When the Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos failed to reach an agreement on a trade for Kyle Orton, two things happened: 1) Chad Henne fell ass backwards into another year as the de facto starter for Miami, and B) Tim Tebow possibly lost his job as the starter in Denver. Thankfully, both professional athletes have responded to their respective situations like men. And I’m just kidding, because they’re both big babies.

Some fans at a recent Dolphins practice began chanting, “We want Orton” when Henne took the field, and the guy who is allergic to throwing to Brandon Marshall didn’t like that very much.

“Deep down inside, it does hurt,” Henne said of the “We want Orton!” chants. “Obviously you want the respect of the fans and you want them to have your back. If you’re a Miami Dolphins fan, hopefully you’re cheering for the Miami Dolphins and the players out there, not somebody that’s not here.” (CBS Sports)

First of all, take my word as a Miami Dolphins fan – we suck. We’re complete dicks, and we bitch and piss and moan about everything. We learned it from New York Jets fans. But as far as it hurting? Man up, Sally. You think the fans are going to lay off because you say it hurts? Maybe try this new thing called getting better. It starts with confidence and it ends with victories, something Miami fans are growing tired of not having.

As for Tebow, we already know what Merril Hoge thinks, and he’s probably not alone, but Broncos fans don’t want to hear that because they’ve been drinking the same Kool-Aid that Gainesville has been brewing for the past 6 years. The fact remains that Orton is a proven starter, and the job is probably his when Week 1 begins. So did Tebow tip his cap to the veteran in front of him and vow to learn from him and earn his starting role like all good QBs do? No. He bitched about it.

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As hard as you try, it’s hard to hate nearly-aborted Denver Broncos quarterback and college football hugging legend Tim Tebow. His religious beliefs make him one of the ten most influential athletes in the world and he always seems affable, even when talking about growing up with missionaries and sponsoring orphanages. So outside of longstanding, biased college football rivalries and Derek Jeter style TIM TEBOW SUCKS talk, who could develop thorough enough of a mean-on for Tebow to crack that Average White Boy persona and hurt his feelings? Who could do it well enough that one of the most hated people in sports (and one of the most beloved, because that’s how it works) would think you’ve gone too far and stick up for him?

Enter: Merril Hoge, former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, current ESPN football analyst and 183rd Pokémon. Merril has taken to Twitter and ESPN radio to but Tebow “on full blast”, and while it doesn’t read as the most literate thing in the world, Hoge is a football authority and what he says has some weight behind it. The “Tebow Thing” evolved into a monster of bickering fan support and 100+ retweets, and sometime around Hoge saying Tebow doesn’t “poses [sic] a skill set”, Miami Heat star LeBron James started chiming in. And you don’t need me to tell you that LeBron James “chiming in” usually kills the conversation.

To make the transition from Twitter to Twitter easier for you to read, please enjoy the Tim Tebow Sucks argument through the fingertips of the men who lived it.

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I still haven’t found a great way to be critical of this new wave of talk about how the NFL is dealing with concussions, but I find all the discussion a bit condescending. Temporary brain damage could lead to permanent brain damage? Who knew?

The only substantive thing that we’ve heard is that the NFL and the Players were “close” to a deal. Right now, there is no deal, meaning that would be no league-mandated framework that would have precluded Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger from playing. Interesting that it was Roethisberger’s concussion and not, say, the one that Eagles running back Brian Westbrook suffered in Week 7, that prompted ESPN’s foray into Head Trauma 101, including a interview with Hines Ward, who was critical of Roethlisberger sitting out after participating in practice for most of the week. Ward, who has played with a concussion in the past, said the Steelers locker room was “fifty-fifty” on whether Ben should play.

Ward was rewarded for his candor by being labeled as “uneducated” on the “new learning,” as if concussions were now more dangerous than they were five weeks ago. Leading the charge has been Merril Hoge, the former Steeler who’s now trumpeting himself head trauma’s cautionary tale. I lost my vision. I almost died. Awesome, I guess. Hoge retired after multiple concussions in 1994. Hoge has worked for ESPN since 2007…so why bare his soul on-camera now?

Part of it, to me, seems like that ESPN is just kissing Roethlisberger’s ass again. Remember that ESPN sat on the story involving Roethlisberger being named in a Nevada civil suit. Could it be that ESPN is overly defending Big Ben to keep him from looking like more of a Big Gash? And if a new NFL policy was already in place before Ben was bumped, why was nobody (including Hines Ward, his own teammate) not aware of it? Surely the “new learning” would have been absorbed by the players before any of them wound up on a stretcher.

Why would ESPN make the effort to hammer home something that’s so obvious to everyone? The whole thing just stinks. But the irony is that the midst of all this, another NFL quarterback, Atlanta’s Matt Ryan, had to leave Sunday’s game with turf toe. Why don’t you testify to Congress on that, Merril?