The Passion of the Tebow: Sports Media and Heroic Language in the Tragic Frame

Abstract

As one of the most widely covered athletes of recent years, Tim Tebow is both beloved and resented. In this essay, I critique sports media coverage of Tebow to demonstrate how tragic framing constitutes this opposition. By emphasizing his character both as a football leader and a Christian missionary, sports media frame Tebow in transcendental terms, the consequence of which is a discourse of absolutism and symbolic division. What is required, therefore, is a turn to Kenneth Burke's notion of the comic frame, a position of humility that is well-suited to the agonistic ethos of commercial sport.

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