Tebow inspires in sport of shameless celebration

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Updated: February 13, 2012 9:17AM

LOL!

“Tebow is puttin’ it on ’em . . . In Jesus name!” I thumbed a Facebook posting quickly on my handheld while watching the Broncos-vs.-Steelers game, giddy over the success of the young NFL quarterback who has taken a ribbing for his open — and on-the-field — expression of his Christian faith.

The critics have also wondered aloud — from radio and television sports shows to newspaper columns and even Monday-morning-quarterback perches — whether Tim Tebow has the right stuff to be an NFL quarterback. And though not always a Tebow believer, I’ve been born again by a young QB who continues somehow to find a way to win.

It didn’t take long before my posting drew a response on a day when the name Tebow seemed to saturate Facebook and Twitter as both noun and verb.

“Ask in my name . . . Really cuz?” wrote one of my cousins who remains a doubting Thomas. “Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha, lol. I’m dying laughing!”

I’ll bet the Steelers aren’t laughing. Not after being “Tebowed” — having their season’s hopes dashed by a Tebow pass leading to a game-winning touchdown in overtime that had me jumping and screaming. Then there was Tebow, live in HD, on bended knee, giving thanks for another victory.

“Hallelujah!!!! Touchdown! Tebow!!!!!! OMG!!!!!” I thumbed as fast as I could, fumbling with excitement, even if I wasn’t always a Tebow-ite.

A couple years back, I had a friendly cup-of-coffee wager that Tebow wouldn’t even be drafted as a quarterback, given the talk about his “lack of” professional QB mechanics. I lost that one.

I bet the Tebow-led Broncos would never beat the Bears (lost). I bet they wouldn’t make the playoffs (lost that one too). And never in a million years would I have imagined that Tebow might get anywhere near a Super Bowl, unless he had, uh, purchased tickets.

And yet, here he is, inching closer, with the New England Patriots, a virtual giant, awaiting the Tebow-led Broncos this weekend. (It wouldn’t be the first story about a lad who faced the likes of lions, bears and giants and prevailed.)

Still, like Rodney Dangerfield, Tebow “gets no respect.”

Gaining respect for him as an NFL quarterback has been my slow but steady conversion. But my liking for him as an apparently God-fearing young man who happens to wear — even if on his sleeve — the faith that by all appearances he lives by has always been mile high.

Except in a day when “bad boys” are celebrated and the media gravitate toward scuttlebutt and salacious scandal, like flies to poop, a clean-cut young man reared by missionary parents in the fear and admonition of the Lord is ridiculed for being “too good,” reviled even, mocked. All of which to me amounts to a kind of religious bigotry.

God forbid that a young man would have the unmitigated gall to thank his “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” before beginning each press conference, or point to the sky after a big play, or kneel on the field and whisper thanks to his creator after a win. God forbid . . . Please.

I have witnessed men fight on the football field, cuss and fuss. And in the end zone, I have seen no shortage of shameless celebratory displays, from gyrating to jiggling and wiggling to the faux mooning of fans.

Tebow plays the game with passion, always speaks graciously, always comes across as a man who understands that there was life before football, and that there will be life long after.

And I’d be willing to bet that he’s got a lot of people praying and hoping, and also waiting to kneel and do the Tebow, once more this season, just for the haters.

How sweet it would be.

OMG!