agracer said:
scoop12 said:
Now do Tiger Woods
Cerena and Venus Williams would also like a word....
Here's the thing about these three, and to a degree Manziel and Tebow as well -
They stood out among their peers in a few ways.
Like it or not, and especially with Tiger and the Williams sisters - they were the proverbial sore thumb in their respective sports. Golf had traditionally been an upper class, rich man, and almost exclusively white man's sport. Then comes along Tiger and he upends the standard demographic. Didn't hurt at all that when he was younger before he stuck his wang in hookers, he played possibly some of the best golf ever and it added to the story. He had a different name, different look and color, and played better than anybody else.
The Williams sisters are much the same. Tennis had long been a sport reserved for the upper class wealthy, who were predominantly white. And in the case of women tennis players, they almost all fit the same build - athletic, thin/lean and not all that muscular. Venus fits the physical mold for the most part, sans the color. Serena is an outlier in the sport, even to this day. She's muscular, almost build like a linebacker. Stronger, far more powerful than most other players. They came from a relatively poor family as well - definitely didn't fit the "rich ivy league" mold that most people were accustomed to with female tennis stars. And they both could play, especially in the case of Serena - she dominated the sport for a good number of years.
With both, nobody similar has replaced them. In golf things have kind of gone back to the more traditional pre-tiger ways, assuming the same with women's tennis as well.
Manziel and Tebow, though not quite as high of a degree, were also outliers int hat they came at a time when there was a major shift in football from the old school Peyton Manning and Aaron Roger type QB's that weren't full blown athletes into an era where QB's had become every bit the playmaker on the field that running backs or receivers had traditionally been. And, almost exclusively, the new breed of QB was comprised of very athletic black guys that could run and throw the ball 80 yards. Cam Newton, Lamar Jackson, etc.
Then here comes Tebow - who was build like a tight end and could run over defensive linemen and linebackers. And Manziel, who did things that even some of the black stud duck athletes shook their heads at in disbelief. They definitely stuck out as outliers in their respective positions at the time they played and for how they played. Helped with Tebow that he played for UF when they were winning championships and for JFF because A&M had just joined the SEC and most pundits and TV aired our games expecting us to get beat down to nothing.
All of them peaked in their careers at the most opportune times, which goes back to the old saying that timing is everything. It's 100% true.
In the case of JFF and Tebow, as others pointed out earlier - part of their popularity stemmed from the fact that it is socially acceptable to do everything possible to tear down a white guy. In Tebow's case because he was openly Christian and a virgin. I remember with him that's about all I heard about for half of his career. Not that he was a hell of a teammate, leader and ballplayer - but that he put John 3:16 eye black on, prayed before and after games, thanked God for his success, etc. and that he wasn't banging chicks left and right becuase he was saving himself for marriage. With JFF, he was a spoiled rich kid that supposedly came from money and every single move he made was scrutinized to the nth degree by everybody - some because they loved him, more because they hated him for what they thought he was. He also played for A&M, which didn't help his media case in any way. But in both cases, nobody got upset at anybody for unfairly critizing the white boys. Hell, when both washed out of the league there were celebratory "I told you so's!" all over the place. Had Lamar Jackson or even Winston had the same level of scrutiny, the term racism would have been thrown around left and right.
