Thursday, January 28, 2010

Quickie: Arenas, Tebow, Warner, More

I'd like to think that I don't write about Tim Tebow gratuitously -- I can picture almost all of you saying, "Ha!" -- and yet of all the days when I could clearly justify leading today's SN column with him, I bump him down to the second spot, behind Gilbert Arenas.

Maybe I'm just projecting your Tebow Fatigue (or fatigue that I continuously write about him), but there are two separate Tebow issues this week: One is the Senior Bowl, which I covered on Monday. (Rightfully so: He's THE story of the Senior Bowl and the biggest storyline of the NFL Draft. I'm hardly the only one talking about how he's doing in Mobile.)

But the second is his controversial Super Bowl ad. I had covered the inklings of the ad on TimTeblog a month ago -- I should have put some money down back then that it would become a huge issue in the slow week before the week before the Super Bowl, because it has.

Everyone is weighing in -- many did it last week (I revisited it at Teblog last week, too, an analysis I have adjusted my opinion on slightly), but it went a little more mainstream this week: Joy Behar talked about it on The View, and yesterday Sarah Palin made it the subject of her widely followed Facebook page, elevating it further.

It's fair to say that it has become the most talked-about ad of the Super Bowl -- which is saying something (and undoubtedly was something that Focus on the Family had to have planned for, giving them way more value for their money than the simple $2 million payment to CBS).

While I have talked about it at TimTeblog, I haven't really covered it here. I'll do that in a post later today. But there's no question that the story is "national" and "mainstream." One more data point about Tebow's prominence as an athlete, whether in college or the pros.

More you'll find in today's column:

*Arenas done for the season: Let the healing (or negotiations) begin? As a huge Arenas and huge Wizards fan, I actually hope they can work it out and he can stay on the team. But I suspect that they'll end up paying him a ton of money to play for someone else. Great...

*Kurt Warner retiring: I have said this before and say it again in the column -- Warner is the single-greatest individual player story in NFL history. He went from Arena League-playing, grocery-bagging nobody to a Hall of Fame quarterback, the ultimate rags-to-riches story.

*It's hard for me to get too excited about New Mexico beating BYU -- both are going to make the NCAA Tournament, so it's not like they were playing a knock-out game. I had thought UNM was overrated, so it was a very good win -- although The Pit is a huge advantage.

*One more reason to think the Baseball Hall of Fame is a joke: They are forcing Andre Dawson to be enshrined in an Expos hat, even though he personally wants to wear a Cubs hat. How could the Hall not let the player pick their own hat? This seems like an overreach.

Tons more in the column. Check back later for more.

-- D.S.

3 comments:

Greg said...

You may think you are not over-doing the Tebow thing, but, alas, you are. Just saying.

Andy said...

"One more reason to think the Baseball Hall of Fame is a joke: They are forcing Andre Dawson to be enshrined in an Expos hat, even though he personally wants to wear a Cubs hat. How could the Hall not let the player pick their own hat? This seems like an overreach."

Isn't this the Wade Boggs rule, to prevent guys like him from selling the cap choice to a team they had little connection to? I'm OK with it.

Steve Sprague said...

In the case of Dawson I agree with you, he should be allowed to pick his own hat. However, it is not always that simple. Remember when Wade Boggs tried to basically sell the rights to his HOF hat to the Rays? Or how about Roger Clemens declaring he wanted to go in as a Yankee? That was purely a move to spite the Red Sox as anyway who followed clearly realized he should go in the HOF with a Sox cap on. Of course now he probably isn't going in at all....