History Literature / TheTimTebowCFLChronicles

* CanadaEh: The bulk of the story's set in Canada, but the story leans more on absurdism than the usual Canadian stereotypes. There are some jokes about bagged milk and Canadian politeness -- but this is intermingled utterly bizarre details, like the Canadians using shout-tubes instead of telephones, and the fact that the majority of consumer goods are tie-ins for really forgettable American movies.

-->'''Schooner:''' Are you allowed to throw it if there isn't an intended receiver?\\

-->'''Troy:''' Cherish this, Tim. I have been in the dark, chasing you for years. But even before I left, things were changing. When we get back home, I fear that American football will have become something neither of us will recognize.

Has a SpiritualSuccessor in Jon Bois's 2017 multimedia miniseries, ''WebOriginal/SeventeenThousandSevenHundredSeventySix''.

* AdaptationDisplacement: InUniverse--Raghib Ismail points out that the Canadians were the original pioneers in adapting rugby into gridiron. American football, despite being much better-known, was adapted from Canadian football, not the other way around.
* AllOfThem: The kid's warning that the Schooners' defense--nearly the entire population of Nova Scotia--is incoming:

* UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest: Referenced and {{Lampshaded}} in Chapter Six, when Volquez and St-Hilaire talk about God. They ask if he is really a man, and if they just passed the Bechdel Test by talking about him. The novel had actually passed the test in the previous chapter when Volquez and St-Hilaire had two brief conversations; one about light switches, and the other about the massive shit Volquez had just taken.
* BenevolentArchitecture: {{Lampshaded}}. There are Bound-For-Street stations sprinkled all over the Toronto area where players can rest and resupply, despite the astronomical odds against them ever being used. There have only been two games in the last 50 years that went bound-for-street in the entire CFL, and no game has ever gone far enough to require the stations.
* BoldInflation: The Ottawa REDBLACKS' official branding guidelines insist that the team name must always be written in ALL-CAPS, and in ''1000 point font''. In Tebow's memoir, he doesn't use the larger font size, but he makes sure to properly capitalize REDBLACKS--because he thinks that's hilarious.

* CanadaEh: The bulk of the story's set in Canada, but the story leans more on absurdism than the usual Canadian stereotypes. There are some jokes about bagged milk and Canadian politeness--but this is intermingled utterly bizarre details, like the Canadians using shout-tubes instead of telephones, and the fact that the majority of consumer goods are tie-ins for really forgettable American movies.

* CrazyPrepared: Natrone Means, possibly the only player in the CFL who did real prep work for bound-for-street play. Games only go bound-for-street once every 25 years or so, and those games usually only go a few dozen yards, so the Argos' cross-country drive is completely unprecedented, but Means still has plans for it: "binders upon binders full of maps, star charts, and field guides identifying safe-to-eat berries and roots." His maps of Quebec allow the Argos to exploit the land in ways the REDBLACKS can't--eventually giving them the slip at Manicouagan Crater.

* DownerEnding: At the end of the story, football is dying. [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom Tebow himself accidentally killed Canadian football]], and American football never recovered from having all its professional and college stadiums converted into power plants. After that fateful Argonauts game finally came to an end, Tebow falls into depression and can't let the past go--trying to teach football courses that barely anyone attends, and writing a memoir that no publisher is interested in.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Leland Melvin offers to reward the Maritimers for their assistance by pulling some strings to finally get them a football franchise of their own. He offers to move ''the Browns'' to Halifax. The Maritimers refuse--they may be desperate enough for their own team to mount a massive naval offensive, but even they don't want the Browns.

** In chapter 4, Troy Smith warns Tim Tebow that times are changing.

** The Nova Scotians form their own impromptu team--calling themselves the Atlantic Schooners, after the franchise which would have been located in their province, but got dissolved before playing a single game. They try to intercept the Argonauts, reasoning that if they get possession of the ball, then the CFL has to recognize the Schooners as a real team.

* ProductPlacement: The shoe store only offers movie tie-in shoes. Tebow gets a pair of ''Hitch'' sneakers--they don't cost him anything, but in return he has to tell anyone who asks that ''Hitch'' is available on DVD.

* ReadingsAreOffTheScale: Tebow notes that his performance in the Broncos vs. Chiefs game on November 13th, 2011 was so bizarre that his passer rating afterwards was 102.6--a wildly unintuitive result from a game where he only attempted eight passes and only completed two of them.

* SerialEscalation: The Argonauts break through every boundary, constantly driving even further than anyone thought possible. First they leave the stadium, then they leave Toronto, then all of Ontario--then after driving across all of Quebec, they find a ship and leave Canada for Greenland. In the end, they try to "pass" the ball into space, so the game can last ''forever''. Unfortunately, Tebow's throw is off, so the ball gets destroyed, and the game abruptly ends.
* SkewedPriorities: The Ottawa REDBLACKS follow their own official brand guidelines (which insist on absurd overuse of BoldInflation), even when they're presenting legal documents to the Canadian Parliament--and even though that makes their argument thousands of pages long and practically unreadable.

** The people of Nova Scotia are desperate for a football team of their own--but not desperate enough to accept the Browns. Leland Melvin instead offers the Nova Scotians "a completely forgettable, nondescript team that is just sort of there": the Titans.

* VictoryIsBoring: In the utopia of Greenland City, human advancement has reached its end state. There's nothing left for their scientists to discover or invent, and they've even plumbed all possibilities of human culture (for example, they have Season 65 of ''The Wire'' already). Knowing everything is boring, so they've all become sports fans--because athletic competitions are the only remaining unknowns.