Tebow Time: The three 3:16 references, boffo TV ratings and Lady Gaga love
You ever feel like there's too much Tim Tebow news? Neither do I. Here's a roundup of some of the most interesting Timbits from the aftermath of the Denver Broncos 29-23 overtime victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• The fact that Tebow had 316 yards passing and averaged 31.6 yards per pass in the game didn't escape notice on Sunday night. Tebow wore "John 3:16" on his eye black in the 2009 BCS Championship game and has since become identified with the famous Bible message. The coincidental stats caused millions of fans to perform Google searches on the Bible passage in the past 24 hours. Here's one more unbelievable stat: John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports that the final quarter-hour television rating for the Broncos-Steelers game was, you guessed it, 31.6.
(John 3:16 reads: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.")
• Will Brinson of CBSSports.com has some more fun with Tebow numbers.
• Tebow earned $250,000 for the victory based on an incentive written into his contract. Since he took 70 percent of the team's snaps this season, he is entitled to a quarter-million dollars for every Broncos playoff victory.
[Related: Broncos given no choice but to embrace Tim Tebow]
• Twitter announced that 9,420 tweets per second were sent immediately after Tebow's overtime TD pass. That set a new sports record for the social media site.
• Wondering why James Brown, Dan Marino, Bill Cowher (!), Shannon Sharpe and Boomer Esiason took an elbow during the CBS postgame show?
The television ratings for Broncos-Steelers could provide a clue: The game pulled in a whopping 25.9 rating for CBS, becoming the highest-rated AFC wild-card game since 1988. (That was 24 years ago, pre-Internet and before a majority of Americans had cable or satellite.) Variety estimates 45 million people watched Tebow's touchdown pass in overtime.
• Here was the headline from the popular news site, The Drudge Report, in the minutes after Tebow hit Demaryius Thomas on that 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime:
My inbox had about 10 messages reading pretty much the same.
• Lady Gaga was watching Tebow's heroics as well. She sent the following tweet to her 17 million followers after the game.
[ Related: Latest pictures and news on Lady Gaga ]
Cindy Boren of The Washington Post collected some other notable celebrity tweets.
• It's only a matter of time before Tim Tebow birthers start up a crusade.
• Did you see Tim Tebow's mean face Sunday? SB Nation did and advises "not to get the Tebow angry."
• Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey may want this column back. (And it's OK. I'm allowed to make fun of him, because I wrote this the same day: "Steelers-Broncos has the potential to be that bad.")
[Related: Tim Tebow, Broncos deliver another miracle in win over Steelers]
• Tebow was the first NFL player to complete four passes of 30+ yards in a single quarter of an NFL playoff game.
• ESPN's QBR rating says Tebow's second quarter was the third-best single quarter from a QB in the NFL since 2008.
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