What the Tebow billboard says
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
The introductory news conference for Tim Tebow will occur later Monday, at noon, but the billboard is already here, on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel.
Billboards in Denver foretold the Tebow story there. Early last season, some Broncos fans voiced their displeasure with Kyle Orton and called for Tebow to start via a billboard. When the Broncos began chasing Peyton Manning, another billboard asked fans to vote for one of the two.
For Broncos Coach John Fox and the team executive John Elway, the billboards were part of the downside of an uplifting playoff season. As Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports wrote about the Denver front office’s celebration at landing Manning, “there was also a decided ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead strain to the exultation.”
Elway had that sick, sinking feeling in his stomach – Tebowmania had become such a formidable force that even Colorado’s most legendary athletic hero would have been vilified for pulling the plug.
Several astute analysts have pointed out that Tebow’s move to the Jets can make football sense. But Tebow won a lot of games for the Broncos, and Elway was apparently happy to be rid of him — and not all of that was about football. The Jets should be able to cut ties with Tebow more easily. Or so you would think. It would be painful for the Knicks to trade or cut Jeremy Lin if his production waned. If Tebow were to become a New York sensation, and a big money-maker for the team, the same dynamic would apply.
The Jets may be facing a Catch-22 (or Catch-15). If Tebow plays poorly, that’s a problem for the Jets. If Tebow plays well, the nuisance/distraction factor grows — for Mark Sanchez, for the coach and for the front office. Unless you believe that Tebow is a quarterback who can lead a team to a Super Bowl, but hardly anyone is willing to go that far yet.
So what does the Tebow billboard say? “We Support Tebow & New York.”
For motorists familiar with traffic backups at the Lincoln Tunnel, and for the Jets, it might as well say, “Trouble Ahead.”
This article was written by Toni Monkovic and appeared in the New York Times. 
Posted by Necesitamos Mas Football
on 1:15 p. m..
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