He’s exciting. No, not because he’s Asian, and no not because he went to Harvard; Jeremy Lin is a sensation because he’s one of those talents that’s making everyone say: “Wait what? Where did he come from?”

The Super Bowl has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean the past football season’s events aren’t still poignant in sports pop culture. Now that there’s this spectacular story for basketball, it’s pretty natural for people to try and pair it with a story from the most popular sport in the country. What was the most incredible tale this season? Tebow-Time of course! While Linsanity and Tebow-Time are similar in how marvelous they are, people need to stop comparing Lin to Tebow. Tebow as an athlete broke records in high school in Florida, where he was in the running for National Football Player of the Year. He was a scrutinized recruit going into college and a first-round pick going into the pros.

The amount of scrutiny on amateur athletes increases every year, to the point that it makes me uncomfortable. Earlier this season I read an article about a twelve-year-old basketball player. The scary part was that the article wasn’t in The Washington Post, covering some local kid that’s garnering attention, oh no, it was a national story on ESPN. In basketball, future players are correctly identified in their youth more than in football, baseball, or hockey.

That’s what makes Lin such a story. In the NBA, players just don’t tend to come out of nowhere. Lin’s story is nothing like Tebow’s, where a scrutinized athlete’s unorthodox style of play helped his team win several times in the face of adversity. No, the easiest parallel to draw from the past NFL season to tie to Lin’s success is Victor Cruz. Cruz was undrafted and deep in the depth chart, but got a chance to play due to some management decisions and some injuries (Jeremy Lin would jump in right now saying: “Now that sounds familiar!”). Not only did Cruz succeed, he exploded, immediately becoming one of the most dynamic wide receivers in the NFL.

So please, stop Tebowing to honor Jeremy Lin. Salsa dance instead!

“But Eli won a championship! He was Superbowl MVP!” I know, without those two facts I’d never dislike Eli as much, nor would as many people continue to place him in company he doesn’t belong. In 2007 the Giants shocked the world to beat the undefeated Patriots. The Giants did this, and Eli was involved, but he was the worst part of that Giants team. Before getting to the Super Bowl, a team has to make the playoffs. The Giants were an excellent team: they were 4th in the country in rushing and 7th in total defense. Unfortunately, the team had a major flaw, as they were the 21st best passing team.

That doesn’t tell the whole story. Eli was tied for worst in the NFL in both interceptions and total turnovers. His yards/attempt on passes was a measly 6.31, which landed him at 28th. Essentially, the great offensive line that kept him from being sacked too many times kept the Giants’ passing game from being very near the very bottom of the league. Almost any other quarterback would’ve allowed the Giants a stronger regular season, luckily they had strength in almost all other aspects of the game to make up for their glaring weakness at signal-caller.

In the playoffs, Eli’s performance improved marginally, but it was still his team carrying the load. The Giants led the postseason in sacks and rushing yards, and in the Super Bowl victory the Giants had more than twice as many rushing yards as New England. The Giants’ defense sacked Brady 5 times and held him to his lowest yardage/attempt of any game across his MVP season.

Is Eli Manning a good quarterback? Yes, now. In 2007 though, the year he won Super Bowl MVP and started entering idiotic discussions placing him with the elite, he was in fact below league averages in every measurable way. Someone asked me if Eli won the Super Bowl this year would I consider him in the top 25 quarterbacks of all time, and I laughed. Eli has made two Pro Bowls, neither of which he deserved (in 2008 Aaron Rodgers clearly deserved it over him, just as Matthew Stafford did this year). Eli has turned into a good leader, and is barking at the door of being an appropriate Pro Bowl selection, but the fact is that never in his career has he had a season where he was one of the top three quarterbacks in his conference, let alone the league.

This year Eli Manning had the best season of his career. He played well throughout and his  team got hot at the right time, and they won a very exciting game last night. I applaud him, and will actively search for a new player to rename this phenomenon. But the fact that Eli has now arrived doesn’t make any person that has been lauding him for years more right. He’s just finally grown into a good quarterback.

Off-ball fouls, lackadaisical defense following any poor offensive series, and a derailing technical all in the fourth quarter cost the Wizards from coming away with their second win in three games. The young kids from DC showed that winning is a concept elusive to them even when they play well. The clearest indicator was on a breakaway play facilitated by Andre Blatche. The Wizards were down by 1 and Blatche snagged a rebound; Blatche spied a streaking Nick Young and threw a perfect down-court pass. Young then dunked on a hapless Pietrus and drew the foul. Washington would be up by 1 with Young shooting a free throw, and then? A taunting foul.

Being down 1 and responding with a good defensive rebound, good assist to a dunk leading to an and-one play is an impressive momentum shift with 6 minutes left. The game was at home, the mostly-silent crowd started to edge towards loud and that knuckle-headed play took everyone out of it completely. The Wizards still were up, but it felt like doom was still lurking. The next couple series included an offensive board leading to a putback for the Celtics, a steal coming off a bad decision, and suddenly the Celtics are up 4 and the inevitable Washington loss took shape.

With John Wall picking up his play lately and the athletic front court, the Wizards have the basketball talent to win far more games than the sub-13% mark they’re at currently. They just need to stop stopping themselves and letting over-the-hill players like Pierce flop their way to victory.

That’s convenient for me, for the Capitals, but most of my fan allegiances aren’t as easily explained. I like a lot of different teams for a lot of different reasons; I’ve only spent 6 months living within 350 miles of the team I care most passionately about, I talked myself into following a random NFL team at age 17, and asked a friend to pick out a soccer team for me to follow.

When people find out that I follow sports, they want to know what teams I like. It’s always a laborious process to explain that I root for the University of Michigan, the Washington Capitals and Detroit Red Wings, the Detroit Lions and New York Jets, the Detroit Tigers and Washington Nationals, whatever team Lebron James or Chauncey Billups is on, Fulham FC, the University of Maryland and Rochester Institute of Technology and Michigan State University. It’s even worse to explain how I came to root for whichever comes up.

I understand why the Buffalo fans were pleased that I was from Washington, and not a traitorous native choosing the flash of Ovechkin over the local team. But as someone that moves frequently and was born to root for a team almost 500 miles away from my childhood home, I don’t care too much about where fans are from. All that matters to claim to be a “true” fan of any team is to wish them the best in every situation. Sometimes when the playoffs are out of reach that means rooting for losses-turned-draft picks, and sometimes that can happen just eight winless games into a shortened NBA season (come on Wizards, this draft is gonna be good!).