The Baseball Crank: Tim Tebow, and the "Million Dollar Movie"

That's where Tim keeps the footballs!

Back in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when I was a kid, I lived just outside of New York City, a place where we actually had 6 different television channels. This was probably at least 2 or 3 more channels than most other places in the world had access to at the time. As nice as that was for a kid to have so many options, there was a lot of TV time to fill, but broadcast television was still in it’s relative infancy, so we got a lot of re-runs.

Sometimes we got re-runs of the re-runs.

The best example of re-run redundancy I can cite was WOR-TV (New York - Channel 9) having something called the "Million Dollar Movie." You would always recognize the theme music for the Million Dollar Movie, which was "Tara’s Theme," made famous by being the theme music for "Gone With The Wind," still one of the great movies of all time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPTQRmwCOWs

So what does the decades old "Million Dollar Movie" have to do with Tim Tebow?

I love you Cleo!

I’ll get to that, but first let's dissect the "Million Dollar Movie," as these days a million bucks ain’t much, especially for a movie budget, but back in the day a million bucks was an enormous budget for most movies. Hell, in 1964 the original game show "Jeopardy" had dollar totals that were 10% of what they are now. Back in 1963 it made some folks apoplectic when Elizabeth Taylor got a $1,000,000 for starring in the epic "Cleopatra." There was endless speculation on whether the movie would make enough at the box office to cover it’s estimated $44,000,000 in production costs. (It did, eventually)

There was no such problem for the Million Dollar Movie, as WOR-TV made sure they got their money’s worth out of each movie by airing it 20-25 times in a week! We'd get dozens of movies from the ‘30’s and ‘40’s, with a strong mix of monster movies, comedies, scary stuff, and adventures. Whatever the movie, it’d be on three or more times a day all week, just in case you missed it the first 10 times. Sometimes it’d be something good like "King Kong," "The House on Haunted Hill," "The Crimson Pirate," or one of two dozen Abbott and Costello movies. But too often it’d be some scaggy piece of tripe that no self-respecting 9-year old kid would watch once, let alone 6 or 7 times.

It was kind of like AMC is today, except today we have anywhere from 80 to 800 other channels to watch, so you may never even know that the same John Wayne movie was re-run 15 times in one week by those folks?

What I am saying is that Tim Tebow is like the old Million Dollar Movie. He was amusing and entertaining for a while, for about 7 games, but I am ready for this movie to stop being aired. I’ve seen it enough. I don’t have much in the way of personal feelings about Tebow, so don't get me wrong. I don’t hate him, as he seems like an honest and genuinely nice young man, but I can’t handle listening to and/or watching him and the accompanying sideshow any longer.

Why not?

No, it’s got nothing to do with his religious convictions. I don’t care about that stuff at all. Over the years, I have heard hundreds of athletes thank Jesus for a great game to the point where I now expect to hear it, almost like it’s been scripted in many cases. I can ignore it, as I do much of the hype both before and after any game.

I want a different Million Dollar Movie because I don’t want to see Tim Tebow get T-boned, which is bound to happen to anyone playing quarterback in the National Football League who runs as much as Tebow does. I am now afraid that some defensive end will crunch this kid’s career and then those of us that follow the NFL will be subject to all the "saddest tales of tongue and pen…"

Can you see the reports on Tim running, bending, stretching, lifting weights, praying, circumcising, and all the while being just so earnest about it?

We could then be subjected to a sequel such as:

"A Tebow on the Brink," "Tebow Strikes Back." or "A Tebow is Waiting."

How about "Tebow Interrupted?"

I don’t want to hear the "…what might have been" for Tim Tebow, so I don’t want him getting clobbered with a nasty knee injury, and then have to hear all the stories about his perseverance in climbing back up to the mountain top.

An alternative story could be the career ending injury, like the time Joe Theisman had his leg snapped by Lawrence Taylor one long ago Monday evening in Washington, D.C. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAluPFKn6zk

No way, I don’t want anyone to get hurt like that, though if anyone could come back from having his leg snapped like a twig, it’d probably be Tim? How about Tebow having his left arm torn off, but then Tim learns to throw right-handed?

"Tim Tebow: The Right Hand of God." (It’d probably be hard to script without a lot of fumbles on the snap?)

No, I want Tim Tebow to keep playing quarterback in the NFL and fail the old-fashioned way, by not being good enough, which is easy enough for me to see happening, assuming he doesn’t get hurt. But he will get hurt, I promise you.

If you don’t believe that Tebow is cruisin’ for a serious bruisin’, take a look at Mike Vick’s career, and see how much time he’s missed due to injury. Yes, I realize that Vick is a relatively small guy, but does anyone really believe that Carolina will keep letting Cam Newton run as much as he has this season?

If you’re not convinced, factor in that Cam is 2-inches taller, 15-pounds heavier, and a lot faster than Tim is, and Carolina will be putting a stop to all those rushes soon enough.

Now, take a look at the top quarterbacks in the NFL for this season, or any season? Go back 20 years, or more, and tell me how many rushing yards the top ten QB’s gained?

Not that many had many, huh?

I'm on the record stating that I think the best QB in Pro Football history, and definitely the best I ever watched play was John Elway. I used to think that Elway ran the ball way too much, and risked significant injury in a league that was not anywhere near as QB friendly as it is today. All players were a bit smaller and slower then, and Elway averaged a paltry 14.6 yards rushing, per game in his career. The list of great NFL running quarterbacks is a short one, with Steve Young probably the best, and he ranks #165 in all-time rushing yards in NFL history. Young averaged 34.6 rushing yards, per game in his career, and estimates he suffered at least 10 concussions in his career, and probably more. Here’s a link to a short running QB story on Yahoo Sports, from a little over a year ago. http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ycn-7454032

Best I ever saw

An average of 14.6 yards rushing for John Elway in a game is one decent scramble for Cam or Mike or Tim, isn’t it? Don’t all QB’s break one of those once in a while?

Well no, and when you consider that the top 5 rated QB’s in the NFL this season have fewer rushing yards combined than Tim does, it makes one consider that maybe having a quarterback running with the ball isn’t a great path to long-term (or even short-term) success?

This season, Tebow is averaging 49.5 yards rushing per game, and it’s going to end his career if he keeps it up.

Of the top 13 ranked QB’s in the NFL this season, only Aaron Rodgers (at 17.1) bests Elway’s career average. Newton, Vick, and Tebow, all average in the mid-to-high 40’s in rushing yards per game.

Cam, tempting fate?

Cam Newton is 22 years old, huge at 6’5" and 248-pounds, very athletic, and exceptionally fast for a quarterback. But Newton is a rookie, and he also shown excellent ability in throwing the football, which is really what it’s all about in the NFL now. That is unless you want to have a stable of running QB’s to cycle in on your team, and hire Rich Rodriguez away from the University of Arizona to run the spread option offense. Again, I’d be stunned to see Newton run as much next season. He is too valuable as a passer. The great quarterbacks that have survived a long time do so because they rarely run, and are coached to throw the ball away if they can’t find an open receiver.

Vick takes licking, stops ticking

Mike Vick is by all accounts (significantly) smaller than his listed size of 6’0", and 215. Vick, even at 31 years of age is still one of the fastest players in the NFL when he’s healthy, but how often has he been healthy the last two seasons? He is an excellent passer, but he’s too small to be running as much as he does. He is smaller than a vast majority or NFL running backs. He needs to throw the football away more often. If you think Mike Vick will lead a team to a Super Bowl, take a look at his won/lost record in the playoffs with Atlanta and the Eagles? I’ll save you the trouble, he’s 2-4, and the last win came in 2004.

Tim is neither Cam nor Mike. Not as big or as fast as Cam, nor anywhere near as fast as Mike. Plus, Tim can’t throw the football very well. We all know that, don’t we?

For me, it’s been a great irony to have the player (Elway) I consider the best NFL QB of all time as the man in charge of the (arguably) worst NFL quarterback of all time. John Elway is not a stupid guy, so he’ll flow with this for a while, as for a while it’s been amusing and entertaining, but I’ve heard ‘Tebow’s Theme,’ and seen his Million Dollar Movie, about 7 times and I don’t want to watch it any more.

I also don’t want to watch "The Return of Tim Tebow," "The Revenge of Tim Tebow," "The Curse of Tim Tebow," nor do I wish to watch "Tebow: The Resurrection."

Looks like busted coverage?

I think I should warn you that Tebow is bound to appear on "Dancing with the Stars," don’t you agree? I can see him fumbling his partner, or tossing her to the floor, and being completely out of step, out of time, and out of bounds.

I can also see him winning the top prize, running and running and running away with it in fact.