Linsanity Is Justifiable; Tebowmania Is Understandable
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By DERON SNYDER
Count me among the ranks of Jeremy Lin fanatics, the certifiably Linsane who can’t get enough of his Lincredible story. We’re enjoying every bit of the Lintense media coverage.
No doubt about it, I’m all-Lin. Not because he plays my favorite position in my beloved hometown for my childhood team. Not because he’s an Asian-American who received no scholarship offers before attending Harvard — and then went undrafted after graduating. Not because he seems so humble and genuine while enjoying his rapid rise from obscurity to obsession.
All of that is a factor. But as much as anything else, I’m Linfatuated with him because he’s not Tim Tebow. No matter how often we see such analogies, Linsanity is not equivalent to Tebowmania.
Faith is one of the few things they seem to have in common. Other than that, Lin is the anti-Tebow.
Equating the two is ludicrous and lazy, admittedly a proven strategy for drawing attention online, over the air and in print. Just because we never saw anything like the Tebow phenomenon doesn’t mean the next unbelievable story is similar. There are too many familiar elements to liken Tebow’s tale to Lin’s legend.
