Simply put, Tim Tebow is the most polarizing athlete of my lifetime. Despite never breaking the law, doing anything morally or ethically wrong, or hell, even winning a professional championship, people have stronger opinions on him than anything athlete I can ever remember. You either love or hate him, loathe or appreciate him. He elicits opinion, anger and reverence like no one else; not Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan or Mike Vick, nor mention Ben Roethlisberger, Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant.

Why? Well, I’m not totally sure, but from the best I can gauge it’s because he doesn’t do things conventionally. Ask most NFL “analysts,” and they’ll tell you a guy can’t be good in the “NATIONAL…FOOTBALL…LEAGUE,” if he can’t throw a frozen rope 40 yards downfield, or he picks up more first downs with his legs than his arm. Forget winning six of seven games, Tim Tebow can’t throw a pretty spiral! The world is coming to an end!!! For some, it doesn’t matter what Tebow does, they'll just never be in his corner. And yes, I’m talking you to Merrill Hoge. You prick.

But thankfully, I’m here. I’m here to peel back the layers of the onion, and help people fully appreciate Tim Tebow. He might not be your conventional signal-caller, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy him.

It’s time to embrace Tim Tebow.

Here are 50 reasons why you should…

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In a weird way, it seems appropriate that I’ve had so much trouble starting this column. I’d tried 100 different beginnings, and come to 100 different dead-ends. I’ve tried to be funny and serious, goofy and grim. And so far I’ve got nothing.

Then again, it’s hard to blame me. I am trying to write about Tim Tebow after all. And at this point, how can anyone possibly quantify this guy with words?

How do words fully explain the most unique, fascinating and polarizing athlete of my lifetime? How do they explain a quarterback that can look so bad for 56 minutes and so utterly untouchable for four? How do words capture a guy who’s so revered, loved and admired by his teammates, even as- at times- he does so little to help them win games?

You can’t. Which is the beauty of Tim Tebow. He’s a perfectly flawed, perfectly confusing, and at times, a perfectly…perfect quarterback.

He’s also perfectly unexplainable, which makes him so damn fascinating. It’s why I love the guy, and why so many others hate him.

Speaking of the haters, let’s start with this: Is there a single person on the planet that can actually give a logical explanation as to why the guy is such a lightning rod? I’ve thought about it from every angle, and I certainly can’t.  He hasn’t broken the law. He hasn’t been arrested. He hasn’t gone to jail. He hasn’t done anything morally or ethically wrong like Tiger Woods. He hasn’t even inadvertently alienated a community or fan base like LeBron did to those in Cleveland. Seriously, what’s the worst thing Tebow has actually done? Tried to push his religious values on us? Well my goodness, lock him up and throw away the key. What a jerk, huh?

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When I was a kid in the early 1990’s, the professional athlete pecking order went a little something like this: Michael Jordan was the greatest; Ken Griffey Jr. (and his backward hat) was the coolest; Mike Tyson was the scariest; Shaq was the biggest; Pete Sampras the most mysterious; and Michael Irvin the loudest, with a few other non-descript guys (Emmitt, Marino, Elway, Ewing, Malone) mixed in too.

Then there was Deion Sanders, a guy who was basically in a class all his own.

With Deion, you never knew quite what you were going to get on a day-today or even hour-to-hour basis, but at the very least, you knew it’d be interesting. He was the brashest, most talkative and occasionally mean-spirited guy in sports, who could also “flick a switch,” on the field when the lights came on like no one else. In a weird way, all of Deion’s talking took away from the fact that he was far and away the best cover corner in the game of football, not to mention a damn good baseball player too. There aren’t many people who can say that they played in the Major League’s as a part-time summer job. But that’s exactly what Deion did at the time.

Still, despite all the athletic exploits, it hardly meant that everyone liked the guy. Not at all. With Deion, you loved him or hated him, embraced him or loathed him, but there was no middle ground in between. No one “kinda liked,” Deion Sanders or “thought he was ok.” If I had to describe Deion in one word (Like I did the athletes above), it’d probably be “polarizing.”

That was definitely the case in the house I grew up in. Now in my defense, I was too young at the time to formulate my own well thought out opinions, so I relied heavily on my parents to do it for me. I took their word as gold, and when it came to Deion Sanders, they couldn’t stand him. The way they’d been raised, and raised us kids was essentially the opposite of everything Deion was about. We were taught to be quite, courteous and respectful of authority. We were told never to discuss ourselves. The one thing my parents never tolerated was arrogance.

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On Friday, July 1, 2011, America woke up to a sad reality: The NFL is locked out. The NBA is locked out. And Major League Baseball just…won’t…go…away. Add in a summer with no Olympics or World Cup (unless you include that cute tournament the gals are playing), and these really are tough times for sports fans.

Luckily, for glorious hour last night, ESPN hit a programming home run. They matched my favorite washed-up, slightly overrated, but always entertaining ex-coach, with my favorite unregistered car driving, Gucci belt wearing disgraced former quarterback, in what was truly the most entertaining hour of TV in a very long time.

That’s right, Terrelle Pryor went to Camp Gruden Thursday night.

And I kept a running diary to commemorate it.

9:00 p.m. EST: We open up the program with the clock showing 4:14 a.m. While the rest of the world sleeps, Jon Gruden is awake, arriving at the headquarters of the FFCA; the Fired Football Coaches Association of America. First order of business: Put on a pot of coffee. Second order of business: Take over the world.

A couple of things here.

One, I don’t know if the “FFCA” is a new shtick, or one Gruden has been playing up all along, but I love it. And really, it just leads me to so many questions. Who else is part of the association? Are there membership dues? Is there a grace period to be elected, like the Baseball Hall of Fame? Most importantly, do they ever prank call Bill Stewart and offer him membership, before hanging up the phone on him and high-fiving each other? Is there a website where I can go to get some answers?

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After covering the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday, it’s time to take a look at what happened over the weekend in Round’s 2-7.

Now if you’ve never read me before, understand that I’m no draft expert. I have no qualifications to evaluate these teams and picks beyond, “I watch way too much college football, and have an opinion on everyone," to the point that when the Bears took Idaho quarterback Nathan Enderle in the fifth round Saturday, I cringed and muttered to myself, “Eww, what do they want that guy for.” I’m guessing I may be the only person outside Idaho or the Enderle family that actually gave that pick more than a second of thought.

Either way, despite my limited qualifications, that would never stop me from writing another mini-manifesto on this weekend’s draft picks.

Here are some picks that I liked, some that I didn’t, and much more…

Best Draft: St. Louis Rams

Ok, so maybe Mel Kiper only graded St. Louis out at a “B.” And maybe Todd McShay questioned a handful of their picks. But honestly, what do those guys know anyway?

Starting from the top, as a reader named Arjun C. pointed out to me after Thursday’s first round, if there’s one thing we’ve learned through the years, it's that the way you win in the NFL is with great quarterback play, great protection, and a great pass rush. Well, after addressing those first two things in the last two drafts, St. Louis definitely addressed No. 3 by taking Robert Quinn in this year’s first round.  Had he not been suspended this past season, Quinn may have been the No. 1 pick overall. Checkmate St. Louis.

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A lot happened in last night’s draft.

Here are some of my thoughts through the first 32 picks…

Let’s Start By Talking About…Jake Locker?: Quick, in a straw poll, how many of you thought I’d be starting off this first round recap by talking about Jake Locker? Unless it was for something like, “Jake Locker wins the award for guy who most definitely shouldn’t have shown up at the Green Room in New York because there was a totally reasonable chance he wouldn’t be selected on Day 1, and then would’ve had to embarrassingly come back on Friday or face public ridicule," then I could buy it. Otherwise, not so much.

Except that’s the thing: Jake Locker didn’t even show up in New York. And you know why? Because even he probably didn’t think he was getting drafted in the first round.

As for the pick itself, here’s my biggest problem: Being the college football nut that I am, as a general rule, I can’t properly evaluate guys heading into the draft. To me, all these guys look so damn good in college that I can’t differentiate the ones who’ll be good as pros, from the ones who won’t be. I just can’t put anyone into the proper context, when I can only view them through the prism of dominant college player.

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With the way the sports world is today, nothing slips through the cracks. There are simply too many blogs, too many radio hosts, too many Around the Horn panelists and too many know it all’s at the barber shop to ever let that happen.

Only, something happened on Monday afternoon, that for once, I feel like not nearly enough people are talking about it. That’s when according to a report by CNBC’s Darren Rovell, former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton signed the largest shoe contract for an incoming rookie in NFL history. While official terms weren’t disclosed, sources told Rovell that the deal was for over a million dollars a year.

No big deal, right? Who cares, right?

Well, I care.

You see, I spend the better part of the fall, every fall, defending the NCAA. Well, not “defending” them per se, since defending the NCAA would be nearly as bad as defending Bernie Madoff, Charlie Sheen, or anyone who enjoys the show The Big Bang Theory. Still, I do defend the NCAA in one regard: Their refusal to pay student-athletes.

I’ll be frank: I didn’t give the Super Bowl my best effort.

What do I mean by that? Well, one of the few downsides of being a sportswriter is that I don’t get to enjoy the games as a fan like most people (Boo-hoo, right?). I usually watch alone, in the quiet of my house, without distraction, in large part so I can hear the announcers, analyze everything and put my own spin on it. I don’t wear jerseys. I don’t drink beer. And I don’t congregate with friends. It’s just how I feel that I do my job best.

So when I say that I didn’t give the Super Bowl my “best effort,” what that really means, is that for once I just let my hair down and had some fun. I took off my sportswriter’s hat, and threw on a fan hat instead. I put away my notebook, my buddy came over, and we drank beers and ate pizza like the rest of you. Granted that much like Christina Aguilera, I’m carrying some extra weight this morning. But still, I had a good time.

Of course what it also means, is that I don’t have any really strong opinions on the game. Because I wasn’t taking notes, or paying particularly close attention, I can’t tell you why the Packers won, why the Steelers lost, or even if Ben Roethlisberger had any food crumbs stuck in his beard. Again, Sunday night was just about having fun, not about being a sports columnist.

The one thing I did notice though, was that in a season where injuries were a major theme, and concussions more commonplace than people making fun of Joe Buck, it seemed like every time I turned around, someone was being taken to the locker room by the trainer, or limping off the field wincing in pain. The fact that two of the Packers most recognizable players- Donald Driver and Charles Woodson- ended the game on the sidelines, only added to the effect.

Which is kind of ironic, isn’t it? That after an excellent Super Bowl where the central theme was “The Packers overcoming injuries to win,” some of the central themes of this upcoming off-season are expected to include, “Lockout,” “owners vs. players,” and “18-game schedule.” And as I stayed up late after Sunday night’s game, thinking, and Googling as much information about the subject as I could, all the blame came back to one person. Roger Goodell.

It’s Super Bowl week, and you know what that means, right? Like every reporter, journalist, blogger, radio host, ex-player, columnist and lingerie model, I need to have an opinion on the game. After all, isn't forcing our opinions on one and other until everything turns into one big blur, what Super Bowl week is all about?

Well, it isn't here. Which is why I’ve decided that rather than giving you a boring, old, 800 word column on “Why X team is going to win,” I figured, I’d do something better… and give you an article on prop bets! For those of us who don’t have a rooting interest in the game, that ends up being the best part of the Super Bowl anyway. Well, unless Ali Landry comes out with a new Doritos commercial.

So which Super Bowl Prop Bets do I like the most? They’re listed below, and they’re provided by our good friends at BetUS.com (As always, if you do decide to sign-up and place some wagers, be sure to mention AaronTorres-Sports.com for your referral, to get some free, extra gifts).

And one more thing:  The good folks at Coca-Cola just sent a link called, “Coca Cola Cheers.” If you go ahead and click on the link, and give a quick “cheer,” Coca-Cola will donate $1 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Also, if you go ahead and submit a picture, you get a free preview of one of Coke’s ads that are going to run this Super Bowl Sunday. Go ahead and take 30 seconds out of your day. It's for a good cause.

Now, the picks…

Admit it: Jets fan or not, you were excited for Wednesday's premeire of Hard Knocks. How could you not be?

Rex Ryan. Darrelle Revis. Rex Ryan's stomach. LaDainian Tomlinson applying for his AARP card. If Hard Knocks couldn't get you pumped for football season, nothing could.

Anyway, like I did for the Jersey Shore premiere a few weeks ago, I took it upon myself to keep a running diary for all to enjoy. Was it the most original idea? Of course not, a million writers have done it before me. But was it the best way to capture all the hijinks from Jets camp? I think so.

Regardless, let's pick things up at 10:02, since I missed the first couple minutes after getting lost on the way back from a friend's house.

Enjoy.