The One About Number 15.

Okay, let's get this out of the way. Tim Tebow won a national title. I can't stand Tebow as a person and I don't like the Florida Gators. Let's make this perfectly clear before I piss anyone off.

Now, I see a lot of response saying that the media loves Tim Tebow to death, especially FOX. Let's also remember that FOX televised the BCS title game. Ratings for the games of the Bowl Championship Series have encountered a steep drop this season, likely when people realized that one of them is actually the only one that matters to anyone other than university presidents and people way too fixated with win-loss records. Also, the "fifth" BCS bowl was between Cincinnati and Virginia Tech, one of them (the one not named Cincinnati) going into the game with an 8-4 record.

So, they needed somebody. And again, even though I don't like him, pushing Tebow as the star of the title game was exactly what was necessary for FOX. The hardcore fan probably hates this, but Fox doesn't want to draw in hardcore fans. Drawing in just the hardcore fans always never quite works. So you have to create a hype machine around him, which I find hilarious that people always allow themselves to get mad at rather than realize its intent. This is the same hype machine that made Vampire Weekend successful on the heels of an album with three good songs and made Juno a $150 million grossing movie in 2007 despite it being nowhere near the country's best movie. And Tebow's hype is exactly the element that will make this game huge in the ratings. (And since last year's "exciting" LSU title win drew 14.4 percent of households, this has to be a raise.)

Tebow is cocky, showy, and completely unnecessarily arrogant. (I.E. he was running on plays when the game was in the bag with two minutes to go.) But that's why he's a media darling. He knows the game of football is by nature, entertainment. So he'll go out and make his most ridiculous show of theater on a national stage. Is he as good as Bronko Nagurski? He's not even the best quarterback in the NCAA right now, but he's the most media friendly. He tells his team and himself to shape up after a loss to Ole Miss, even when in hindsight, almost all of their opponents from that point on were mostly mediocre. But this is seen as an act like something you'd see in a movie. Thus, it's entertainment. The hype is not meant to be taken seriously at all, because honestly, Mark May can't tell me anything about college football that I can't figure out with an ESPN Gameplan package.

Sometimes, you have to look at college football with a realization of what it is. If you put too much emotion into any one thing, you almost ignore its point entirely. College football is, for lack of a better term, entertainment. And though the story is unscripted and the scenarios are played out by unscripted actions. College football always has a story and always goes by a media process that is supposed to set up later developments. (I.E. Tebow's famed hooplah when recruited three years ago set the stage for his hype and then over hype tonight.) Because otherwise, we would be watching two teams pushing a ball 100 yards with no care of what goes on, and well, people wouldn't know who a Brett Favre even is. I wouldn't have cared about the Dallas Cowboys in the mid-90s (which their fame inherently was caused by their rags-to-riches success from crap team to amazing team, and their inevitable hype led me to figure out who they were when I was around six).

So yes, Fox is simply doing their job (which is to sell the game to the viewer by showing a "legendary player" do his job), and when hasn't ESPN piled on the hyperbole? These are the same guys that still think that a team losing one regular season football game (or a baseball or basketball game, for that matter) totally matters in the scope of a full season. Sure, a team can struggle, but if they get into the playoffs (like the "struggling" Indianapolis Colts this season), what's the problem? Because they're selling things as important to their viewer, or else they have no audience. It is the same reason that good but overrated movies and music get praised like crazy in the media. Because if they didn't, they'd be out of a job.