A Slice of Bacon

My senior year of college, I started dating a girl I’d wanted to date since my very first class of freshman year. I was an insecure little kid from a town of 24,000 people in East Texas starting out at the University of Arizona in a town of nearly 1 million people, and didn’t have  the slightest idea of what the hell I was going to do, but my first day of class I had a 10 A.M. astrology class and as I sat down on the west side of the auditorium, I looked across the hall and saw one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen in my life. I remember thinking that day that there was no chance in hell I was going to miss that class all semester, damn the pledgeship, hangovers and early morning tee times. Every other day, I’d get to that class in the morning and sit in the same area, occasionally making eyes with this young lady. 

Second semester hit, and I had another class with her. Somehow we ended up sitting next to each other, and a chartered flight heading into the Pacific wouldn’t make my hands as sweaty as they were during that Russian history class. So when we finally dated three years later, life was great. It was something I wanted. And sometimes that longing forces you to look past what is actually going on. When relationships, as they seem to do more often than not, hit that “end this now” point, it’s hard to do that because you want it to work so bad. You long for the days of kisses and laughs and fun, and sweaty palms. 

That’s the sports world with Tim Tebow now. Everyone wants him to succeed, because unlike most of these athletes in the world that have seven kids or have more drug possession charges than Pablo Escobar, Tebow was a saint, both in the flesh and on the field. He was the quintessential Duke guard for college football. A stand-up kid with raw talent and the ability to lead people, which to be honest, is rare these days in college sports. This kid was a leader. He was talented. He came off perfect. He was a saint.

And while I never really believed in that whole thing, I got the appeal. He’s the kind of player my dad likes, because he is what you want your kid to emulate. So as Tebow drops down the depth chart at Denver, it’s a story, because while it seems the general public wants him to work out, he just doesn’t have it. He can’t. It’s not in his blood.

It shouldn’t matter, really, because a ton of college quarterbacks hit the pros and can’t make it. They don’t have the chops. They turn into fullbacks or wide receivers or they move on to the UFL or AFL or DHL. As “Hard Knocks” has shown us through the years, it isn’t easy to make a roster in the NFL, no matter how talented you are, but Tebow is on the Broncos because people wanted to see him defy the odds. A white, slow quarterback using raw power to become a leader in the NFL. That story doesn’t happen much anymore, especially when you can’t hit your tight ends hands on a 10-yard out, but before the season started, it was a hopeful proposition.

Now, it isn’t. Tebow is now fourth on the Denver depth chart and falling fast. The coaches are starting to realize that it was just a pretty face, a good heart, but not much else there in the end. 

It’s tough when it hits you, but for now, it’s the way to that Broncos should go, and football fans are feeling the sting.