Great Moments in Super Bowl History: January 31, 2009

 
We don’t remember who won the game, or who won the MVP award. Frankly, we don’t even know who played.

That’s not to say, though, that we didn’t enjoy the game, or that we didn’t find certain highlights worthy of instant replay:

Bad Lip Reading: NFL

We don’t take any credit for this, but we wish we could. It’s best to watch this at full-screen size if you have the option.





Presumably these folks have other similar videos at their website. We recommend you go there and watch the crap out of a lot of their videos. This little recommendation is our way of justifying posting this video here as if we had anything to do with it at all.

If You're Going to Embarrass Yourself, Why Not Do It While Everyone's Watching?

We here at Bowling in the Dark are not Jets fans, but neither are we Jets detractors—except in an general way that, based on their recent accomplishments, they clearly deserve. Thus, we can objectively say that this play from late 2012 may be both the funniest and saddest things we’ve ever seen happen on a football field:




If Mark Sanchez ends his career as a Hall-of-Fame quarterback, a five-time Super Bowl MVP, the guy who solved U.S. debt crisis, and the discoverer of the cure for the common cold, Americans will still remember him as the Butt-Fumble Guy. You can’t buy that kind of publicity, even if for some weird reason you wanted to.


Sorry, Butt-Fumble Guy. Good luck in wherever town you’re playing next season. Keep your passport current, just in case.

Nike Takes a Courageous Stance Against Certain Kinds of Cheating

Tiger Woods, professional golfer

Tiger Woods, immediately after bombarded
by gamma radiation.

Moral misstep: slept with a woman who was not his wife, and then—having decided that that was pretty awesome—went on to sleep with five, nine, eleven, or 121 others, depending on which disgusting internet source you choose to believe.

Marketability: while his popularity may not be what it once was,¹ he’s still a well-known and much-discussed athlete in what is inexplicably one of the world’s most popular sports. While he’s not playing up to his usual standards of late, he has the potential to continue to golf at a very high level for the next five to twenty-five years, making him a huge boon for any company with the right amount of moral fiber to stick with him through a few thousand minor marital indiscretions.

Nike’s stance: Everything’s swell. The Tiger Woods Center at Nike’s headquarters remains, as you may have guessed, named after Tiger Woods.

Kobe Bryant, shooting guard, Los Angeles Lakers (NBA)

Kobe Bryant, having briefly forgotten that the name
that matters to him is the one on the back of the jersey.

Moral misstep: accused of rape by nineteen-year-old Katelyn Faber; while the charges were dropped after Faber refused to testify, Bryant later publicly stated that while he “truly believe[s] this encounter . . . was consensual,” he “now understand[s] how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.” So viewed in the best possible light, he had sex with a woman who was not his wife. Given the competition in this category, one single adulterous affair seems positively quaint, but it’s still not a particularly decent thing to do.

Marketability: remains active as the most popular player on the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the NBA’s most popular teams, with potential to make Nike oodles of money for at least another four to six years.

Nike’s stance: no problems here.

Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback, Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL)

Moral misstep: accused of sexual assault in 2008; no charges filed. Accused of sexual assault in 2010; no charges filed. After the second accusation, he served four games of a six-game suspension and lost his Fathead endorsement. A spokesman for the company stated at the time, “We named our company Fathead, not Fat Asshole.”²

Marketability: Two-time super Bowl champion, marquee quarterback on one of the absurdly popular and marketable NFL’s most popular and marketable teams. While his career may not last more than another five to six years or two to three allegations, even mediocre players and backups  sell jerseys.

Nike’s stance: Are we under oath, here? No? Then what he may have done would have been bad, and we’re definitely going to cut him loose any day now. Honest.

Lance Armstrong: cyclist, seven-time Tour de France winner

Have you ever spent a lifetime sitting on a bicycle
seat? Trust us, you’d look this grouchy too.

Moral Misstep: despite his repeated and strenuous statements to the contrary, Lance Armstrong may well turn out to have been something of a cheater in the otherwise squeaky-clean world of competitive cycling. He joins the very brief list of cyclists who have tested positive, admitted to doping, or been sanctioned for doping that includes—and is absolutely, almost definitely, probably limited to—barely-known racers such as Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich, Roland Meier, Alex Zuille, Laurent Dufaux, Abraham Olano, Richard Virenque, Bjarne Riis, Christophe Moreau, Roberto Heras, Richard Virenque, Francisco Mancebo, Igor González, Óscar Sevilla, Raimondas Rumsas, Levi Leipheimer, Alexandre Vinokourov, Iban Mayo, Ivan Basso, Michael Rasmussen, Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador, Alejandro Valverde, Mikel Astarloza, Bernhard Kohl, Christian Vande Velde, Fränk Schleck, Tadej Valjavec, and Tyler Hamilton.³

Marketability: one of the best-known figures in the world when it comes to providing emotional, physical, and financial support to survivors of cancer, a disease that has to some degree, directly or indirectly, affected pretty much every person on Earth. Ever. On the other hand, he’s retired, and he participated in a sport that nobody in Nike’s U.S. demographic gave a shit about before Lance Armstrong came along.

Nike’s stance: Screw you, Lance Armstrong.

In the past, Nike has cut ties with sports figures such as Marion Jones (for her alleged and later admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs), the late Joe Paterno (who, of course, technically didn’t do anything but also, of course, didn’t do anything), and Michael Vick (who was coincidentally reinstated with Nike once he’d become popular again).

We’re not going to say that Nike should have maintained its ties with Lance Armstrong, regardless of whether the doping charges against him were (or are) ever proved or definitively disproved—that’s completely up to them. And we’re not saying that Armstrong’s admirable work with his foundation gives him a pass if he is, in fact, a big fat blood doper—although this raises the interesting question of whether it’s better to be a great guy in your sport but a turd in your personal life, or the reverse.
 
We’re simply a little disappointed that the message we’re all getting from Nike here seems to be “if you’re gonna get caught cheating, it’d better be on your wife.”⁴



NOTES
1. Except perhaps in the limited circles in which he was always apparently popular—after all, ladies, he’s single now. Rawr.
2. No, of course we made that up.
3. The part about these guys being “barely known” is just us being sarcastic. While we recognize only a handful of their names, all of them have finished in the top ten of the Tour de France at least once in the last fifteen years.
4. We realize that Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t fit the “cheater” theme here, as he was not married when he was accused of sexual assault. Twice. He does, however, still have a valid place in this piece, thanks to its overarching theme of “pro athletes who are definitely or at least probably dicks.”

NFL Broadcaster Cliché Bingo 2

A week or two after we posted our initial NFL Broadcaster Cliché Bingo card it occurred to us that, having created only one card, we had doomed our legions of bingo-crazy readers to play against each other using the exact same phrases. Folks would be filling out all the same spaces at the very same time, with only minor variations based on deafness, channel-flipping, or bathroom breaks, so virtually every bingo game would end in a tie.

While it’s heartwarming to think that such an oversight might inadvertently foster a sense of teamwork and cooperation among our readers—and, eventually, among football fans and then people of all creeds and colors from all walks of life—we think it’s a bit silly to even bother playing a game you have virtually no chance of winning. 

That’d basically be like playing for the 2008 Detroit Lions, and nobody deserves that—except maybe for the 2011 Indianapolis Colts.

Don’t be like those losers.¹ Be a winner—pick up a bingo card, find a game on TV, and kick some ass, bingo-player style.

. . . okay, we admit that we don’t have any idea how playing bingo could possibly have anything to do with the notion of “kicking ass.” But we’re willing to admit that it’s probably technically possible, and we’re sure you’ll do your best. Go get ’em, Sport.

 

NOTES

1. That is, coordinated, strong, famous, and rich.

Previously published on December 10, 2011. Bowling in the Dark has gone green, proudly recycling old crappy content and turning it into fresh new crappy content that looks pretty much the same. Please show your support by rereading, or, alternatively, sending us a ton of money.

NFL Broadcaster Cliché Bingo

Do you find yourself with no legitimate reason to continue watching your favorite football team more than five or ten minutes after the opening kickoff? (Colts, Jaguars, Dolphins, Browns, Panthers, Rams, Jets, Seahawks, and Cardinals fans, we’re looking at you.)

Don’t lose hope yet, and by all means don’t get off the couch and try to live a productive life. You can use your local team’s broadcast—assuming it hasn’t been blacked out in your area thanks to lack of interest—to have fun the way old ladies at the local church do. Except you get to do it on your couch, with a beer in your hand!¹

NOTE

1. We do not intend to imply that all old ladies play bingo, or that all bingo players are old or even ladies, or that all churches play or even allow bingo. We merely intend to imply that you are a fat, lazy drunk.

Previously published on November 7, 2011.

Peyton Manning Bobblehead Getting Awfully Tired of All the Jokes

 

“Come on, guys, it’s not funny anymore,” comes the muffled voice of
Manning’s head, which has probably rolled under the bed or something,
barely audible over the hard laughter of bad people.

 

San Diego Chargers Starting to Wonder if Ryan Leaf Will Ever Pan Out

Hopeful fans wanted to give him five more years. Turns out the judge thought the same thing.

What Do I Tell My Kid?

While the rest of the football world busily argues whether John Elway is a genius for paying $96 million to an immobile thirty-six-year-old man with a broken neck, or a fool for trading away a younger man whose completion percentage was not up to the exacting number we demand from a random coin flip, some thoughtful American parents are concerned with more weighty subjects: namely, how the trade of Tim Tebow to the New York Jets will ruin childhood everywhere, for everybody:

“The first victim of the Tebow trade: The [f]ans (and my children). . . . But with the magic of Tebow gone from Mile [H]igh so do most of the viewers and readers [editor’s note: huh?]. . . . I see it in my children[’s] eyes (w/tears).” —Iporeh, Denver Post message boards, March 21, 2012. (Edited both to be more grammatical and very slightly more disjointed.)

“My little boy[’]s heart is broken that Tebow is gone. What do I tell him that He¹ [we’re pretty sure the author is referring to Tebow here, rather than to his own son—ed.] took us to the playoffs and beat the Steelers and the front office hates him[?][Tebow, again, although we have it from a good source that the Broncos’ front office does indeed hate this guy’s kid—ed.]”—Broncosilver, Denver Post message boards, 3/21/12 

Refusing to offer parenting advice to strangers’ kids is a good rule of thumb,² and for the most part we follow it—telling others how to raise their children is condescending at best, usually insulting, and sure to be ignored.³ However, in this particular case, they did ask, so in the interest of raising your kids better than you can, we have faithfully compiled this list of potential

Things You Could Tell Your Kid About the Tebow Trade

• “Your favorite quarterback in the whole wide world isn’t very good.”

• “There’s nothing in the world more important than loyalty. We’ve been Broncos fans for years and years, ever since Tebow was drafted, but John Elway didn’t show him any loyalty, and that’s very disappointing. We’re so mad at him for his lack of loyalty that we’re Jets fans now.”

• “If you can look back at your childhood and say that this was your biggest disappointment, either you’re a very lucky kid—which is great—or you’re in for a terrible shock when your helicopter parents eject you into the real world. But don’t worry, we’ll never let that happen.”

• “You were gonna find this out sooner or later, son: life is shitty.”⁴

• “John Elway got jealous of Tebow’s popularity, so he replaced Tebow with one of the most accomplished and popular quarterbacks of the last twenty years. I know you don’t believe this, because only a child would believe something this silly, but sometimes we say dumb things that we want to believe.”

• “We never told you this before, but football games don’t actually start in the fourth quarter. We’ve been fast-forwarding past all the unwatchable parts.”

We sincerely hope some combination of the above phrases helps you through your child’s brief and easily forgotten time of grief.



That said, though, we would be failing in our responsibility as your kids’ surrogate parents if we didn’t bring this up: quite frankly, we question your desire to protect your children. If you really, truly cared about shielding your beloved children from crushing disappointment,

why on Earth did you allow them to be Broncos fans in the first place?
 
 

NOTES
1. A lesser blog might dwell for paragraph after hyperbolic paragraph on the religious significance and/or impropriety of the author’s deifying capitalization of “he” in reference to Tim Tebow. But we—being decent, kindhearted folk always willing to see the best in people—are going to take the high road here, and assume that this was just an honest mistake made by somebody stupid.
2. The phrase “rule of thumb,” incidentally, has nothing to do with legalized wife-beating, no matter what your more gullible friends may have told you.
3. And God help them if our advice isn’t ignored.
4. Recommended only for shitty parents.

Eli Manning No Longer his Family’s Fredo Corleone

For New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning, perhaps the most thrilling aspect of his team’s February 5, 2012, victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI is the fact that he is now, undeniably, no longer the Fredo Corleone of the Manning family.

“I can handle things,” said Manning in a postgame press conference, his knuckles white as he gripped the Vince Lombardi Trophy. “I’m smart! Not like everybody says . . . like, dumb. . . . I’m smart and I want respect!”

Manning—now not only a two-time Super Bowl winner but also a two-time Super Bowl MVP, and one of only eleven quarterbacks to win the game multiple times—has spent the bulk of his seven-year career in the dual shadows of his more famous (and, in most ways, undeniably more accomplished) brother—the Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning—and their father, Don Vito “Archibald” Manning, a respected quarterback in his own right and two-time Pro Bowler.

After eldest brother Cooper’s injuries put an end to his career, Peyton took over and led the family to heights beyond anything his father could have imagined—pain-free games, winning records, playoff berths, and a legitimate front as one of the nation’s largest importers of olive oil.

Horrific injuries rendered Cooper only barely more mobile than his younger brothers.

With his brother occupying a place of respect in the NFL, Eli Manning was taken with the first overall pick in the 2004 draft, sparking immediate discussion about whether his high selection was based on his abilities or on the shady influence of his powerful family.

Giants starter Kurt Warner “voluntarily” voided of his contract after the end of the 2004 season and signed with the Arizona Cardinals, leaving Eli to be declared the team’s starting quarterback. This raised further suspicions, especially given Warner’s statement that it was “probably better to play for Arizona than sleep with the fishes . . . I guess.”

The NFL’s formal investigation into the Warner Incident came to a stumbling halt, however, after anti-Manning crusader Senator Pat Geary  announced in the middle of the hearing that 

”I can state, from my own knowledge and experience, that Mannings are among the most loyal—most law-abiding—patriotic, hard working American citizens in this land. And it would be a shame, mister chairman, if we allowed a few rotten apples to bring a bad name to the whole barrel,”

before exiting suddenly and leaving the committee without one of its most important members.

Since then, Eli Manning’s seven-year career has revealed sporadic signs of greatness amid long stretches of mediocrity, with his performance in the 2008 playoffs being almost dismal enough to qualify him to play for the rival New York Jets. His best single-season quarterback rating is less than Peyton’s career average rating, he throws significantly fewer touchdowns per game and more interceptions per game, has scored far fewer rushing touchdowns than his brother despite having superior mobility,¹ and, of course, failed to protect his father from a vicious (albeit eventually unsuccessful) assassination attempt engineered by Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo.

That said, though, Eli has accomplished enough in his career to no longer deserve to be compared to the real Fredo Corleone:²

• Eli effectively stole the thunder from his brother’s longtime rivalry with the other premier quarterback of this generation (Tom Brady’s Chin of the New England Patriots), upstaging Peyton by beating Brady twice in the only game that really matters. Peyton has failed to even meet Brady in a Super Bowl.³

“Every time I put a ball in the air I said a Hail Mary,
and every time I said a Hail Mary, they caught the ball.” 

• In 2011 Eli compiled more passing yards than Peyton Manning has ever managed in a single season, and it’s probably only a coincidence that this happened in a season in which harsh language counted as pass interference. It’s quite likely, though, that Peyton would have put up similar numbers had he not had to flee the country and live incognito after murdering Virgil Sollozzo and corrupt police captain Mark McCluskey.

Peyton, master of disguise, went undetected in Sicily.

• Eli, ever the ladies’ man, crossed Moe Greene in Las Vegas by “banging cocktail waitresses two at a time,” preventing players from getting drinks at their tables. We’d like to see Peyton try that.⁴

• And of course Eli has won two Super Bowls, to Peyton’s one. As if winning one Super Bowl were even that hard. Heck, all sorts of forgettable quarterbacks have won one Super Bowl: Jeff Hostetler, Trent Dilfer, Mark Rypien, Dan Marino, Jim McMahon—so really, for Peyton to hang his professional reputation on one measly Super Bowl ring⁵ is awfully silly.

So clearly, Eli Manning deserves every bit of praise he receives, as long as, you know, it’s not too much. He has proven beyond doubt that he’s one of the best quarterbacks in his immediate family, and his brother certainly won’t mind being momentarily upstaged in his home stadium.

Still, it might be wise if Eli were to skip the family’s annual Lake Tahoe fishing trips for a while.

“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.”

NOTES
1. In much the same way that a drifting continent is more mobile than, say, a dead turtle.
2. Who is, of course, not technically real.
3. Purists and nitpickers might attempt to bring up that Peyton Manning has not and never could face Tom Brady’s Chin in the Super Bowl, because they play in the same conference, but we’d like to respectfully point out that we never asked for their stupid snotty opinions.
4. We don’t really mean this. In fact, there’s nothing on Earth we’d rather not see.We mean it—stop calling us, Peyton.
5. That is, one Super Bowl ring plus his mastery of every measurable criterion of quarterbacking excellence, with the one minor exception being the ability to outrun a toddler.

Broncos Rookie Linebacker Von Miller Wins Prestigious Steve Urkel Impression Award

 

Miller’s prize-winning performance.

“Rookie of the Year? Yawn. When he single-handedly
saves a floundering sitcom by making it
twice as stupid, maybe I’ll be impressed.”

God Indifferent to Football; Satan Still Heavily Invested

Armchair philosophers have argued for years, often with nobody in particular paying attention to them, that God doesn’t care who wins or loses a football game. With a balanced mix of the devout, the disinterested, and the despicable on both sides of the ball—not to mention the long list of actually important problems on Earth to occupy God’s time—the notion that God notices, much less intervenes in, an essentially irrelevant athletic activity played by maybe 0.06% of the world’s population is a pretty silly one to a lot of folks.¹

On the other hand, though, one should probably be forgiven for believing that Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots—having won the AFC East nine times since 2001, and now being one win away from reaching their fifth Super Bowl in eleven seasons—are proof that Satan is heavily invested in the NFL, and hasn’t lost his touch.

Sherman: Brother Dickinson, New England has been fighting the devil for more than a hundred years.
Dickinson: And as of now, Brother Sherman, the devil has been winning hands down.²

NOTES
1. That doesn’t mean, of course, that plenty of folks won’t still make the argument.
2. From 1776 (1976), John Dickinson to Roger Sherman.

Glitchy “Tim TiVo” Device Still Immensely Popular

 

It knows what kind of show you want to see, and it’s
obviously running the whole time, but it only
starts working right with about five minutes to go. 

This is You Taking the National Football League Far, Far Too Seriously

 

 

What can we say about bearded men dressed as women dressed as pigs—
dressed as beauty-pageant contestants—that hasn’t already been said?
Something, probably, but we’re damned if we can think of what it might be.

 

Show us a pimp that’s actually a Bengals fan,
and we'll show you the world’s crappiest pimp.

 

Hulkamania still lives on in certain parts of the frozen American north.

 

No, really, he isn’t, he’s just a football player.
Although a tight spiral coming from the Broncos’
backfield could be considered a miracle.

 

Q: What’s more intimidating than Dolphins? A: Creepy clowns.

Q: What’s more intimidating than creepy clowns? A: Everything else.

 

Hey, the whistles are our favorite part of the game too.

 

Hell no, we’re not going to make fun of the Barrel Man. The guy was a
Colorado institution. That little leprechaun dude, on the other hand. . . . 

  

. . . yeah, he kind of creeps us out.

Raiders fans have been a bit listless, even depressed,

ever since Frodo destroyed the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.

Tebow Now 4-0 in Alternate Universe

With a 45-10 loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, October 30, 2011, extremely popular Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow improved to 4-0 in the intangible-heavy and unorthodox alternate universe where a large minority of his fan base appears to reside.

Bowling in the Dark’s sports correspondent recently met with the Ambassador to the United States from Tebow Nation—this unusual universe’s densest populated country—to discuss the differences between their reality and our more mundane and conventional one. While we didn’t catch his name, which was spoken too quickly and excitedly to be understood, he showed a heartwarming disdain for formality by suggesting we call him by his nickname, #TBo_4EVA_GoGatorsGo:


INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Q: In Tebow’s first game of the season, against the San Diego Chargers, he replaced an ineffective Kyle Orton after halftime and led the Broncos to fourteen fourth-quarter points, but still lost 29-24. Doesn’t that count as a loss?
A: Tim Tebow won that game because he’s a winner. Kyle Orton lost it. There’s no way the Broncos lose that one if Tebow plays the whole game, I guarantee it.

Q: What?
A: I personally guarantee that Tebow would have won that game.

Q: If I understand you correctly, you’re personally guaranteeing something that’s not only very, very unlikely but, in fact—having already not happened—can’t ever actually happen?
A: What kind of fan would I be if I couldn’t guarantee something like that? We do it on message boards all the time.

[long pause as interviewer collects himself]

Q: Official statistics indicate that Tebow missed on sixty percent of his passes against the Chargers, and passed for less than eighty yards. Aren’t those the kind of numbers one would expect from a quarterback who’s not ready to play at the professional level, where a good quarterback generally completes around 60% of his passes?
A: Well, you see, the NFL is a league built on passing, so the ability to throw is overrated. Think about it—how many times did “great passers” like Joe Montana, John Elway, Jim Kelly, or Tom Brady lead their teams to the Super Bowl?

Q: Eighteen. They went to eighteen Super Bowls.
A: Actually, what I asked was how many Heisman Trophies they won.

Q: Well, you’ve got me there. But don’t Heisman-winning quarterbacks usually struggle to succeed in the NFL, if they even make it into the league in the first place? I’m thinking here of Charlie Ward, Andre Ware, Gino Torretta, Jason White, Eric Crouch, Chris Weinke, Danny Wuerffel, Ty Detmer, and Matt Leinart, to name a few.
A: I’m pretty sure none of these guys actually existed.

Q: Well, that kind of supports my point.
A: Simply put, Tim Tebow is the most successful Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback since Cam Newton.

Q: But didn’t Cam Newton win the Heisman after Tebow?
A: Next question please.

Q: After the 24-29, er, win against San Diego, the Broncos announced Tebow as their starter. The team then had a bye week. [For those of you unfamiliar with football or even basic sporting terminology, that means they didn’t play at all.] Our sources say that you’re counting that Sunday off as another win.
A: Indeed we are. If Kyle Orton had been the starter that didn’t play that week, he would have found a way to lose the game that didn’t happen. So Tim Tebow, who is a winner, won that game that didn’t get played, by preventing Kyle Orton from not losing it. Tim Tebow is a winner. He wins games.

Q: Even games he doesn’t play?
A: Especially those games. Tim Tebow went 1,378-3 at Florida in games he didn’t play.

Q: Moving on to the Miami game, then . . . in this case, we all can agree that the Denver Broncos scored a legitimate win, 18-15 in Miami.
A: Yes. We’re thinking about counting that one twice.

Q: It’s been observed—for example, by us—that for the vast majority of that game, the Broncos’ offense looked awful, with Tebow going 4-for-14 for 40 yards. His comeback was impressive, of course, but it’s hard to believe the Broncos would have needed such a thrilling and improbable last-second comeback if their offense had been even marginally competent in some of the game’s earlier seconds.
A: He would have looked better if the play-calling hadn’t been so conservative.

Q: So he missed ten of his first fourteen passes—some of them very badly—because the plays called were too rudimentary?
A: Well when you put it that way, it sounds bad. The problem is that Elway is jealous of Tebow’s popularity, and doesn’t want to see him succeed.

Q: What about the wide-open receivers that he didn’t see in the first fifty-five minutes of the game? Was Elway hiding them?
A: He didn’t need to see them until Tebow Time. You’re not clutch if you bother to succeed early on. That’d be like Scotty fixing the Enterprise only as fast as he said he could.

Q: And isn’t Miami one of the worst teams in the league? Shouldn’t even a young, raw, inexperienced quarterback have had a better overall showing against some of the weakest competition to be found?
A: If Miami were such a bad team, why were they in the lead for most of the game?

Q: Well—
A: We had to go into overtime to beat them, so they're clearly much better than you think. It was great to see Matt Tebow kick the game-winning field goal after missing the two earlier ones.

Q: Matt Prater?
A: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.

To be fair, many other Denver Broncos looked bad today too.

Q: Never mind. I’d say that one of Tebow’s obvious tangible strengths is his running ability.
A: Yep, he’s much more mobile than Kyle Orton. A quarterback with a questionable offensive line need the ability to move in the pocket to avoid sacks.

Q: Agreed. But Orton was sacked nine times in five games, whereas Tebow was sacked six times by the Dolphins, and then another seven by the Lions. Doesn’t that suggest that Tebow’s slow release and poor field vision are as problematic as Orton’s immobility, perhaps even more so?
A: No, you don’t get it. Tim Tebow’s mobility allows him to escape sacks. Plus, he has intangibles.

Q: But—
A: [Plugging ears with fingers] Intangibles! Intangibles! INTANGIBLES! INTANGIBLES!

[several minutes later]

A: Clearly you’re just a hater.

Q: So you’d call objective analysis of a player’s strengths and weaknesses “hating”?
A: What would you call it?

Q: Offhand, probably “objective analysis of a player’s strengths and weaknesses.”
A: Hater. Go drink some Haterade, hater.

Q: Be honest, did you even follow the Denver Broncos before they drafted Tim Tebow?
A: I would have, if they’d even existed back then.

At this point our intrepid interviewer suddenly developed a piercing headache, and decided to go home.

Nobody knows how long—or why—the enthusiasm for Denver’s newest quarterback will continue, but we do know for sure that Tebow Nation looks forward to next week’s certain victory against the Island of the Misfit Toys.

Don't let the rosy cheeks fool you—Charlie-in-the-Box is
a ruthless pass rusher and one mean son of a bitch.

Tim Tebow Proves Both His Harshest Critics and Looniest Supporters Absolutely Correct

Tim Tebow in action against the Miami Dolphins,
mercifully not trying to throw the ball.

Sunday, October 23, 2011—In a display perhaps more dazzling than the Denver Broncos’ improbable fourth-quarter comeback against the still-winless Miami Dolphins, new Broncos starting quarterback Tim Tebow managed to simultaneously fuel the angry, spittle-filled arguments of both his most vocal critics and his most stalwart, possibly unhinged supporters.

Kyle Orton at full sprint.

Tebow, until very recently the most popular third-string quarterback in the history of the universe, spent ninety percent of the game showing his detractors why he’s still several years away from being an NFL-ready quarterback.

Despite being far more mobile than previous starter Kyle Orton (right), Tebow absorbed seven sacks on the day from a defense that had only eight sacks in its previous six games. With 54:37 elapsed in the game, Tebow had managed only a dismal 4 completions on 14 passes for 40 yards, and the Broncos were on the verge of being shut out for the first time in almost twenty years.

This performance came against a last-place Dolphins team lacking a pass defense—a team for whom the Broncos’ offense had had an extra seven days to prepare thanks to their bye week. Tebow critics were quick but not wrong to note that few teams the Broncos will face for the remainder of this season—or perhaps any season—will be of the Dolphins’ caliber, unless they can schedule a game or two against the PAC-12’s CU Buffaloes.

In the last five-plus minutes of the game, however, Tebow showed his giddy legion of breathlessly optimistic supporters that the inability to be better at quarterbacking the lightly-regarded Orton or the barely-regarded Brady Quinn apparently has no actual bearing on how good one is at quarterbacking, engineering two scoring drives, going 9-for-13 with 121 passing yards and two touchdowns, and showing a thrilling ability to create plays by darting out of a collapsing pocket without necessarily seeing wide-open receivers.

Tebow also scored the game-tying two-point conversion by convincing the Dolphins’ defense that they shouldn’t expect a guy who rushed for almost 3,000 yards and 57 touchdowns in college—and has one of the most suspect arms in the NFL this side of Jason Campbell—wasn’t likely to try to run into the end zone. It is not known at this time whether Tebow is the first NFL quarterback with actual hypnotic powers.

Befuddled Denver fans, hoping to remember witnessing another such improbable combination of simultaneous athletic excellence and utter incompetence, had to think all the way back to January 31, 1988, when a Broncos team led by Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway leapt out to a 10-0 first-quarter lead over the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII, only to have nothing else of consequence happen the entire game—especially not in the second quarter.


Despite the uncertainty swirling around Tebow’s play, the gloom of another lost football season in the Mile High City, and the yawning, mostly Tebow-induced gulf dividing the Broncos’ dedicated and emotional fans, a few things can be said for certain: Tebow has or has not proven, without a doubt, that he can play quarterback at the highest level; the Broncos have or haven’t found their leader of the future; the otherwise somewhat unpopular Josh McDaniels’s drafting of Tebow was, or perhaps wasn’t, an act of unqualified genius; and if the team can find a way to play only the worst teams in the conference, they will or won’t sometimes actually barely win, once in a while, in overtime.

And for Denver Broncos fans, that is or isn’t enough.¹

NOTES

1. We stand by this statement.²
2. Or we don’t.

Oakland Raiders to Wear Peculiar "Black" Jerseys as Tribute to the Late Al Davis

The National Football League’s Oakland Raiders have announced that they will honor the memory of influential, iconoclastic, litigious late owner Al Davis in bizarre fashion, by wearing black jerseys—black jerseys, on a football team!—for their remaining 2011 home games.

Raiders star running back Darren McFadden (assuming it’s not
some other guy; we don't actually care) wearing white, the
only jersey color the Raiders have ever known.

The Raiders run the risk of confusing their fan base with their noble if unprecedented and misguided sartorial tribute. Known throughout their tenure in the AFL and later the NFL as the “Silver and White Attack,” the Oakland Raiders have become synonymous with the color white and the bad-boy image of tough, hard-edged rebellion that it represents.

The proposed black jerseys (artist’s conception).

However, Raiders fans’ reaction to this strange development has been surprisingly muted so far. Older fans are perhaps shocked by the loss of the powerful and charismatic owner who helped change the face of the NFL and led his team to an AFL Championship, twelve Division Championships, four AFC Championships, and three Super Bowl victories.

Younger fans, perhaps not familiar with Davis’ early career, are probably befuddled by the outpouring of praise for the man who led the team to a 29-83 record from 2003 to 2009, burned through five head coaches in the same time span, and paid JaMarcus Russell $3.38 million per touchdown pass. 

It’s also possible that younger Raiders fans have not reacted to Davis’s death because the news has yet to reach their cell block.

Man, is he ever going to be bummed
when he gets out of solitary
and finds a newspaper.