This is one of the funniest videos I've ever seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJVHTQSvUIo#!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Tim Tebow
Tim Tebow is the most fascinating thing to happen to pro football in years. Chuck Klosterman is smarter than me, and he wrote all about it here: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7319858/the-people-hate-tim-tebow
But since this is my blog, I'm going to go ahead and talk about him too.
First, some background information.
I hated Tim Tebow in college.
I figured he'd be a pretty solid, but not spectacular starting QB in the NFL.
I'm a hardcore agnostic and am generally opposed to hyper religious athletes for all the usual reasons.
I picked the Broncos to win their division this year, so I have personal "don't-look-like-a-moron" stakes in this.
Ok, onto the Tebowing.
I am actively pulling for Tim Tebow to win as many games as possible simply because I love watching people react to shit that doesn't fit into their world views (that and the whole 'Broncos to the playoffs' thing, but let's focus on this part).
Since the Tebowing of America began, my Facebook and Twitter feeds have featured a never ending stream of Tebow hate.
People who hate Tim Tebow seem to fall into two categories.
1. NFL "QB is King" Purists
2. Cynical Pricks
Let's tackle the Purists first.
JUST WAIT UNTIL HE PLAYS A REAL DEFENSE
Tim Tebow pisses everyone off because he is a great quarterback (so far) but has the worst set of quarterbacking skills the NFL has ever seen. I remember the Vince Young debate from several years ago, but Tim Tebow takes the Vince Young dilemma to another stratosphere.
Despite this, Tim Tebow keeps winning football games, and he keeps winning for two reasons.
#1: he makes the best play he's capable of making every time he touches the ball.
#2: he's almost Kanye-level confident
The first point has made me roll eyes at NFL Draft pundits since I began watching football. Yes, form matters. Yes, mechanics and talent are very relevent. But throwing a perfect spiral to the other team because you don't make good decisions under pressure makes you a bad quarterback.
Tim Tebow has thrown 2 INTs all year, and not throwing INTs is the main reason you stick around as a QB in the NFL. Interceptions are why Brett Favre's illustrious career resulted in exactly one Super Bowl win. And interceptions are largely a byproduct of decision making. Even a shitty quarterback can at the very least avoid turning it over by throwing it out of bounds every time he sees his recievers are covered.
The obvious response here is that's all well and good, but if you throw it out of bounds every play, your offense just sits there. Tebow overcomes this deficiency by seemingly being able to run at will. How a hefty white dude who can't throw manages to outrun NFL linebacking corps is a mystery, but until defenses figure out how to effectively spy Tebow on his idiotic looking scrambles (see: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/804962/tebow1.gif), he'll keep handing it off and scrambling for 3rd and 4s until the last few moments all season long.
That brings us to the irrational confidence side of things. The difference between Tom Brady's blinged out career and Peyton Manning's "Yeah, but I still beat Rex Grossman in the Super Bowl once" career is how both react to being down 3 points at the end of the game. It's easy to remember that Tom Brady was pretty miserable looking at throwing the ball his first season too. But whether it's his male model good looks or his fear of Bill Belichick ripping his spine out in the locker room, Brady always pulled it together at the end of games.
Joe Montana was another "meh stats, great win percentage" quarterbacks.
Stats purists aside, the last ten minutes of a sporting event are a whole different animal than the rest of the game. Pressure does weird things to the human psyche, and as anyone whose walked back from one of those timeshare presentations wondering why the hell you have three weeks of rentals in Cabo when you only have two weeks of vacation time knows, your decision making process can break down when stress levels are high.
Some people seem utterly immune to this phenomenom. They aren't even that good at what they do, they just play exactly the same way when stakes are high as they do when they're low. In a situation where everyone else is losing their head, this is normally enough, which is why Tebow, who seems to think he's literally the reincarnation of Jesus Christ on the field, suddenly starts floating ducks over the hands of Pro Bowl cornerbacks or scrambling for twenty yards through the best run defense in the NFL.
I played in a hockey game in high school once. It was a key game for the conference championship, and we came out and fucking blew it for two period. We went into the third down 5-2, utterly dejected. But our captain, a kid named Brandon John, was utterly, unapologetically unfazed. "We're going to win this game," he declared matter-of-factly, and it caught on. The other key players began echoing it, and we went out there pretty damn sure it was going to happen.
There wasn't even talk about the POSSIBILITY we wouldn't win this game, which was utterly irrational, considering it was hockey, goals come at the same speed as congressional resolutions, and we played 15 minute running clock periods.
We won 7-5 in regulation. We had the lead with 5 minutes to go. By the end of the game, the other team was barely even trying. They were completely broken.
Sometimes, all it takes is irrational confidence to make idiotic things happen.
WHAT, DOES HE THINK HE'S BETTER THAN ME?
The second group of Tebow-haters is more interesting. These are the people who just genuinely dislike good people.
They'd never admit to it, of course. They probably wouldn't admit that Tim Tebow is, by all accounts, a ludicrously good person.
I'll admit, I flirt in and out of this category as well. As a cynical bastard, on my bad days, I tend to roll my eyes at the do-gooders of the world. But I wouldn't have described myself exactly in those terms until I spent some time on the other side. Yeah, I disagreed and mocked people who took social issues too seriously, but only because they were naive to think they could really make a difference.
After I graduated college, I popped into a summer job of fundraising for a nonprofit group. At the time, it was just a thing I was doing for a few months for some combination of white guilt, an attempt to use my degree for something, and an attempt to get over my general social phobia (the job was door to door fundraising, probably the most infuriating difficult summer job you can have).
I came out with two stunning revelations: holy shit, good people actually acting like good people actually DOES make a difference in the world, and HOLY SHIT, people HATE HATE HATE people who actually do good things.
Not everybody, of course. But it's rather stunning to see how quickly large sectors of society turn against you when you tell them you work for a non profit group. People you wouldn't expect, as well. It's one thing when girls at a bar drunkenly tells you about the "loser hitting on me who worked for Americorps...why would you admit you worked THERE?". That's fairly easy to dismiss. It's quite another when people who you generally regard as middle of the road, fairly positive people get actively upset when they hear what you do. I'll excuse the people who sicced dogs on me or called the cops when I knocked on their door asking for donations...nobody likes to give money away. The people who became upset in casual conversation, however, were very revelatory.
More revelatory, though, was realizing both before and after, that I freqently fall into that category as well, though I generally don't realize until I replay the conversation afterwards.
Which brings us in our own roundabout way to Tim Tebow and his haters. Tim Tebow goes on missionary trips to help children in third world countries. Tim Tebow gives back to his community. Tim Tebow, for whatever it's worth, has an incredible amount of faith in and gives an incredible amount of devotion to God, and while I personally don't value that, I can at least respect it.
In almost every sense, he does not behave like we expect our athletes to behave. And we hate him for that, because nobody likes the idea that there are professional fucking athletes who are better people than us.
So I fucking love Tim Tebow. Not just for his hilariously effective performances on the field, or his miracle salvation of my BRONCOS TO THE PLAYOFFS bid, but for the entertaining sideshow of reactions from every corner of society. And as long as he keeps winning football games, for however long it takes defenses to figure out how to stop his nonsensical approach to the quarterback position, I'm going to be watching the carnival.
But since this is my blog, I'm going to go ahead and talk about him too.
First, some background information.
I hated Tim Tebow in college.
I figured he'd be a pretty solid, but not spectacular starting QB in the NFL.
I'm a hardcore agnostic and am generally opposed to hyper religious athletes for all the usual reasons.
I picked the Broncos to win their division this year, so I have personal "don't-look-like-a-moron" stakes in this.
Ok, onto the Tebowing.
I am actively pulling for Tim Tebow to win as many games as possible simply because I love watching people react to shit that doesn't fit into their world views (that and the whole 'Broncos to the playoffs' thing, but let's focus on this part).
Since the Tebowing of America began, my Facebook and Twitter feeds have featured a never ending stream of Tebow hate.
People who hate Tim Tebow seem to fall into two categories.
1. NFL "QB is King" Purists
2. Cynical Pricks
Let's tackle the Purists first.
JUST WAIT UNTIL HE PLAYS A REAL DEFENSE
Tim Tebow pisses everyone off because he is a great quarterback (so far) but has the worst set of quarterbacking skills the NFL has ever seen. I remember the Vince Young debate from several years ago, but Tim Tebow takes the Vince Young dilemma to another stratosphere.
Despite this, Tim Tebow keeps winning football games, and he keeps winning for two reasons.
#1: he makes the best play he's capable of making every time he touches the ball.
#2: he's almost Kanye-level confident
The first point has made me roll eyes at NFL Draft pundits since I began watching football. Yes, form matters. Yes, mechanics and talent are very relevent. But throwing a perfect spiral to the other team because you don't make good decisions under pressure makes you a bad quarterback.
Tim Tebow has thrown 2 INTs all year, and not throwing INTs is the main reason you stick around as a QB in the NFL. Interceptions are why Brett Favre's illustrious career resulted in exactly one Super Bowl win. And interceptions are largely a byproduct of decision making. Even a shitty quarterback can at the very least avoid turning it over by throwing it out of bounds every time he sees his recievers are covered.
The obvious response here is that's all well and good, but if you throw it out of bounds every play, your offense just sits there. Tebow overcomes this deficiency by seemingly being able to run at will. How a hefty white dude who can't throw manages to outrun NFL linebacking corps is a mystery, but until defenses figure out how to effectively spy Tebow on his idiotic looking scrambles (see: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/804962/tebow1.gif), he'll keep handing it off and scrambling for 3rd and 4s until the last few moments all season long.
That brings us to the irrational confidence side of things. The difference between Tom Brady's blinged out career and Peyton Manning's "Yeah, but I still beat Rex Grossman in the Super Bowl once" career is how both react to being down 3 points at the end of the game. It's easy to remember that Tom Brady was pretty miserable looking at throwing the ball his first season too. But whether it's his male model good looks or his fear of Bill Belichick ripping his spine out in the locker room, Brady always pulled it together at the end of games.
Joe Montana was another "meh stats, great win percentage" quarterbacks.
Stats purists aside, the last ten minutes of a sporting event are a whole different animal than the rest of the game. Pressure does weird things to the human psyche, and as anyone whose walked back from one of those timeshare presentations wondering why the hell you have three weeks of rentals in Cabo when you only have two weeks of vacation time knows, your decision making process can break down when stress levels are high.
Some people seem utterly immune to this phenomenom. They aren't even that good at what they do, they just play exactly the same way when stakes are high as they do when they're low. In a situation where everyone else is losing their head, this is normally enough, which is why Tebow, who seems to think he's literally the reincarnation of Jesus Christ on the field, suddenly starts floating ducks over the hands of Pro Bowl cornerbacks or scrambling for twenty yards through the best run defense in the NFL.
I played in a hockey game in high school once. It was a key game for the conference championship, and we came out and fucking blew it for two period. We went into the third down 5-2, utterly dejected. But our captain, a kid named Brandon John, was utterly, unapologetically unfazed. "We're going to win this game," he declared matter-of-factly, and it caught on. The other key players began echoing it, and we went out there pretty damn sure it was going to happen.
There wasn't even talk about the POSSIBILITY we wouldn't win this game, which was utterly irrational, considering it was hockey, goals come at the same speed as congressional resolutions, and we played 15 minute running clock periods.
We won 7-5 in regulation. We had the lead with 5 minutes to go. By the end of the game, the other team was barely even trying. They were completely broken.
Sometimes, all it takes is irrational confidence to make idiotic things happen.
WHAT, DOES HE THINK HE'S BETTER THAN ME?
The second group of Tebow-haters is more interesting. These are the people who just genuinely dislike good people.
They'd never admit to it, of course. They probably wouldn't admit that Tim Tebow is, by all accounts, a ludicrously good person.
I'll admit, I flirt in and out of this category as well. As a cynical bastard, on my bad days, I tend to roll my eyes at the do-gooders of the world. But I wouldn't have described myself exactly in those terms until I spent some time on the other side. Yeah, I disagreed and mocked people who took social issues too seriously, but only because they were naive to think they could really make a difference.
After I graduated college, I popped into a summer job of fundraising for a nonprofit group. At the time, it was just a thing I was doing for a few months for some combination of white guilt, an attempt to use my degree for something, and an attempt to get over my general social phobia (the job was door to door fundraising, probably the most infuriating difficult summer job you can have).
I came out with two stunning revelations: holy shit, good people actually acting like good people actually DOES make a difference in the world, and HOLY SHIT, people HATE HATE HATE people who actually do good things.
Not everybody, of course. But it's rather stunning to see how quickly large sectors of society turn against you when you tell them you work for a non profit group. People you wouldn't expect, as well. It's one thing when girls at a bar drunkenly tells you about the "loser hitting on me who worked for Americorps...why would you admit you worked THERE?". That's fairly easy to dismiss. It's quite another when people who you generally regard as middle of the road, fairly positive people get actively upset when they hear what you do. I'll excuse the people who sicced dogs on me or called the cops when I knocked on their door asking for donations...nobody likes to give money away. The people who became upset in casual conversation, however, were very revelatory.
More revelatory, though, was realizing both before and after, that I freqently fall into that category as well, though I generally don't realize until I replay the conversation afterwards.
Which brings us in our own roundabout way to Tim Tebow and his haters. Tim Tebow goes on missionary trips to help children in third world countries. Tim Tebow gives back to his community. Tim Tebow, for whatever it's worth, has an incredible amount of faith in and gives an incredible amount of devotion to God, and while I personally don't value that, I can at least respect it.
In almost every sense, he does not behave like we expect our athletes to behave. And we hate him for that, because nobody likes the idea that there are professional fucking athletes who are better people than us.
So I fucking love Tim Tebow. Not just for his hilariously effective performances on the field, or his miracle salvation of my BRONCOS TO THE PLAYOFFS bid, but for the entertaining sideshow of reactions from every corner of society. And as long as he keeps winning football games, for however long it takes defenses to figure out how to stop his nonsensical approach to the quarterback position, I'm going to be watching the carnival.
Yeah, But Still...
So I started a blog. Those of you who are sick as shit of me posting every other thought that enters my golden retriever brain on my Facebook stream should be ecstatic.
Those of you who would like to see some of those thoughts a little bit better developed, this blog is for you.
Those of you stumbling through because God-knows-why stumbleupon or Somebody Important sent you here to read my ranting nonsense...well, a bit about me.
My name's Aaron Benmark, I am insanely opinionated, and I have a blog.
It's the Internet. What the fuck else do you want?
What will I talk about here?
The usual water cooler nonsense. You like sports? I got sports. You like movies? I got movies. You like music? I got music. You like literature? Hahaha, this is America. But I'll have some of that too.
I'll try to put some smart shit here too, for the smarty pants people who are like totally responsible and shit. So politics, the green movement, technology, social change, policy...god, I'm already bored. Let's just say that I'll have that shit too.
I'll try to put some adorable pictures of cats too, because you seem to like that, Internet.
Well, that's enough. Feel free to disagree and post in the comments. Have I enabled the comments? I literally have no idea.
Those of you who would like to see some of those thoughts a little bit better developed, this blog is for you.
Those of you stumbling through because God-knows-why stumbleupon or Somebody Important sent you here to read my ranting nonsense...well, a bit about me.
My name's Aaron Benmark, I am insanely opinionated, and I have a blog.
It's the Internet. What the fuck else do you want?
What will I talk about here?
The usual water cooler nonsense. You like sports? I got sports. You like movies? I got movies. You like music? I got music. You like literature? Hahaha, this is America. But I'll have some of that too.
I'll try to put some smart shit here too, for the smarty pants people who are like totally responsible and shit. So politics, the green movement, technology, social change, policy...god, I'm already bored. Let's just say that I'll have that shit too.
I'll try to put some adorable pictures of cats too, because you seem to like that, Internet.
Well, that's enough. Feel free to disagree and post in the comments. Have I enabled the comments? I literally have no idea.
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