SI.com asked The Marketing Arm to provide updated statistics as of last week, and Tebow's numbers continue to soar.
The quarterback sits at No. 4 among all celebrities in DBI's Endorsement scale, trailing only Oprah Winfrey, Adele and Kate Middleton. (Will Smith, Bill Gates, Hank Aaron, Tom Hanks and Jack Nicklaus follow Tebow in the Top 10 of Endorsement). He has also soared into the Top 10 in the Influence category -- up from No. 40 in December -- which places him alongside Adele, Justin Bieber, Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt.
Regarding the Trendsetter attribute, Tebow has risen to No. 6, which is on par with Katy Perry, Anne Hathaway, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake and Will Smith. His No. 13 ranking in Trust puts him in the same neighborhood as Warren Buffett, the late John Wooden, Bill Cosby, Jerry Rice and Dr. Oz.
The Marketing Arm says Tebow is now known by more than 75 percent of all U.S. consumers. According to Nielsen and E-Poll's N-Score ranking, which measures factors including name and image awareness and appeal, as well as attributes such as sincerity, approachability, experience and influence, Tebow has a score of 180. Jets starting quarterback Mark Sanchez has a score of just 12.
"He transcends the sports landscape and that's why you are seeing stories on the front of the paper," says Teri Thompson, the managing editor for sports at the
New York Daily News. "And he creates immediately a quarterback controversy, which of course is a Godsend to the tabloids of New York. Once training camp begins, it will be like that Allstate commercial -- mayhem. And then once the season starts, Lord only knows what will happen, and no pun intended."
Sports talk radio often drives the water-cooler conversation in New York, and caller lines last week were heated with fans wanting to talk about the Tebow acquisition. "It has completely overtaken the radio station," said Mark Chernoff, the vice president of sports programming for CBS Radio and the operations manager for WFAN-AM. "Linsanity was big, but it did not overwhelm the radio station the way Tim Tebow has."
Michael Kay, the afternoon host for ESPN New York 1050-AM, said that his callers were overwhelmingly negative about the Tebow deal. "Not so much that he's a bad player," Kay said, "but they don't think he's a great player. There doesn't seem to be any gray area with Tebow and that makes him the perfect subject for the media.
Kay said he attended an ESPN Next party two months ago at the Super Bowl and spotted Tebow in the corner surrounded by 30 people. "Sitting maybe 10 feet from him on a couch were Barry Sanders and Jim Brown," said Kay. "Nobody was near them and nobody looked at them. They were all with Tebow. I mean, this guy is the Beatles."
Jones said that Tebow never treated his media obligations like a chore. She said he made an effort to learn the names of the beat reporters who were around regularly and his media interaction was much more of a touchy situation when he was not the starter (yet the most in-demand player in the locker room). Tebow also had the benefit of having been in the spotlight since his early days at Florida, a beat covered by nearly a dozen newspapers, plenty of websites and national college football reporters.
(To the infidels who seem to get irritated to hear Tim proclaim his love for Christ, once again, it was a reporter being the one who brought it up! To those infidels, you can be jealous of Tim, or mad. But be mad at the media because they are always the one's who ask these quesions. And you know why they do it- to irritate the infidels. Same reason the Journal-Sentinel PAYS the racist Eugene Kane to write his racist opinions. It irritates the most readers. Who are not Kane folk.)
The most interesting moment of the conference came with about eight minutes left, when a
reporter from the Times asked Tebow to explain his core religious beliefs and why he had not addressed the hot-button social issues discussed by religious and political leaders. "We're at a press conference for the football team, so it's not exactly the platform to give and share everything you believe," Tebow said.
"But I have no problems ever sharing what I believe. I'm a Christian. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. And that is first and foremost the most important thing in my life. For me it is about having a relationship with Christ. That's pretty much it. That is the basis of what I believe, and it is exciting for me to get opportunities to share that. But at the same time this is a press conference for the New York Jets football team, so I feel like it is an opportunity to answer questions about my opportunity to be here as a Jet. I'm excited about that. Any time you get an opportunity I am always going to talk about Jesus Christ and what he has done in my life. But I'm also here to talk about the Jets."
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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/richard_deitsch/03/25/tim.tebow.conference/index.html#ixzz1qHe5VVL5
