MOBILE, Ala. — Tim Tebow began his NFL audition shirtless with half a dozen television stations filming his weigh-in for the South team at the Senior Bowl on Monday morning.

When the North team weighed in 30 minutes later, not a single TV camera remained.

The first and only Te-Bowl was under way.

Never has so much attention been heaped upon a prospect that so few of the league's talent evaluators are convinced will be a successful NFL quarterback.

But this isn't just any old spread-offense quarterback with questionable accuracy and a long release. This is Tim Tebow, cultural icon. A phenomenon even.

To call Florida's quarterback a rock star doesn't quite capture it. He is a Beatle in cleats. The Senior Bowl usually includes a few middling prospects from nearby schools to sell some tickets. This year, the event sold out on the very day Tebow was announced as part of the roster.

More than 100 of the country's top seniors will play in the game, but he is the focus. The debate over Tebow's prospects in April's draft has become a referendum on everything this football-mad corner of the country holds most dear.

There is no middle ground on what might be a mid-round prospect.

Those who laud him think it would be an indictment of the NFL if the league's 32 teams overlook his transcendent leadership qualities. Others will point to the long list of successful college quarterbacks who were ill-suited to winning on Sundays.

At this point, it is impossible to be agnostic about Tebow, a statement that has nothing to do with the devoutness of his faith or his willingness to profess it.

The NFL is beholden to ability above everything else. You could be a Wiccan or wearing Jeff George's mustache so long as your spiral is tight and your aim is right.

That's not Tebow. He's got the foot speed and strength, but the accuracy of his left arm is a question and it takes him a long time to get rid of the ball — an elongated release in the NFL's scouting vernacular. That constitutes a problem in this league, where quarterbacks are timed down to the tenth of a second on how long it takes to get the ball out.

That's not a knock on Tebow, the two national championships he won at Florida or his Heisman Trophy. Plenty of great college quarterbacks simply were not fit to play the position in the NFL. Charlie Ward won the Heisman and a national title at Florida State, but opted to play in the NBA. Eric Crouch was a Heisman winner who first changed positions to enter the NFL and then changed his mind entirely, leaving the Rams.

In college, Tebow was an icon. In the NFL, he will be a project. At least that's what it looked like this past week. He struggled to handle a snap from under center during warm-ups, a big concern for quarterbacks coming from a spread offense. His agent said he's battling strep throat, and on Wednesday he was lackluster in 11-on-11 team drills.

But this isn't just any college football prospect trying to make his way into the league. This is a great college player. One of the very best of the past 30 years.

Whether he will ever be even a passable NFL quarterback is a question. One that will be answered the next few months.

There's one thing that is certain, though: his box-office potential.

There's a certain NFL franchise in Jacksonville that could fix its attendance problems simply by picking Tebow.

Judging by the turnout at the Te-Bowl, plenty of people would show up just to watch him wear a headset for the Jaguars.