You may have noticed the hours of programming ESPN dedicates to Tim Tebow, or the fact he is the most popular current athlete in the world, or that he's generated more tweets per second than anyone else in the fledgling life of the social medium. And you might have noticed I am doing the following in my column so it is more optimally searched by various Internet engines.

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The man is a human gauge for public perception. For a good seven weeks, fans couldn't stop betting on him, no matter where bookmakers put the line because they believed in whatever higher calling Tebow was offering. That waned in the final weeks of the regular season. But then it happened again last week. The number originally shot up because of skeptical sharps, but as the game drew nearer and the Steelers became more fragile and the public got on board, the price dropped. This week, bookmakers posted the Pats at minus-14, and before you could say John 3:16, the number had been bet down to minus-13.5, where it has sat all week.