Tebow can defend himself  but I like to help when I can.

GQ: Brady Quinn Debunks Year Of The Tebow: ‘We’ve Had A Lot Of … Luck’

The Tim Tebow debate has raged into the off-season, and by now we know the usual detractors: guys like Terrell Suggs, Nick Barnett, Shawne Merriman, Brady Quinn …

Wait. What?

That’s right, in a thoroughly reported feature by Yahoo! Sports NFL writer Michael Silver in the March issue of GQ, one of the Tebow critics is actually fellow Denver Broncos quarterback Brady Quinn.

And it’s not just one subtle jab, either. Early in his piece, Silver gets Quinn talking about how Tebow got promoted to starter:

Early in the season, there was a game when Kyle [Orton] got hurt and the coaches were calling for me to go in, but Kyle got up and finished the game out. So I was the second-string guy. Then, a few weeks later, they decided to put Tim in. I felt like the fans had a lot to do with that. Just ’cause they were chanting his name. There was a big calling for him. No, I didn’t have any billboards. That would have been nice

Silver continues on with an oral history of the season, sprinkling in choice quotes from the likes of Kurt Warner (who compares Tebow to a character in the Bible) and Suggs (who calls Tebow “terrible”).

Then it’s back to Quinn, who demystifies Tebow’s late-game prowess:

The entire game, the defensive line is chasing the quarterback around, and that wears down the pass rush. Meanwhile, the defensive backs are chasing receivers, but you only throw eight passes, so they start to feel lazy. It only takes that one play, that one big pass, for a touchdown.

To be sure, others in the story feel similarly. Merriman, of the Bills, tells Silver, “His teammates are making him look a lot better than he is.” Suggs, of the Ravens, says, “No matter how many bad games Tim Tebow is gonna have, it’s ‘He’s great.’ I’ll never understand it.”

But the most glaring quotes — though not the most hard-hitting — come from Quinn.

In one passage, Broncos star linebacker Von Miller gives credit to the team — “I mean, you could just see our team’s resiliency in action. Nobody was giving up” — and then Quinn offers a different reason for the Broncos’ surge: “We’ve had a lot of, I guess, luck, to put it simply.”

Now, Quinn isn’t saying anything that hasn’t been thought by pretty much everyone. Tebow didn’t win football games with dominance or cunning. It’s hard to pin his leadership on anything other than his all-world will and, as Warner suggests, “divine intervention.” But in this story we have everyone in the Broncos organization, from coach John Fox to president John Elway to Miller, saying all the right things. Then there’s the backup quarterback, Brady Quinn.

And not everything Quinn says is about football. The former Notre Dame star also questions how Tebow prays.

“If you look at it as a whole,” he tells Silver, “there’s a lot of things that just don’t seem very humble to me. When I get that opportunity, I’ll continue to lead not necessarily by trying to get in front of the camera and praying but by praying with my teammates, you know?”

Will Quinn get that opportunity? Fox says he wants two new quarterbacks to contend for the top job in Denver in the fall. So despite leading his team to a playoff victory, Tebow will have plenty of headwinds when training camp opens.

And it’s likely not all of the doubters will be outside the Broncos complex.

Read Michael Silver’s entire GQ story here.

Related posts:

Uploaded by Swancourt on Feb 16, 2007

From Wikipedia:

Who’s on First?

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2012)

Who’s on First? is a vaudeville comedy routine made most famous by Abbott and Costello. In Abbott and Costello’s version, the premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello’s questions. In this context, the first baseman is named “Who”; thus, the utterance “Who’s on first” is ambiguous between the question (“which person is the first baseman?”) and the answer (“The name of the first baseman is ‘Who'”).

[edit] History

“Who’s on First?” is descended from turn-of-the-century burlesque sketches that used plays on words and names. Examples are “The Baker Scene” (the shop is located on Watt Street) and “Who Dyed” (the owner is named Who). In the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts, comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey examine a map of a mythical kingdom with dialogue like this: “What is next to Which.” “What is the name of the town next to Which?” “Yes.” In English variety halls (Britain’s equivalent of vaudeville theatres), comedian Will Hay performed a routine in the early 1930s (and possibly earlier) as a schoolmaster interviewing a schoolboy named Howe who came from Ware but now lives in Wye. By the early 1930s, a “Baseball Routine” had become a standard bit for burlesque comics across the United States. Abbott’s wife recalled Bud performing the routine with another comedian before teaming with Costello.^[1]

Bud Abbott stated that it was taken from an older routine called “Who’s The Boss?”, a performance of which can be heard in an episode of the radio comedy program It Pays to Be Ignorant from the 1940s.^[2] After they formally teamed up in burlesque in 1936, he and Costello continued to hone the sketch. It was a big hit in 1937 when they performed the routine in a touring vaudeville revue called “Hollywood Bandwagon”.^[1]

In February 1938, Abbott and Costello joined the cast of The Kate Smith Hour radio program, and the sketch was first performed for a national radio audience that March.^[1] The routine may have been further polished before this broadcast by burlesque producer John Grant, who became the team’s writer, and Will Glickman, a staff writer on the radio show.^[3] Glickman may have added the nicknames of then-contemporary baseball players like Dizzy and Daffy Dean to set up the routine’s premise. This version, with extensive wordplay based on the fact that most of the fictional baseball team’s players had “strange nicknames” that seemed to be questions, became known as “Who’s on First?” By 1944, Abbott and Costello had the routine copyrighted.

Abbott and Costello performed “Who’s on First?” numerous times in their careers, rarely performing it exactly the same way twice. They did the routine for President Franklin Roosevelt several times. An abridged version was featured in the team’s 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, and it is that longer version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed “Who’s on First?” numerous times on radio and television (notably in The Abbott and Costello Show episode “The Actor’s Home”).

In 1956 a gold record of “Who’s on First?” was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, New York. A video (taken from The Naughty Nineties) now plays continuously on screens at the Hall.

In the 1970s, Selchow and Righter published a Who’s on First? board game.

In 1999, Time magazine named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th century.^[4]

An early radio recording was placed in the Library of Congress‘s National Recording Registry in 2003.

In 2005, the line “Who’s on First?” was included on the American Film Institute‘s list of 100 memorable movie quotations.

[edit] Sketch

The names given in the routine for the players at each position are:

• First Base: Who
• Second Base: What
• Third Base: I Don’t Know
• Left field: Why
• Center field: Because
• Pitcher: Tomorrow
• Catcher: Today
• Shortstop: I Don’t Care/I Don’t Give a Darn/I Don’t Give a Damn

The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine, and the right fielder is never identified. In the Selchow and Righter board game, the right fielder’s name is “Nobody”.^[5]

At one point in the routine, Costello thinks that Naturally is the first baseman:

Abbott: You throw the ball to first base.
Costello: Then who gets it?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Now you’ve got it.
Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You don’t! You throw it to Who!
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Well, that’s it—say it that way.
Costello: That’s what I said.
Abbott: You did not.
Costello: I said I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You don’t! You throw it to Who!
Costello: Naturally.

Abbott’s explanations leave Costello hopelessly confused and infuriated, until the end of the routine when he finally appears to catch on. “You got a couple of days on your team?” He never quite figures out that the first baseman’s name literally is “Who”. But after all this he announces, “I don’t give a darn!” (“Oh, that’s our shortstop.”) That is the most commonly heard ending, which varied depending on the perceived sensibilities of the audience. The even milder “I Don’t Care” was used in the version seen in the film The Naughty Nineties. A recording of the obvious “I Don’t Give a Damn” has also turned up on occasion.

The skit serves as a climax for an Abbott and Costello radio broadcast which begins with Costello receiving a telegram from Joe DiMaggio asking Costello to take over for him.^[6]

PROJECTED U.S. PUBLICLY HELD DEBT AS PERCENTAGE OF GDP

Chart 27 of 42

The Big Talk by Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum 2012 | Reagan Democrats | p06 of 10

Uploaded by voteforricksantorum on Jan 29, 2012