What else should it be based on? Spectacular performances on the biggest stages. Yeah, sure, that's a hallmark of mediocrity.
Our Thanksgiving get-together is basically tomorrow, so oddly I'm spending some time catching up here, while simultaneously hoping all the rest of you don't read this because you have better things going on.
Anyway, what I would say to brad, OAM, and even this comment, is that the idea that VY is only "VY" in our minds because of two Rose Bowls, is--as one frisky Florida fan puts it--simply not supported by the facts.
I didn't put VY in the list either because I felt less strongly and less certain about him than the names I offered. This speaks to how good I think TT was. Over an entire career, I think I would go with Tebow. But there's no guidelines on this thing as to whether one spectacular season or an entire career should be favored. And my rebuttal to some of the comments here is that VY's 2005
season was phenomenal. For everybody who thinks he magically appeared for the Rose Bowl out of nowhere, I don't know what to tell you, except that you certainly weren't watching Texas games in 2005.
I was, and I saw a couple of them in person. VY was a 3000+ passer in 2005. And he rushed for 1050 yards to boot. I hate to tell people this, but he didn't do all that in the Rose Bowl (although you'd be forgiven for thinking he did). That's a
stellar season, particularly for 2005. He set a Texas school record for efficiency against Colorado that year--which I happened to be there for--by completing something like 19/21 passes. His comeback effort against Oklahoma State where he put his listless team on his back and willed them to victory was Herculean. And yes, doing the same thing against USC in the Rose Bowl was one of the best individual game efforts I've seen. The list goes on, and there really wasn't a game that year where he
wasn't proving he was a special player.
But the thing that really disappoints me about OAM's "analysis"--and he knows better than this--is that football is not reducible to simple numbers. I don't actually give much of a crap about what Tebow's numbers were vs. Young's numbers. They played on different teams with different strengths and complementary players, against very different opponents. Stats are a great place to start. They'll lie to you almost always without some qualitative analysis, and I say that as a number nerd with a Master's degree in statistics. I watched both of them play. They both had great skill sets that served their teams extremely well, and they used those skills consistently. Tebow, probably over a bigger portion of his career than Vince's singular year, but that's exactly my dilemma: am I picking the better career, or the player at a given point in time? Because if I had to pick a career, I probably lean Tebow. But if I had to pick a guy out of the time-stream with my magic time-scoop to quarterback my team, I'm probably taking 2005 VY.
None of this is an argument against Tebow. I just fail to see how people think it's an argument
for him, either, or that VY is somehow strictly a product of a lone Rose Bowl, or two. Sorry those people missed all Texas' games in 2005. They missed a lot. OAM says he doesn't care, but clearly thinks the answer is Tebow. Fine. Just don't act like the "facts" obviously side with that opinion.
