Brand "T".

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS - National Football League

He hasn't taken a snap from center, but Tim Tebow already has Bronco Nation wrapped around his throwing arm. You know, the one that used to have that weird little hitch in it.

Just listen in:

"In my heart, I believe be will go down as one of the greatest NFL players to ever lace 'em up." "Please help me welcome the Mile High messiah." "The more I learn about this guy the more I love the pick." "Tim Tebow will raise the Lombardi trophy before his football career is over." Those are comments lifted from various online fan forums over the last few weeks as the reaction to the Broncos' first-round selection of Tebow has gone from curiosity to full-on embrace in about the time it takes a Georgia wide receiver to run a decent 40 in the combine. And although I couldn't find the citation directly online, I'm pretty sure there's at least somebody out there who credits Tebow with the resurrection of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the reason rivers continue to flow downstream on either side of the Continental Divide.

To be sure, heaping a hopeful sort of praise on newly recruited players is an annual rite across the NFL landscape, part of an off-season tradition that helps fans keep faith and owners preserve season ticket sellout levels. In springtime, every 290-pound tackle drafted before Round 3 is the key to a revived offense and a certain playoff berth. Every formerly obscure defensive end from TCU is the second coming of Lawrence Taylor, and every lanky wide receiver is poised, with proper grooming, to surpass Jerry Rice's career TD mark.

Among the greatest quotes to encapsulate the enduring capacity for belief in one's team came from Carrie Rozelle, the late wife of former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. "I never met an owner," she is said to have observed, "who didn't think he was two players away from winning the Super Bowl."

This Tebow stuff is different. It transcends the ordinary off-season chatter and enters a rarefied territory occupied only once before in Bronco-land, circa 1983, when a promising Stanford graduate named John Elway couldn't get a haircut in town without a horde of reporters chronicling the gravitas of the moment.

Tim Tebow, possessor of irrepressible smile and unimpeachable character credentials, the author of an impromptu "Promise" so stirring that it has been...