There’s some kind of Tebow-like lore spreading around Matt Barkley. It’s almost like he’s some kind of archetype - the White Evangelical Quarterback (tm). Let’s take a look at the comparison:
Hype before career:
Tebow: Pretty much every Gator fan raved about him and wanted him to take over from Chris Leak ASAP.
Matthias: Good lord, he beat out two experienced five-star recruits. He personifies hype.
Winner: The Barkley. He was the National Player of the Year in his junior season of high school. Enough said.
ESPN Love:
Tebow: On Saturdays, ESPN turns into the Worldwide Leader in Tebow. Erin Andrews throws herself at him on air. To warm up before telecasts, SportsCenter anchors engage in a ritual chant glorifying the Tebow Manchild.
Matthias: He’s getting there. Todd McShay has guaranteed that he will be the first pick in the draft in 2012. And ESPN was all Barkley, all the time after the Ohio State game.
Winner: Manchild by a wide margin. When Barkley has ESPN sideline reporters stalking him, then we’ll talk.
High School:
Tebow: Didn’t go to high school, natch. He was too close to Jesus to be corrupted by those nasty government-run socialist institutions. He chose to play on Fridays with a local high school, because the State of Florida allows teenagers to not actually take classes and still play football. In Florida, that’s called “College Prep.”
Matthias: Went to quarterback factory Mater Dei, a Catholic High School with a logo that looks suspiciously like Notre Dame (God's own school, of course). Barkley’s predecessors at Mater Dei include Matt Leinart and the original super-prospect, Todd Marinovich.
Winner: Tebow. Nothing like staying completely free of worldly influence in the comfort of your own home.
Volunteer Work:
Tebow: Routinely flies to developing countries and administers medications. With the love of Jesus. Young children flock to his loving arms and he gathers them one by one to cure them of polio.
Matthias: Organizes drives to send materials to troops stationed overseas. He organized a couple in high school, but has been apparently too busy being the first freshman quarterback to start for USC to continue his philanthropic activities at his chosen institution of higher learning.
Winner: Tebow. Let the little children come to him, indeed.
The Messiah Factor:
Tebow: His mom was a missionary in the Phillipines when she was carrying him. She then developed dysentery. Yeah, dysentery: the disease that killed all your Oregon Trail characters in elementary school. The drugs to cure her of dysentery put her into a coma, which caused Tim to have a “severe placental abruption,” which sounds really bad and stuff. So the doctors tried to convince her to have an abortion, since Tim was nearly guaranteed to be stillborn, but Tim’s mom so firmly opposed abortion that she was willing to die to save the nearly-dead Tim. Somehow, both Tim and his mother survived the birth. HE’S THE CHOSEN ONE, PEOPLE!!!!
Matthias: He’s always been a starter. At the best QB prep school, he started from freshman year. At the strongest football program in the nation, he was the starter before he could shave. The man doesn’t know how to back somebody up. Plus, all SC’s other QB’s kind of stink, even though they’re all five star recruits. So Barkley has kind of saved USC's quarterback situation.
Winner: The Manchild. Seriously, Tebow had a cooler birth than Jesus.
Overall winner: Tebow blew away the competition. Obviously, he has a huge head start on Matthias Barkley due to his experience level. Maybe at some point Barkley can become the standard for the White Evangelical Quarterback (tm). But until then, Tebow picks up the cross - let us all follow him.
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