COVER CANDY: Cam Newton, Tim Tebow on GQ Mags annual NFL Kickoff issue

14 August, 2012

Cam Newton, Tim Tebow share cover duty for GQ Magazine’s 2012 NFL Kickoff issue.

When it comes to cover candy at Ballertainment, Carolina Panthers QB Cam Newton (along with MLB’s Matt Kemp) sit atop our list.

This is Baby Cam’s second cover for GQ Mag (last June, we gave you a glimpse of the first) and he certainly doesn’t disappoint, but joining him this year is New York Jets QB, Tim Tebow, and Tim definitely holds his own. If anyone can tow the line of reppin’ for Jesus the Christ and being a sex symbol, I suppose it would be Tebow.

Each cover story examines the men in somewhat unforgiving terms. For all of Cam Newton’s unprecedented rookie accomplishments, his tendency toward immature reaction to his mistakes will hopefully disappear this season.

An excerpt from the GQ article indicates that it likely will:

Back before the draft, it seemed that Newton’s biggest crime—worse than the Florida stuff, worse than the recruiting stuff—was declaring to Sports Illustrated that he wanted to be more than just a quarterback, that he wanted to be an “entertainer and icon.”

“If I come out and say, ‘I will be the greatest to ever play this game,’ that’s a no-no. If I come out and say, ‘I will not be stopped this year,’ that’s a no-no. People want to see humble,” Newton says. Never mind that icons and entertainers are precisely what the entire sports-industrial complex runs on.

As for Tim Tebow, he may be a marketers dream, and Christianity’s golden boy, but from a football perspective, the questions of his ability to throw the ball remain, especially for Jets fans. In an excerpt from Tebow’s GQ article, writer Devin Gordon says:

This, really, is the root of my beef with Tebowmania: It has nothing to do with football. It’s a sales pitch—a sensation built on evangelism, not ability, powered by people who see a chance to turn the NFL into the next front of the culture war. And now that culture war is coming to my team.

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