Now here's that well-known concussion-lobotomized moron Boomer Esaison piling on the friends-of-Elway bandwagon with a highly publicized column in Pro Football Today which BEGINS at "Tebow can't throw, can't play" and descends into another rage-filled personal attack. This is a guy (Esaison) who has never lead a team to ANY championship, and was known for being essentially a "big dumb guy at quarterback who runs slow and and can't think", but COULD heave the ball a long way--so they relied on a running back and a couple of fast receivers for offense when he was the Bengals' QB. Like Elway, he is a petty and bitter man, and harbors great resentment towards his old team for insults real and imagined. Something about Tebow just rubs his already raw and sensitive thin skin the wrong way: as we've seen in so many other cases, the tip-off is in how the reaction so outweighs the stimulus. Tebow HAS in fact performed relatively well in games, continues to work hard and do everything that is asked of him. He is popular, has represented his team and the League well, and has certainly done NOTHING to warrant these vicious and relentless personal attacks.
I will say it once again: this sort of over-the-top fit of public-pique reveals a lot more about the perpetrator, in this case Boomer Esaison, than it does about TT. The strange and disturbing part of it all (at least to me) is how it appears part of a large and orchestrated campaign against him. While this is to some extent explained by very real efforts on the part of Elway and the Bronco organization to address and minimize the anticipated PR-fallout from their fans' disappointment and anger at the abandonment of their popular first-round draft pick, it is also part of a larger, nationwide anti-Tebow backlash. It began with simply "too much Tebow" in the media (not his fault, just normal media-laziness, but there, nonetheless), but has grown and metamorphosed into something else, something ugly and dark. There are a whole lot of folks out there who don't just want to see Tim Tebow fail , they want to see him injured, humiliated, damaged in every way.
NOW I begin to see how it got with the Romans. For numb and decadent spectators, it isn't enough to see their heroes win. Not even to see enemies and bad guys lose. No, the "outsider", the "others", especially those who don't even try to fit in, who make us feel uncomfortable about our own lives and values, these must be squashed. See y'all Sunday at the Coliseum. I won't be there.