Tim Tebow, Jeremy Lin Among Athletes On TIME 100 List For 2012

Breaking: Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin are important to the world! And not just to the world of sports, but to the much larger world of magazine publishing!

TIME has released its TIME 100 for 2012, a listing of "The 100 Most Influential People In The World" (which may have recently dropped the tagline "...That We Could Find Someone To Write About"), and Jets quarterback/furor fulcrum Tebow and injured Knicks point guard Lin are both on it, despite neither player having made it through a full professional season as a starter.

Lin wrote Tebow's blurb, praising his faith and leadership, while Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a fellow Harvard grad with a passion for hoops, wrote about how Lin's story "is a great lesson for kids everywhere."

All players from other sports had to do to make the list? Be the best in their sport, really: Novak Djokovic, Lionel Messi, Yani Tseng, and Oscar Pistorius all have write-ups in the issue, with Messi's penned by Mia Hamm and Tseng's by Annika Sorenstam.