time, of course. Such is the bucket of goodwill he has accumulated by winning in college and doing nothing of note away from the field.

No matter his successes, Melo could never win the hearts of the Denver sports fans.

No matter whether he ever has success, Tebow already has.

And that tells you everything you need to know about how much sports fans really want to get to know their heroes; we really only want our heroes to act human when it makes them seem more heroic.

Better to remain a myth than have your humanity actually demonstrate frailty or weakness.