There is an intersection that very, very few athletes ever find themselves at. It's the cross between being a folk hero and being a cult hero.
The folk hero is the all-time talent, the Peyton Manning, the Vince Young, the Deion Sanders; the guy so gifted you think you may never see another quite like him. The cult hero is different, a guy who in some cases is quirky but always seems to connect with a fan base for reasons beyond simply performing on the field. Owen Schmitt is one of the best examples I can think of for Mountaineer Nation. Tim Dwight at Iowa is another one. Maybe to a lesser degree your team had some walk-on special-teams ace or a DB with a knack for highlight-reel-worthy collisions.
You can see the cult hero emerge perhaps more in the college game than in a lot of other places because there tends to be less packaging involved. We get more of a grass-roots marketing vibe that spirals off these athletes.
Tim Tebow is the best example of the blend of folk hero and cult hero we have ever seen.
To read the rest of Bruce's thoughts about the legacy of Tim Tebow, plus more notes from around Saturday's games, you must be an ESPN Insider.
Bruce Feldman | email
College FootballABOUT THIS BLOG
Bruce Feldman
Bruce Feldman is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He started at ESPN in 1994. He spent a good portion of two years in the South working on his book, "Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting."
His first book, "Cane Mutiny: How the Miami Hurricanes Overturned the Football Establishment," made it to No. 1 among sports titles in the fall of 2004.
Bruce can be reached via Twitter at @BFeldmanESPN. and his full ESPN.Com archives are located here.
