From this morning’s Transom: Wipeout.

I recommend this Peter Suderman piece on Romney not (just) for the text, but for the clever picture embedded. There are levels.

I’m two weeks late to everything and the next full game of tackle football I watch this season will be my first. But I’m still digesting the awesomeness of Denver’s Tebow 3:16 game in the first round of the playoffs, which will probably be part of sports lore in that town for a really long time.

The Tebow hype phenomenon is a little strange and I understand why people push back against it. But that said, the Tebow itself is kind of interesting. He’s a gimmick quarterback, and gimmick quarterbacks tend to do poorly in the NFL over time. That said, if you don’t root for gimmick quarterbacks (like Jake the Snake, Jeff George, or the great Randall Cunningham), then you don’t have a heart. Tebow isn’t Tom Brady. He isn’t Alex Smith, even. But it would be neat if someone devised a way for non-traditional quarterbacks to succeed over the long-term.

But the most exciting thing about Tebow is that he is positioned for the greatest heel turn in the history of professional sports. Tebow going heel would be like Christian Laetner’s stomping married to Tiger’s downfall, then cubed and times a million. Just close your eyes and picture it:

It’s 2013 and the Detroit Lions have made it to the Super Bowl. The Motor City is awash in good feeling and Michigan’s favorite son, President Mitt Romney, is presiding over the game, decked out in Lions gear. There’s talk about how a Super Bowl win could signal a comeback for Detroit the way the Saint’s championship did for New Orleans. The only thing standing in their way: The Denver Broncos.

It’s a hard-fought game that begins to get a little chippy when, during a kick-return, a Lions player is pushed out of bounds and clotheslined by a waiting Tebow. Mysteriously, the referees miss it. Then, with the game winding down, and Detroit up 6, Tebow runs the option and scores after Ndamukong Su falls to the ground with a ruptured Achilles’. Tebow sprints out of the endzone to where Su is writhing on the ground in pain, the crowd and the announcers cooing about his great sportsmanship when suddenly, someone on the sideline chucks two cans of Coors to Tebow!

Tebow stands over Su, shakes the cans, then mashes them together and pours Rocky Mountain refreshment all over the downed Detroit player! He looks into the camera as a nervous Leslie Visser approaches him and snarls, “Tebow 3:16–I just whupped your Nigerian ass.”

In the booth, the announcers go nuts.

Chris Collinsworth: “Son of a bitch, Bob!”

Bob Costas: “This is a disgusting act! Su isn’t even Nigerian–he was born in Portland!”

It would rank with the greats.

Perhaps the greatest entry yet.

Odds and ends from the comic book world:

* In order to gain a favorable legal settlement, lawyers for Marvel are arguing that mutants–as in, the characters in Marvel’s comic books–are not human beings. They’re not saying that mutants are fictional, mind you, but rather that the fictional characters should be considered to be fictional human beings. Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr will not be amused.

* DC has announced the cancellation of six of their New 52 titles. That’s not surprising, of course. Hawk and Dove has no audience? Who could have guessed? But what’s deeply satisfying is that two of the books are affirmative action diversity titles (the NYT will not be amused) and the third is written by Dan DiDio, the man whose leadership led to DC through such a glorious creative period that, when he was done with the company, it seemed best to obliterate 80 years of continuity and just start over.

* It’s nice to see that I’m in agreement with the great Jim Shooter in my esteem for the Azzarello/Chiang Wonder Woman. (I like it more than he does, but he doesn’t hate it.)

Started watching Downton Abbey, which is kind of great, particularly if you like genre mash-ups. You can practically hear the pitch meeting: “It’s Mad Men . . . in a house . . . for the Jane Austen set!”

(Never mind that it’s really for the Waugh set. I don’t think that producers–even at the BBC–would get caught up in such trivialities.)

I don’t read Ta-Nehisi Coates enough to understand whether or not this is satirical:

I finished up Middlemarch two days ago, and had a good debate about it on Twitter.

An email from Galley Reader X on Ezra Klein

Ezra in October:  Economists thought that we needed a bigger stimulus; it’s Republicans’ fault that Obama could deliver it.

Ezra today:  Economists “scoff” at the notion that Presidents create jobs, so let’s not go blaming Obama.