Minnesota Vikings: The Tim Tebow Circus Is Coming to Town

Tim Tebow is a good boy who loves his mama. He loves Jesus and America too. He rides a unicorn to work and sleeps in a rainbow. He throws lightning bolts, and when he runs, it sounds like a stampede of horses. When he sings in the shower, the sun decides to rise and and the stars can finally sleep. Kryptonite sometimes works against him, but never in the fourth quarter. Tebow hasn't had to go to the bathroom since he was 10 years old.

Tebow is an abomination to the NFL and the worst thing to happen to the quarterback position in league history. He is a home-schooled freak who is using one of America's most idyllic platforms—the National Football League—to to spread his religious beliefs like an ideological terrorist. He is blatantly rubbing all of our noses and our souls in his first amendment rights. Church and state is one thing, but church and football? Tebow is clearly a witch and should be burned at the stake during halftime of the Super Bowl.

Take a side football fans, for out in Denver resides perhaps the most polarizing athlete since Muhammad Ali. Might Tebow simply be a big, good looking kid who plays the glamour position differently than we've seen it played before at the highest level? Unconventional athletes are polarizing enough, but throw in the fact that Tebow looks at every microphone as an opportunity to espouse his religious beliefs, and suddenly, you've got more Americans caring about the Tebow debate than those being held among the Presidential hopefuls. 

So cue up the circus music, Vikings fans, the Tim Tebow show is coming on Sunday afternoon to play under your big top in downtown Minneapolis. Love him or hate him, football fans have been forced to admit that Tebow is doing what his moral polar opposite, Charlie Sheen, was pimping last spring: winning. 

It's how Tebow is winning that has football purists gouging at their eyeballs and setting their hair on fire. Since taking over the starting job from Kyle Orton on October 23, when Tebow threw for 24 yards in his first half as a starter, Tebow has gone 5-1 and put the left for dead Broncos back into the hunt for the AFC West division title.

Tebow is completing an abysmal 45 percent of his passes for a whatever-the-next-word-worse-than-abysmal-is 85 yards a game. And he's 5-1.  

How can this be? How can this H-back, whose best play in college was to fake a run into the line and then float a 10-foot jumper to a wide open tight end, be winning against the most complicated defensive schemes imaginable by playing like a caveman? And where exactly was Tebow's favorite teammate, Jesus Christ, ranked on Mel Kiper's big board?

Closer examination of what's going on in Denver reveals several key stats: Tebow has turned the ball over just twice in 236 touches. He has thrown for eight touchdowns and ran for three more while throwing just one interception.

The Broncos defense, led by rookie phenom Von Miller and his 10.5 sacks, are suddenly playing like world-beaters. Why? Reason No. 1 might be that since Tebow took over at quarterback, the Broncos have gone from 30th to fifth in time of possession. The defense is far better rested when they take the field. 

Beyond that, Tebow simply has the Broncos believing in themselves. It's simplistic, old-fashioned and easy to make fun of, but Tebow is a great leader, and his teammates believe in his ability to lead them to victories. There is no stat or measurement for that, but Tebow has it.

Tebow has his best opportunity to show off what the Broncos hope are his improving passing skills this Sunday against the Vikings and their injury ravaged secondary (three defensive backs have been signed off the street in the last two weeks).

Can Tebow keep up this most improbable streak of winning ugly? Who can bet against a kid whose life seems to be playing out like a fairy tale?

To borrow from another fairy tale, would it surprise anyone if Tebow waited for his largest audience, at Super Bowl media day, to announce the following to the world:

Reporter: "Why are you smiling?"

Tebow: "Because I know something you don't know."

Reporter: "And what is that?"

Tebow: "I'm not left handed."