I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that Jeremy Lin’s game winning three-pointer against the Toronto Raptors on Valentine’s Day was my favorite sporting moment of my lifetime.

I can only imagine I’ll remember where I was when that miraculous shot dropped in the same sepia-toned nostalgia-vision my parents must remember the moon landing in.

Disregard the fact that it was a regular season game in mid-February, strike Lin’s eight turnovers from the record, forget the fact that Toronto had less than 10 wins — the country and I have a new underdog to cling to and revere and publish thousands of newspaper articles about — not unlike this one.

PATRICK DEEHAN

A week has taken place between that fateful shot and now, and the deafening buzz surrounding Jeremy Lin has since faded to a dull roar. With this, the quintessentially American process of deifying an athlete only to quickly cast them aside has begun anew.

Perspective has been gained, and that karmic dagger into the Raptors’ hopes is starting to look more like the barely-contested, straight-ahead shot to end a game between mediocre teams that it was.

Like so many sports stories, Jeremy Lin’s quick start has received far too much coverage for its own good. A vestigial trait left over from the early florid days of sports journalism in which a baseball recap often read like an epic poem, hero-making is one of the sports media’s favorite pastimes — perhaps second only to tearing those same heroes down.

One must only look back to last fall and its Tebowmania to understand that Jeremy Lin is simply the most recent tabula rasa for America to vicariously imprint itself upon. Linsanity is just the most recent burgeoning star to experience the last name-mental illness portmanteau phenomenon.

This is not to discount Jeremy Lin or his accomplishments. I love watching him play, and I think his success is more sustainable than that of last season’s faux-underdog miracle run.

Tim Tebow was a first-round pick, whereas Jeremy Lin was undrafted D-League fodder until he decided to become an all-star two weeks ago and saved a team’s doomed season as well as the career of a once-praised, then-beleaguered, now-vindicated head coach.

I almost feel guilty perpetuating the comparison between Lin and Tebow. In fact, I think we should embrace and indulge the 24-hour sports news cycle’s obsession just this once.

After all, in a time in which basketball players are ranked for college and pro potential as early as middle school, and every three star offensive lineman is parsed by thousands of armchair scouts every signing day, who knows how many true out-of-nowhere underdogs we have left?

Make no mistake, this is that rare phenomenon where the actual story is truly as weird and unlikely and organic as the story being reported.

So embrace the Linsanity. Next up, Troy Tulowitzkiphrenia.

— Patrick Deehan is a junior from Milton majoring in political science