NFL:  Next Chapter, “the Book of Tebow”  

 For more sports analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com

                “SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

            SPECIAL OLYMPICS SUMMER GAMES, COLORADO: for more information: specialolympicsco.org

NFL:    NO need for tears, it isn’t to Siberia. The nationally popular NFL quarterback, Tim Tebow, is headed from Denver for the world’s most popular of heavily populated regions, metro-New York City, to play for the New York Jets.

The Big Apple, or whatever you want to call it, is possibly the biggest sports market in American history, though it’s where former Denver Nuggets star forward, Carmelo Anthony, hasn’t found his full mojo yet, and from where Denver native and former Nuggets player, Chauncey Billups, was traded “happily” to the L.A. Clippers within less than a year as a Knicks guard.

New York is also where the 2012 Super Bowl winner and MVP, N.Y. Giants Eli Manning, brother of the man who replaced Tebow in Denver, can taunt anyone afield, and that includes current primary Jets quarterback, Mark Sanchez. New York is also where fans are more fickle than a 1950’s movie version of a homecoming queen, and where fans characterize themselves as too sophisticated for affirmative nods when the extremely talented quarterback kneels and talks to God.

Still, New York City loves football as much as it loves the Yankees, the Mets, chomping down on toasted bagels and cream cheese + smoked salmon while reading the sports pages of the New York Times and the Daily News, and Nathan’s hot dogs at either ballpark and at Madison Square Garden (with sauerkraut).

So---Tebow’s headed for a big town that has a big appetite for sports, which means high expectations for victory and for its athletes to be playing “to the hilt.” Even Jeter gets jeered, even Joe Namath got booed in NYC.

For Tebow, the trade to New York may hold more promise than years of only “sideline,” of his having to be dude number two, or three, a deputy chief of the long bench, sitting by the Gatorade barrel. For example, Sanchez had a weak 2011 season, the Jets were behind the competency-curve compared with its main rivals, the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Jets head coach, Rex Ryan, is therefore being pressured New York-style by the Jets ownership and Jets fans for a winning season and a shot at the next Super Bowl, which could lead to a continuum of Jets shake-ups, leaving Tebow in the position that he found himself in last year, suddenly “a starter” when then Denver Broncos quarterback, Kyle Orton, couldn’t rise above the margins of effectiveness and was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs. Tebow soon helped pull the Broncos up from a losing record to a playoff slot. There’s no reason to think that Tebow couldn’t turn matters around for the Jets, should a situation similar to the Orton-exit occur in 2012.

Tebow should be happy with what the coming season’s Jets status-quo could be with him aboard, a Sanchez-led 9-7 or 8-8 record that couldn’t exist were Tebow less than proficient as a special situation quarterback, that is, Tebow in for Sanchez when a game is winding down, e.g., under the two minute warning and the Jets are inside the opposition’s 20, a chance for a Tebow rush or the unexpected Tebow wingshot to an outside receiver---boom! TD.

Also, envision the Jets offense needing to initiate a mid-fourth quarter attack requiring what Tebow is best at, “running the football,” even if it’s Tebow pushing the ball by himself three and four yards per play toward that first down (he’s been labeled, “natural running back.”).

Too, Tebow’s speed, strength and quick mind for “the rush” has underscored Rex Ryan thinking that he should have Tebow work the two-point conversion.

So---Tebow could be the Jets two-in-one quarterback for a number of seasons, not just a Sanchez understudy. He could be the unfailing gunslinger in for those special kill moments, a successful closer from behind, the Jets tie-breaker, once again a Sunday hero.

Yet in 2012, Sanchez could unintentionally morph into being New York’s Kyle Orton.

END/ml