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BY TOM MARTIN

ANCHOR AUSTIN KIM

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Choose your side, football fans: are you or aren’t you with Tim Tebow? (PRON: Tee-Beaux) The former Heisman Trophy winner now carries the clipboard as a backup quarterback in Denver -- and that isn’t settling well with his most steadfast supporters.

NFL.com cues the controversy:

“Kyle Orton is officially off the trading block in Denver. Orton’s going to start once the regular season kicks off -- not Tim Tebow. Lombardi reports the Broncos brass is now saying that Tebow is expendable, a complete turnaround from just a week ago when Denver was in heavy trade talks with the Dolphins to deal Orton and presumably let the Tebow era begin.”

Tim Tebow -- expendable? That’s a new one for Broncos fans who thought Tebow would be the team’s starter just days earlier. But if you ask ESPN NFL analyst Merril Hoge (PRON: Hodge), Tebow hardly justifies the hype.

“Now, our Merril Hoge has looked at the situation- he tweeted this: ‘Sitting watching tape of Bronco offense from last year. Orton or Tebow? It’s embarrassing to think the Broncos could win with Tebow.’”

Tebow’s pseudo-defense team took to Twitter to combat Hoge’s comments -- a group that even included basketball star LeBron James.

But why all the fuss over a player with just three starts to his name? Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio explains:

“It’s almost like a red state blue state thing with Tebow -- very polarizing, either you like him or you don’t like him. And the people who like him, nothing they hear is going to change their mind ... Maybe it all works out well -- maybe Tebow develops, maybe he gets it, maybe all that hard work and all that desire and all that effort finally clicks and he becomes a great NFL quarterback, but there are people out there who think that he will never be.”

Hard work, desire, effort -- Drew Sharp of The Detroit Free Press writes, these traits are what separate Tebow from his peers:

“He's a paragon of moral rectitude to one side -- a positive example for a culture devoid of values … Denver should play him right now. He will win, because that's all he has done throughout his life. Who cares if everybody already knows he couldn't accurately throw a ball into the water even if standing in a boat?”

While fans and critics are up in arms over Tebow’s benching, the Chicago Sun Times’ Rick Morrissey notes, it’s the Broncos who should be sweating the most:

“The pressure on John Elway, the Broncos’ new vice president of football operations, is significant. Tebow is much, much more than a football player … The reality of what the Broncos are up against public relations-wise can be summed up by three questions … A best-selling autobiography? At 23? Really?”

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Transcript by Newsy.