[tomder55]

Good points all. However ;it is the women's groups that have their dander up over it. There was no hype at all until they proclaimed it an outrage.

My own thinking on this is CBS is using Pete Townsend ;a registered sex offender ,for their half time entertainment . Tebow just provides some balance.:D

[tomder55]

As far as Tebow's skill levels go; a strong arm like his makes up for a whole lot of other deficienies. Someone with his athletic abilities;his size and strength can be taught to take a snap from the center .

You are right ;he's probably not a top tier prospect because he spent his whole career in a shot-gun system. But an NFL team could do worse than drafting him for his abilities . Alex Smith came from a similar system ;Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell were high draft picks and I think Tebow at least has their skill level.

[spitvenom]

I think a team should draft him in the 3rd or 4th round (if he is there). Give him a few years let him develop nobody does that anymore it is either sink or swim. But if I were the Dolphins I would draft him. Put him Ronnie brown and Pat White in the back field and I don't think any team would have a clue how to stop it. Or maybe the Raiders will draft him number 8 make him start ruin his confidence and he will be out of the league in 3 years.

[tomder55]

The Giants could do worse than to have a wild cat option in their playbook. Would also make Eli look over his shoulders.

Either way ; a Heisman trophy 2 national championships and too many SEC records to count. I'm sure there is a team willing to take a chance. Marino took a large percentage of his snaps in the shotgun... so does Peyton Manning .

[spitvenom]

Espn is taking a poll which is the bigger story about Tebow: the super bowl ad or his draft stock plummeting. Overwhelmingly america cares more about his draft status.

ESPN.com Poll Results by State

[speechlesstx]

Well I hear the Cards could use another QB. Oh wait, they already have Leinert. At least hopefully he won't end up as another Ryan Leaf, who as you may or may not know had his last chance at the DII school down the street from me but blew it after a burglary looking for drugs.

[speechlesstx]

Finally, a voice of reason from the pro-choice crowd:

Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are

By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow's pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We're always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the [I"National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time."[/I] For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.

"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."

Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.

Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

Amen sister. And if you want to have a little fun watch Megyn Kelly smack down Gloria Allred.

[thisisit]

What are they afraid of? That someone who is planning on having an abortion might change their mind? Being able to change your mind is all part of pro choice, isn't it?

[Synnen]

Who says we're afraid of anything?

I seem to recall--though I can't find links now--that a birth control or Planned Parenthood ad was to run during the Superbowl a couple-few years ago, and was nixed, because it wasn't "appropriate" to the family oriented audience.

Yet talking about abortion IS?

I haven't seen the ad. I'll tell you what I think when I see the ad.

However--this pro-life group just opened the doors for OTHER groups, like Planned Parenthood, to get THEIR message aired at a time when more people watch commercials than any other time of the year.

Way to ruin my only reason for watching the Superbowl--the commercials. I want them AMUSING, not political.

[thisisit]

Afraid was a poor choice of words

[thisisit]

I just don't understand if someone is pro choice why they would object to a Focus on the Family and/or pro life commercial. I am pro choice and I have no objection to anyone presenting evidence against abortion, or alternatives to abortion.

[spitvenom]

I really think they should save the money. 3 million for a 30 second spot that most people won't see cause they are going to the bathroom. Won't remember cause they are drunk. Then you have the Tebow haters that will say his mom should have aborted him (I imagine those people will be alums of 'BAMA, FSU, WVU etc... ) So basically in the end a few people will see it, it will not change anyone's minds and that will be the end of it.

I am more concerned how long the National Anthem will take I got money on that. I say OVER a minute and Forty two seconds!!

[speechlesstx]

Who says we're afraid of anything?

I seem to recall--though I can't find links now--that a birth control or Planned Parenthood ad was to run during the Superbowl a couple-few years ago, and was nixed, because it wasn't "appropriate" to the family oriented audience.

Yet talking about abortion IS?

I haven't seen the ad. I'll tell you what I think when I see the ad.

However--this pro-life group just opened the doors for OTHER groups, like Planned Parenthood, to get THEIR message aired at a time when more people watch commercials than any other time of the year.

Way to ruin my only reason for watching the Superbowl--the commercials. I want them AMUSING, not political.

Synnen, the whole thing here (besides jumping to a gazillion conclusions) is these "pro-choice" groups are directing their anger at the wrong target. If they don't like it they need to protest to CBS, THEY made the decision to run the ad as does every network that airs the Super Bowl.

If the network wouldn't run the PP ad it was the network that made the decision and I'd bet the anger was directed at the network. In this case everyone is jumping all over Focus on the Family and the Tebows. That's just wrong.

Btw, that's the beauty of DVR's, I only watch what I want to.

[speechlesstx]

I really think they should save the money. 3 million for a 30 second spot that most people won't see cause they are going to the bathroom. Won't remember cause they are drunk. Then you have the Tebow haters that will say his mom should have aborted him (I imagine those people will be alums of 'BAMA, FSU, WVU etc...) So basically in the end a few people will see it, it will not change anyone's minds and that will be the end of it.

I am more concerned how long the National Anthem will take I got money on that. I say OVER a minute and Forty two seconds!!!!!

Spit, there's been so much crap stirred up over this by the, how did that writer put it, the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," that there will be people tune in just to watch that ad.

By the way, who's doing the anthem? I think they should just do away with celebrities massacring the anthem at the Super Bowl and get some military drum and bugle corps to do it every year. My bet wouldn't be the length, but whether the singer can pronounce "perilous." I'd bet no.

[speechlesstx]

And by the way, I'm sure the PP crowd is totally upset now that a study has shown that abstinence works best for youth.

[cdad]

Just wait and see what happens after the game. Gloria Alred has threatened suit claiming the whole thing is faked. I guess they are getting their monies worth in publicity out of this one for sure. Guesstimates are 2 - 2.5 million dollars for the commercial.

[Synnen]

Meh... I already boycott CBS. I've not watched them at all since the "Mentalist" episode where they got Wicca entirely wrong, then refused to apologize to the pagan community--I think that's going on at least a year and a half now, maybe 2 years.

I probably won't watch the Superbowl, but will have fun with a couple of friends watching the commercials---IF they're not too lame by the end of the first quarter. They seem to get stupider and more conservative every year.

So--I'd write CBS and complain, but I already know that my complaints will fall on deaf ears, so I won't bother.

I had FAR more luck complaining to the sponsors of that show, really. At least I got responses to those I wrote, even if the response was a form letter.

I agree, though--the $30 million could be MUCH better spent taking care of about 100 kids for the rest of their LIVES whose mommies weren't strong enough to choose adoption even though they "at least didn't abort".

[spitvenom]

Speech Carrie Underwood is singing the National Anthem. I think she will do it justice.

[tomder55]

IO enjoy some of the versions loath most. For my money they should just dust off a Robert Merrill recording of the Anthem.
YouTube - National Anthem at the New Yankee Stadium

[speechlesstx]

Speech Carrie Underwood is singing the National Anthem. I think she will do it justice.

Female country singers generally do a great job. LeAnn Rimes has done it at several Cowboys games we attended and did a fabulous job. Seems I've heard Reba do it there a time or two as well.