Antidote to NFL Crime: Tebow in First Round

If I ran an NFL franchise, I'd draft Tim Tebow in the first round and, for now, put him in a mascot suit. He's the perfect anti-toxin for what ails the NFL, the annual roll call of bad actors that now focuses on Ben Roethlisberger and what should be a four-game suspension, or much longer if the raw, creepy details of what happened that night in a Georgia bathroom stall are remotely accurate. (Update: Roethlisberger Punished)

We keep waiting for Tebow to do something that exposes him as less than his yes-sir, God-squadding, still-a-virgin, helps-sick-children-on-spring-break image. And I suspect we'll be waiting forever, except for the virgin part. He aced the high-character litmus test during four years in the searing national spotlight at Florida, proving to be a better man than his coach, Urban Meyer, who played a suspicious bait-and-switch game about his future and then petulantly threatened a reporter who did nothing wrong but, well, report. Yes, no one knows if Tebow can throw well enough to be a starting quarterback in the league or even make a roster at that position. But given the climate of lawlessness in the league, he is worthy of a legitimate shot by a team that eventually will grant it to him.

Will it be Buffalo? Minnesota? Denver? Washington? Arizona? Seattle? Cleveland? His hometown team in Jacksonville? Someone had better pull the trigger quickly Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall, for this is the NFL's opportunity to prove its teams will gamble on high morals, leadership and intelligence as much as they'll take risks on rap-sheet punks who run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds.

"My dream is to be a quarterback," Tebow said. "And I'm going to pursue that as much as I can. I want to be a quarterback in the NFL. It's been my dream since I was six ... I've heard it since high school: I can't throw. People didn't think that I could throw at Florida; we did OK at that. Going to the next level, we're going to try and prove people wrong. It's going to be fun. I just want an opportunity to be a quarterback at the next level and to get that chance."

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And if the chance doesn't come for a while? "If I'm on a team that asks me to help in some other way, I would do whatever you wanted me to do, and do it with all my heart,'' he said.