Point-Counterpoint by H. Jose Bosch and Paul M. Banks
Another week of college football, and you know what that means: another week of the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network whoring Syracuse QB (and former Duke basketball star) Greg Paulus in their coverage. And now that he’s actually won a game (thanks Northwestern secondary, you just had to have your first 2 CBs banged up THAT week, so that Paulus’s wide receivers could make him look good) expect the overexposure to be even worse. 
Within this framework, we thought about what might happen if ESPN’s other 2 overwhelmingly favorite college athletes switched sports? What if Tim Tebow played college basketball? What if Tyler Hansbrough played football?
1 First Tim Tebow made heaven & earth 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of Tim Tebow was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And Tim Tebow said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And Tim Tebow saw that the light was good; and Tim Tebow separated the light from the darkness…And Tim Tebow saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day Tim Tebow finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.
In all seriousness, when I tried to replace God with Tim Tebow the computer asked me why I was replacing a word with the same word. Crazy.
But Tim Tebow can do nothing wrong in the world. To think that Psycho T would get more press than Tebow is crazy. They took a freaking Tebow postgame quote and made it into a plaque for goodness sake. All Tebow needs to do is exist and everyone wets themselves.
The biggest difference between the two is that Tebow clearly works hard but looks like an athlete. Hansborough works hard and looks like he has the mental capabilities of a gym sock out there. His style is like that player who tries too hard during a pick up games except he wins national championships and my shots …. er … that player’s shots go over the backboard.
Just accept it Paul, Tim Tebow could quit football right now and he will be considered a bigger success than the two of us…even if we found the cure for cancer; which is Tim Tebow’s tears.
Too bad he doesn’t cry.
(Sorry Chuck Norris, but Tim Tebow tears are much better. In fact, did you know that Chuck Norris looks in the morning every day and thinks to himself, “God, I wish I was Tim Tebow.” To which God replies, “So do I.”)
–HJB
Wow! It’s very tough to respond to that. Hard to argue against the laws of divinity. I always knew That Tim Tebow=Jesus, or that he was this generation’s messiah, but I didn’t know that he was in fact, God himself. Oh wait, Jesus is the son of man, and the human embodiment of God, while also being the son of God. So I guess by transitive property on inequality, Tebow=God. I’m not sure. That part of the Bible, like the rest of the book, is very vague and mysterious to me.
But what does all this make Tyler Hansbrough? Well, he’s hard working. And energetic. And he works really hard expending a lot of energy. And he brings a lot of energy to all the hard work that he does. And he’s extremely competitive in the hard work that he does. Work that he does with tremendous energy. You might have heard that Psycho T “is a tremendous competitor” who “does all the things that don’t show up in the stat sheet,” and he does all these things with “a blue-collar work ethic” and that he’s also hard-working. Blue-collar even.
So if you work a blue-collar job and you’re relaxing from working hard like Tyler Hansbrough, you must by law, (or by God’s will, make that Tim Tebow’s will) love Tyler. There is no other way. His hard work, and energy, must be adored at all times by everyone. Because he’s “what’s right with this game” “what’s right with college basketball” and everything that’s right in America, in the world, in the universe. Tyler Hansbrough’s work ethic is so powerful it’s the karmic polar opposite of strip-mining, child pornography, and clubbing baby seals all rolled into one.
Tyler Hansbrough’s energy and work ethic is to basketball what pictures of kittens and puppies are to being cute. Resistance is futile, If you don’t like Psycho T. you don’t like college basketball, or basketball at all. Or sports, or pizza, or looking at girlie magazines, or even breathing for that matter. Tyler Hansbrough is better, and more important than all these things. If you are not with Hansbrough, than you are with the terrorists. He is to the secular world, what Tebow is to the heavenly.
So basically HJB, I see your point, but basically you and I are having a debate which is the sports media equivalent of Aristotle and Plato in Raphael’s famous Fresco painting, at the Vatican, “School of Athens”. In the center of the foreground, Plato points down to signal that the answers to life are to be found here on Earth, in the secular realm. Aristotle, points upward to the Heavesn signifying that the answers are to be found in the cosmos. Which is what this debate boils down to. But I win this round for another reason. Psycho T. would be playing America’s Game:football which would get all the headlines. Tebow is playing basketball- which is just not as popular. Sorry. Game. Set. Match.
–PMB