There's a new messiah in town. Tebow! Tebow! Tebow!

For those of us who follow football, few have seen a sensation like Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow. He's' broken almost every record for a passer in the history of the top division of collegiate football. He's a leader of the first degree. He's a winner. He's won one Heisman Trophy and is a favorite to win another this year in his senior year. He's taken his team to victory in two national championships already and is favored to do so again in January.

And yet ...

"He's been extremely important for Christians, as a sort of role model of how you want to live your faith and not be embarrassed." So says Eddie Gilley, director of UF's Baptist Collegiate Ministries, echoing the thoughts of thousands (if not millions) of other Christians around the country (and world).

Tebow is the most visible Christian fanatic in college (or any) sports in recent memory. He wears the ominipresent "John 3:16" in white print on his black light-relector patch below his eyes in most games, often changing cited scripture for other games. More than 93 million people Googled "John 3:16" after the BCS championship last season when they saw Tebow wear the famous passage.

"He is so brave," says Gators fan JoAnn Tyer of Green Cove Springs, FL, who herself wears eye-black "Phil 4:13" to many games. "How many other people would stand up and let people know what they believe in?" Tyer says.

Tebow, like all fanatics such as Barry Bonds (who would laughably point to heaven after hitting home runs) and others who feel the alleged hand of a god on their play-by-play, is the quintessential Christian narcissistic megalomaniac who thinks it is all about him and that some ethereal being somehow not only gives a shit about him but has singled him out for greatness and to allegedly ensure that others are great, too. (coat-tail spiritualism)

"It's almost like selflessness is a cool thing (now) -- kids realizing to give back -- and if you can brighten someone's day, you do it," says Florida coach Urban Meyer of Tebow's influence on his brethren and college football and the world. Meyer joins millions of others who glow when discussing Tebow's strict off-season regimen: helping poor kids in the Philippines become mystical -- that is, find the alleged god.

This spiritual monster who plays quarterback is a throwback to Victorian times, when such lunacy and "spiritual" obsession was the norm. He makes a mockery of just plain hard work being the end all, being the *only* thing you can be thankful for, being the only thing others can congratulate you for and emulate you for, being the thing that makes us human, that makes us better than the lower animals.

Tim Tebow is another deluded representative of the Age of Mysticism that we still find ourselves steeped in. He and his irrational, trenchant peers of today and times past will be forgotten one day. But today, men like me who represent rationality and objective justice must hear of a great quarterback on the field being a man that directs people toward oblivion off the field -- and receives even higher praise for it.