Last week, the owner of the Russian football team Moscow Black Storm, offered Tim Tebow $1 million to appear in two games later this month. Don’t get confused, this isn’t “football” in the European sense; this isn’t soccer.  These guys actually play actual American style football; they’ve got helmets and everything.

“I talked with him personally and he wanted to go,” owner Mikhail Zaltsman told Russia Beyond The Headlines. “[His agents are] thinking of using him as a motivational speaker. They don’t want him to play football.”

Unlike the old Beatles’ song, Tebow doesn’t want to be quarterback in the USSR (or what used to be the USSR…c’mon, I had to make that joke work somehow).

“Unfortunately agents of Tim Tebow turned down our proposal,” Zaltsman wrote. “I hope that it’s Tebow’s agents’ fault that the contract wasn’t signed and Tim couldn’t do anything about it. If it was his decision — it’s very upsetting. And in this case we don’t want him in our team anyway.”

Am I the only one gets the idea something got lost in the translation there? There’s a lot in that statement which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but ti does seem pretty clear the Black Storm sounded serious about acquiring Tebow in an attempt to win the American Football Championship of Russia, which takes place this weekend.  But there had to be a major mis-communication here. If you doubt that, all you have to do is look at the Russian side of this story from the Moscow newspaper ITAR-TASS.  The best place to start is with the headline itself.

“Tim Tebow signs contract with Russian football team”

Yeah, maybe not so much.  First of all, from the American story I linked to, it certainly seems as if the team owner Zaltsman is pissed off at Tebow’s “agents” for keeping a contract from being signed.  What’s worse is that according to ITAR-TASS, I don’t think the Russians really know what they are trying to get.

Dmitry Popkov, president of the Black Storm, Russian football club, confirmed that talks on signing Tim Tebow to play two games for his team, have not been easy.

Popkov emphasized that Tim Tebow is a legendary player, Michael Jordan of American Football. “He’s a real sports star, surrounded by a crowd of agents, that’s why negotiations were difficult. Tebow himself after finding out that people play American football in Russia was surprised and wanted to see it for himself, to play with Russian players. And then again, an extra million dollars won’t harm him. As far as popularizing American football in Russia, he doesn’t really care about it. It’s interest.”

Former Denver Broncos and New York jets quarterback Tim Tebow is considered to be one of the best and most popular athletes in the United States. In 2013 the player signed a deal with New England Patriots; however, after exhibiting poor performance in a series of preseason games, Tebow was cut from the team; currently he is a free agent.

“Michael Jordan of American Football.”  Just let that sink in for a moment.  Either the Russians have a fundamental misunderstanding of who Michael Jordan was,  they have no concept of what American football is all about, or the alcoholism problem is Russia is far worse than we ever imagined.