The most famous backup quarterback in NFL history stepped onto the artificial turf of the New York Jets practice facility at 12:06 p.m. on Monday afternoon. He smiled as he walked past the yard markers on the field, the click-click-click of cameras marking his every step. Tim Tebow then stepped up to the podium to address the congregation, and what he saw was a three-deep row of 36 cameras in front of him. “How’s it going?” Tebow said. “Good to see all y’all. Lot of people here.”
Lot of people, indeed. More than 200 media members headed to northern New Jersey for Tebow’s introductory news conference, an alphabet soup of organizations from ESPN to Fox to the New York Times. The quarterback answered 30 questions over 33 minutes, smiling politely at each inquisitor upon answering. When asked why a backup quarterback was holding a press conference, Tebow did a very smart thing: He blamed management: “The reason we are doing this today is because I have bosses, too,” Tebow said. “They wanted me to stand up and talk to all y’all. So I could blame it on them because they made me do it.”
It was the beginning of what promises to be a memorable ride for Tebow and the New York sports media, given he is unlike any second-string athlete in the history of New York professional sports. He now ranks in the Top 10 in the endorsement category of all celebrities, according to The Marketing Arm’s Davie-Brown Index (DBI), which measures nearly 3,000 celebrities, including current and retired sports figures. Each celebrity is evaluated by respondents and given a weighted average score across eight attributes — appeal, aspiration, awareness, endorsement, influence, breakthrough, trendsetter and trust.
SI.com asked The Marketing Arm to provide updated statistics as of last week, and Tebow’s numbers continue to soar.
The quarterback sits at No. 4 among all celebrities in DBI’s Endorsement scale, trailing only Oprah Winfrey, Adele and Kate Middleton. (Will Smith, Bill Gates, Hank Aaron, Tom Hanks and Jack Nicklaus follow Tebow in the Top 10 of Endorsement). He has also soared into the Top 10 in the Influence category — up from No. 40 in December — which places him alongside Adele, Justin Bieber, Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt. Regarding the Trendsetter attribute, Tebow has risen to No. 6, which is on par with Katy Perry, Anne Hathaway, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake and Will Smith. His No. 13 ranking in Trust puts him in the same neighborhood as Warren Buffett, the late John Wooden, Bill Cosby, Jerry Rice and Dr. Oz.
The Marketing Arm says Tebow is now known by more than 75 percent of all U.S. consumers. According to Nielsen and E-Poll’s N-Score ranking, which measures factors including name and image awareness and appeal, as well as attributes such as sincerity, approachability, experience and influence, Tebow has a score of 180. Jets starting quarterback Mark Sanchez has a score of just 12.
What will impact Tebow’s scores on the DBI going forward is how much he plays this season. “The guy is not as exciting and influential if he’s on the sideline with a clipboard or playing 10 plays a game,” said Matt Delzell, a group account director from The Marketing Arm.
But that’s not the case for the hypercompetitive New York media market, which has treated Tebow’s arrival with lustful brio and plenty of column inches. Since he arrived from Denver last Wednesday, Tebow has appeared on the front of the New York Post three of the past five days, including a “GOD HIM” headline on the day he arrived. (The Post ran 24 stories on Tebow between Wednesday and Sunday.) The New York Daily News has also featured Tebow on the front three of the past five days, including a story centered around the quarterback attending the Broadway play Wicked on Sunday (“TIM GETS WICKED”). The News ran 28 stories on Tebow between Wednesday and Sunday.
In addition to tabloids and America’s most well-known national paper, The New York Times, New York City is home to a pair of 24-hour sports talk stations, including long-time powerhouse WFAN-AM, multiple local television stations and all the broadcast networks. Worth noting is that the Bristol, Conn., home of ESPN, whose obsession with Tebow is similar to the one Jennifer Jason Leigh had for Bridget Fonda in Single White Female, sits just 107 miles north of Manhattan.
“He transcends the sports landscape and that’s why you are seeing stories on the front of the paper,” says Teri Thompson, the managing editor for sports at the New York Daily News. “And he creates immediately a quarterback controversy, which of course is a Godsend to the tabloids of New York. Once training camp begins, it will be like that Allstate commercial — mayhem. And then once the season starts, Lord only knows what will happen, and no pun intended.”
“He’s going to sell papers because he’s a guy that sparks great interest from the public,” said New York Post night sports editor Pat Hannigan, who has worked at the paper since 1978 and is well-known within newspaper circles for providing some of the paper’s most famous back page headlines. “As for writing headlines, with a guy like Tebow there are a lot of things to play off. You can almost go to the Bible. On Friday we had REX’S NEW COMMANDMENT: LOVE THY BACKUP because Rex [Ryan] was raving about the guy.”
Source: sportsillustrated
