Linough is Linough: The True Comparisons Made Between Lin & Tebow

Since I took my sports blog hiatus a couple weeks ago, a new "Mania" has emerged in the sports world. Just when ESPN and other media outlets thought that they were going to lose ratings/viewers with the disappearance of Tim Tebow from the news cycle, a new world-wide phenomenon started his ascent in the city that already dominated the news cycle earlier in the month with a Super Bowl victory.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jeremy Lin.

The undrafted Harvard point guard was out of a job on Christmas Eve when the Rockets released him right before the regular season. The season before, Lin was buried on Golden State's depth chart behind such guards as Stephen Curry & Monta Ellis and saw very little playing time.

A few days after being released, the Knicks picked him up - but they played him very little. Lin played in just 9 of the team's first 23 games, playing in less than 55 total minutes in that time.

By many accounts, he was close to being released again due to the Knicks' depth at the guard position. Luckily, injuries forced Mike D'Antoni's hand as the Knicks coach gave Linn some playing time.

In the 7 games he has played significant minutes (past 6 have been starts), the team has been undefeated. In his 6 starts, he averaged almost 38 minutes per game while averaging 24 points and 9.5 assists in helping lead the Knicks back to the .500 mark and the playoff race.

Comparisons to Tebow

As a result of this performance, Lin has dominated the social media news cycle. Any casual sports fan with a television on in the past two weeks has seen at least a handful of highlights if only watching TV minimally.

With ESPN and other major media outlets shoving the story down our throats, comparisons of the coverage have rivaled that of Tim Tebow. In this madness, people have also gone out of their way to say that their careers have had similar arcs.

I am hear to completely dispel the notion that their careers are parallel as some have been saying. Outside of the media coverage, not much is the same between the two. Since everyone loves charts, I decided to make one that compares the two on many key components of their short careers:

Name	Jeremy Lin	Tim Tebow
Sport	Basketball	Football
Position	Point Guard	Quarterback
Team	NY Knicks	Denver Broncos
Height (according to team site)	6'3"	6' 3"
Weight (team site)	200 lbs	235 lbs
Years in Pros (of current/completed season)	2	2
College	Harvard	Florida
Other Colleges That Recruited Him	Brown	Alabama
Round/Pick that each was picked	Was not drafted	1st Round, 25th pick
Main Reasons for Promotion to Starter	Injuries	Overwhelming popularity/Starting QB Inefficiency
Before he started, fans _________.	never heard of him for the most part.	were quite polarizing regarding his future effectiveness.
When he finally started, his coach ______.	had him run the offense he has always run as coach	changed team's offense around, saying they'd be screwed
		if they ran a regular offense
Team record before he started in 2011-12 season	(9-15)	(1-4)
Team's record in first 8 games started after promotion	(6-0 - does not include game preceding streak - came off bench)	(7-1)
Notable win streak	6 wins (current)	6 wins
What each man averaged during streak:	51% shooting (averaging 17 shots/game)	50.4 Completion% (averaging 20 attempts/game), 7 TDs, 1 Int
	averaging 24.3 pts, 9.5 asts, 6 turnovers,3.8 rbs per game	Averaged 146 yards passing/60 yards rushing
Downfall during streak	Turnovers	Low Completion Percentage, Bad Passes
Shooting/completion % compared to league avg	49.7% Shooting - League Average is 44.4% as of 2/16/12	46.7% Completions - League Average was 60.1%
(includes games not started - 2011-12 stats)
Most Popular Nickname for Hype	Linsanity	Tebowmania
Reasons for Sudden Hype	Long win streak, out of nowhere "feel-good" story	His fourth quarter comebacks (5 total, including 4 in a row)
Many Suspect Hype is Based on…	Race	Religion
Start of Career Hype resembles that & reminds me of…	Kurt Warner	Danica Patrick
Twitter Followers as of 2/16/2012:	380,057 (@Jlin7)	1,216,574 (@TimTebow)

I tried getting through the blog without a Lin pun, but the title itself dispels that notion.

While the chart shows some similarities, the one thing to remember is that the Lin story is changing daily and the mania is likely to level off at some point. That's not to say he can't be a solid point guard in the league for years, but I highly doubt he will maintain his averages once opposing scouts learn of his deficiencies and exploit them.

To say that their careers are similar, particularly when Lin was barely recruited (basically by those two Ivy League schools - a conference not known for their athletics) and Tebow also had an offer to play at Alabama, is hyperbole at its finest.

In either case, for fans of either player, I say the best thing to do is this: enjoy the ride, ignore the critics (including me of Tebow) and hope that their joy rides can last a little while longer.