The question facing thirty-two NFL teams is not whether or not they should draft Tim Tebow.  If he were to find himself still on the board in the 5th round, any one of the teams would take him.  But what about the fourth round?  The third?  The second?  Is anyone still thinking first?

On the plus side, Tebow had a great college career.  He’s a winner – a high motor, strong, smart kid.  He’s also a leader.  Who can forget his “No one will work harder” speech in 2008?  There is so much to like about Tebow that it’s hard to imagine him not being an NFL starter next year.

But… there are things not to like.  He lost the SEC Championship game this year.  He didn’t even get a shot to play for the national championship.  Of course, there are 21 other starters on the Florida Gators who could share the blame for that.

He’s an accurate passer and a strong runner.  Both are great assets for an NFL quarterback, but he’s measured in both by the standard of a college QB.  Questions abound when you start considering the leap from college to the NFL.

Is he accurate enough for the NFL?  Maybe.  Does his running ability matter when evaluating him as an NFL QB?  A little, but not that much.  Is he good enough to be an NFL running back?  No.  A tight end?  Maybe – but who knows if he can catch or block well enough to play the position in the NFL.

My take is this: He’s a leader and a high character kid.  He carried a team on his back for two seasons.  I think he’s going to be successful wherever he goes.  There are not 32 NFL teams that could use him at quarterback next year.  He’s not going to bump Tom Brady or Peyton Manning out of the starters role, but there are some teams who frankly don’t have a better option.

Jacksonville can’t win games or fill up their stadium.  Drafting Tebow certainly could help with the latter and maybe the former, too.  Somebody should and will take him in the draft.  It’s just a question of when.

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It was a dream scenario for the men’s hockey team from Canada. The Canadians were embarrassed in the preliminary rounds, only to find themselves in the Gold medal round facing off against the bullies to their south who had so traumatized them just a week earlier. A spectacular come from behind rally to tie it up (OK, in their dream scenario, it would have been the Canadians coming from behind to tie, but still…) followed by an incredible overtime period in which they claimed victory in the sport that Canadians consider to be theirs and theirs alone.

The US women’s ski team fared better than ever before, but maybe not quite as well as we all hoped. Lindsey Vonn had a Gold, a Bronze, and two “Agony of Defeat” worthy crashes, which were pretty spectacular in themselves. Her teammate Julia Mancuso, who was mostly obscured by Vaughn’s shadow in the pre-Games hype, won a couple of Silver medals.

Jen Heil and Hannah Carney fought another amazing proxy battle between the US and Canada on the downhill moguls, with the American coming out on top this time. The men’s downhill mogul was equally enthralling, except that it was Canada and France, so, equally enthralling equals a big ‘who cares’ here in the US.

Shani Davis won the long track speed skating, again.  He grabbed a Silver along the way, too.  Apollo Ono won his sixth medal, a Silver, in Short track speed skating.  Then he won a seventh, a Bronze, despite being pushed aside and shoved out of Gold contention.  Then one more Bronze in the relay, just for good measure.

Shaun White won the Gold, but I think he’s won a lot more than that with the rock star status he’s enjoying here in the US.  His Carrot-Top look and crazy X-Games skills have earned him a spot in the hearts and minds of a generation new to the Winter Olympics.  My nine year old just voted for Shaun as “Favorite Male Athlete” on the Nick Kids Choice Awards.

It was a good two weeks.  A fun time of watching sports I never heard of or at least never cared about before.  Now, we can put curling on the shelf for the next four years and focus on the impending arrival of MLB Spring Training.

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As I write these words, the sound of Canada’s loss to the US in Men’s Hockey is reverberating throughout the Great White North. It sounds a little bit like “What just happened, eh?” The US team’s 5-3 victory over Canada puts the US in the driver’s seat for the gold and Canada in the loser’s bracket where they’ll take their revenge on teams like Belize or China.

Now that professional athletes are allowed in the Olympics (I’m sure Jim Thorp is performing some extremely athletic roll overs in his grave right about now), it is good to see the US seizing their proper role at the top. It is also nice to see the athletes taking the games seriously. This isn’t some extended, international All-Star game. These guys know what is at stake here, and they’re playing hard.

Some random observations from the Olympics so far:

• With all the talk about Crosby and Nash on the Canadian hockey team, I kept looking for Stills and Young, but they were nowhere to be found.

• Curling is so awesome.  In case you haven’t seen it yet, check out MSNBC some night.  I only discovered the, ahem, sport four years ago.  At that time, I didn’t really understand the rules.  Most of the time I didn’t understand what was going on, but it was kind of funny to watch - a little like bowling on ice.  Now, thanks to the wonder of Wii Decasports, I’m a veritable curling expert, and I’m enjoying the contests on a whole new level.  My favorite moment was during the US – Sweden match when the coach of the US team came down from… wherever he’d been all along and gave his guys a little guidance.  I didn’t even know they had a coach, much less what he could have been talking to them about.

• The USA is way ahead in the total medal count halfway through the games, with a full 25% more medals than our closest competition.  That doesn’t include the one we’re going to win in Men’s hockey, by the way.

• What is up with the two-man luge?  Was there a petition to add a sport that’s gayer than men’s figure skating?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

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The Olympics have a funny way of making us suddenly care about sports that we’ve never been interested in, maybe never even heard of, before.  Two years ago, it was women’s volleyball.  Two years before that, curling captured everyone’s attention.  What new sport will land on America’s collective radar this year?

If American Johnny Spillane had held his lead for just a few more seconds, we might be talking about the Nordic Combined Normal Hill Event.  Maybe it is good that a French athlete edged him out at the last moment.  ”Nordic Combined Normal Hill Event” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  Better that America wins gold in events that are easy to pronounce and remember.  It makes for better water cooler conversation.

Some assorted and sundry observations from the first two days of the 2010 Olympic Games:

• As of this writing, America is winning the total medal count.  Total medal count was adopted as the best way to measure success right about the same time that China started whooping us in the total number of gold medals in the Summer Olympics.

• Speaking of China, hockey just isn’t your thing.  Sorry if the USA ran up the score a bit in that 12-1 beating you took, but we needed to practice for when we face some teams with, you know, actual hockey players on them.

• Was it just me, or did the whole night of the opening ceremonies seem like one long infomercial for Canada?  I kept expecting to see an 800 number to call for reservations pop up at any moment.

• Is Ice Dancing a sport?  I don’t want to be demeaning.  I’m sure it takes a great deal of skill and effort.  I’m sure that the Olympians are very good at it.  But is it a sport?  I think that dancing, ice or otherwise, is by definition not a sport.  It’s, you know, dancing.  I’m just saying.

Until I discover the next “new” sport that the TV network chooses to force on us in prime time, I’m just looking forward to the start of the curling tournament on Tuesday.

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The Super Bowl should be judged on three main criteria: the game, the halftime show, and the commercials. The game was a great one. Few penalties, great offenses matched up against great defenses, a see-saw battle with a finish that was closer than the final score would suggest, gutsy calls and gusty performances.

Sean Peyton is a hero. If the onside kick at the start of the second half of the Super Bowl had bounced six inches to the left, he probably would have been the goat. But it didn’t. It bounced squarely off a stone-handed Colt up-lineman and safely into the welcoming grasp of the Saints.

And with that, everything changed. The Saints won the Super Bowl. The onside kick was a stroke of genius, not an act of desperation.
As big as that play was, and it was huge, the game still came down to the score of 1-0. Peyton Manning made one mistake. One little miscue. That’s not bad. But Drew Brees made no mistakes. And that was the real difference in the game.

Manning’s one interception, which just so happened to negate a strong Colts drive and was returned 74 yards for a touchdown, was the difference between another Colts victory and the Saints first Super Bowl win ever.

The half-time show was kind of creepy. The Who stumbling around on stage like a bunch of geriatric old men reliving glory days long gone- it just didn’t work for me.

I took special satisfaction in the commercials this year. Two commercials in the early going paid homage to Super Bowl commercials from my youth. I always enjoy feeling like I’m in on an inside joke that not everyone gets. Of course, it was me and tens of millions of other fans on the inside, but still… Seeing the ’85 Bears trot out for an updated version of their Super Bowl Shuffle was a hoot. (I don’t even remember what the commercial was supposed to be enticing me to buy, but I enjoyed it all the same).

The other commercial that really caught my attention was the Dwight Howard – LeBron James dunk contest, which smartly paid tribute to the classic Michael Jordon – Larry Bird “Nothing But Net” ads for McDonalds back in the day.

The Tim Tebow ad was funny, if only for the fact that it turned out to be completely harmless after we heard for two weeks about how horrible and divisive it was going to be.

Great game, good commercials. I guess two out of three ain’t bad.

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World class athletes of all sports and disciplines are trying to break their way into MMA.  Some want to see if they can handle the conditioning and the challenge of the fight.  There are those trying to break into the sport to continue their quest as world class athletes and fighting for the championship belt.  No matter what the motivation, MMA truly is becoming known as the sport where the real athletes live and work.

Herschel Walker and Jason Frank both are known names who are helping to bring light to the sport and challenge themselves in a whole new way.  This past season of The Ultimate Fighter had a few former professional football players who revealed this sport is quite tough.  They showed that to make it in a match of three five-minute rounds conditioning had to be top-notch.

Now, bring in Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy holder, who recently debuted in MMA.  This 47 year old was heralded for his level of conditioning in his recent fight.  Although he is nowhere near ready for elite fighters, his fight was impressive.  Walker walked away with a victory and is currently trumpeting a 1-0 record.  Many of the MMA in-crowd stated this will probably be his only fight, but it was a good one and he helped shine more light onto this great sport.

The next newcomer is Jason D. Frank.  He has been in the shadows of the MMA world for quite awhile now.  However, he had his first fight on January 30th and won by submission in the Lonestar Beatdown.  Jason is best known for his time on the kid’s television show, The Power Rangers.  This martial arts master and fighter who is belted in numerous arts is now 1-0 as an MMA fighter.  He enjoyed a first round victory using an omaplata.

He let me in on his training video, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would run through whoever climbed in the ring against him.  He has been preparing to fight MMA for a long time, and it showed in his training and in his recent victory.

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The Pro Bowl came and went this week with barely a ripple in the world of the NFL. Here are the highlights and lowlights as I saw them.

Highlights:
DeSean Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles – This kid is all of 21 years old and has a promising career ahead of him. His enthusiasm on and off the field was electrifying. From the opening introductions to his two spectacular TD catches to his unspectacular pass attempt to his impassioned sideline defense of his QB when a McNabb interception was nullified by a defensive penalty, he was all over the place.

Brian Dawkins’ interception of former teammate Donovan McNabb followed by a series of increasingly ill-advised laterals as Dawkins and his AFC teammates had some fun on the field. It was nice to see professional athletes just enjoying the game, if even for a moment.

The lack of penalties – Other than the aforementioned defensive penalty that negated a McNabb interception and the offensive penalty on the same play that negated the negation, there were no penalties to speak of.

Lowlights:
It would be too easy just to write ‘everything else’, although that summarizes things fairly well. But here are a few aspects of the Pro Bowl especially deserving of mention.

The rules – Sure, everybody loves to see some offense, but the defensive players earned a place in the Pro Bowl, too. Hamstringing the defense with a bunch of restrictions isn’t the best way to showcase the crème de la crème of the NFL.

The effort – They may as well change the name to the “Play Not to Get Hurt Bowl”. The defenses of both conferences, partly because the rule changes already discussed, were mostly going through the motions out there while their offensive counterparts ran amok.

The timing – The week before the Super Bowl? The game always has been irrelevant. Trying to tie it in to the Super Bowl hype just fell flat. I’d rather see some kind of non-contact skills contest in the bye week.

The participation – Because of the timing, the top players from the top teams in the NFL could not play. Without Peyton Manning, Reggie Wayne, Dallas Clark, Drew Brees and the rest of the 1st teamers, the Pro Bowl seemed more like a consolation prize for the also rans.

On the bright side, we’re that much closer to the game that counts next Sunday.

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This week the NFL offered up the best of the best, the creme de la creme, the elite teams that dominated their respective divisions all season long… and also the New York Jets.

To be fair, the Jets made a show of it. Early on, it looked like they were going to take it to the Indianapolis Colts.  The Jets defense was stingy in the first half, limiting the Colts to a puny field goal for the first 28 minutes on Sunday.  Unfortunately for the Jets, there are 30 minutes in a half.

At half-time, the naysayers were having a ball naysaying Jim Caldwell, Peyton Manning, and the rest of the Colts organization for resting their players, for giving up the chance for a perfect season, for choking under pressure, and for causing global warming.

The last 32 minutes were more along the lines of what we all expected to see.  Manning and company dismantled the Jets defense to the tune of 27 unanswered points while the Indianapolis defense completely shut down rookie Mark Sanchez and the Jets offense.

The second game was more evenly matched.  Early on, it looked like it was going to be a case of two offensive juggernauts pushing the opposing defenses around for sixty minutes.  But after a couple of early touchdowns for each team, the defenses stiffened up.

Although four touchdowns a piece in regulation is nothing to sneeze at, this wasn’t the high flying, aerial extravaganza that we expected.  Somewhere in late in the first half, the entire Vikings team got the old fumblerewski going on and just couldn’t stop.  Six fumbles (they only lost three of them) and three interceptions is tough to overcome.

But still the Vikings had the chance to win in regulation, and if not for a bone headed 12 men in the huddle penalty with nineteen clicks left on the clock, they probably would have kicked a long field goal and packed their bags for Miami.  Instead, Favre threw an ill-advised interception, and the Vikings offense never get back on the field.

A final footnote:  I didn’t look it up, but I’m pretty sure that this week marks the first time in NFL history that two guys named Pierre scored touchdowns in the Conference Championships.  That would be Pierre Thomas and Pierre Garcon (I don’t know how to make that funny French squiggly ’c’ thing on my keyboard) who scored for the Saints and Colts respectively.

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By 4 o’clock on Sunday, I was beginning to wonder why we even bother with the Wild Card round.

The Divisional Round Weekend of the NFL playoffs started with the Arizona Cardinals putting up an anemic effort against the well-rested New Orleans Saints.  Whatever problems were plaguing the Saints as the season wore down were long gone by the start of Saturday’s contest.  One play  into the game, the Cardinals looked like a real threat.   The rest of the afternoon, they looked more like a punching bag.

Saturday night was even worse.  Baltimore held tough for a quarter, but then things got out of hand fast.  The Baltimore Ravens defense is certainly playoff worthy, but the offense didn’t stay on the field long enough for them to catch their breath.  As the Ravens defense wore down, the Indianapolis Colts offense just got stronger.  Indy’s defense was no slouch either, holding the Ravens to just three points.

Half way into the season, it looked like the Saints and Colts were bound for the Super Bowl and anything that would happen in between was just a formality.  Later in the season, we all thought things were changing, chinks were appearing in the armor.  But after a bye-week rest, both teams look like the world beaters we knew they could be back in September.

Sunday afternoon’s match-up of the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys was a laugher.  Tony Romo, who finally shed his “can’t win in December” and “can’t win a playoff game” tags, was absolutely awful.  Really, really bad.  Brett Favre, on the other hand, looked as good as he ever has.  Somebody needs to tell that guy that he’s forty years old and that his body cannot do the things that he thinks it can.  It just isn’t natural.

So back to 4 o’clock on Sunday – I really wasn’t expecting much from the J-E-T-S Jets.  After what you’d politely call a defensive struggle in the first half, I thought my suspicions were confirmed by the intermission.  Whatever coach Rex Ryan said or did at half time should be bottled and sold in finer department stores everywhere.  The Jets came out in the second half and took it to the #2 seed San Diego Chargers.  By the time the final whistle blew, the Jets squeaked out with a 17-14 come from behind win that made me a believer.  Not a believer that they can beat Indy next week, mind you.  But a believer that they’ll be a team to watch next year.

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Over on Idea Offer, there was an idea request that asked the question, “Who is the greatest sports coach of all time ?“ With such a broad arena to choose from, you can expect a wide array of answers.  Professional, amateur, winter, summer, team, individual — the options are almost limitless.

The winning idea was submitted by Penelope:

No one can equal the record and dignity of John Wooden. The Wizard of Westwood has to be the greatest.

It is hard to argue with that answer.  Ten NCAA basketball championships, including seven in a row surely will make you the greatest of all time.

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