You saw the tears. And you can't forget the tears because they were unlike any two tears you have seen. Maybe you saw them while watching CBS's broadcast of the Broncos game in Kansas City on Dec. 1, when cameras caught Denver running back
Knowshon Moreno crying during the closing notes of the national anthem. Or perhaps you caught them coming out of a second-quarter commercial break, the moment rebroadcast after Moreno scored on a three-yard pass from
Peyton Manning. Or maybe you saw the tears later that night on SportsCenter. Or in the GIFs and mash-ups and montages that swept across the Internet like a winter storm: Knowshon crying to Whitney Houston, Knowshon crying to Michael Bolton, Knowshon crying to Justin Timberlake.
The tears formed at the base of Moreno's eyes and then rushed over his cheekbones as if they were blasted from tiny garden hoses, enough water to nurture the grass at his feet on the Arrowhead Stadium sideline, to hydrate any small animals that might have wandered past. "Alligator tears," Paige Elway said to her husband, Broncos executive vice president John Elway, so impressed that she mixed both reptiles and idioms. It was an outpouring that reduced famous weepers **** Vermeil and
Terrell Owens and
Ray Lewis to wannabes. "I've never seen anybody cry like that," says Denver left guard
Zane Beadles. "Never seen that amount of tears."
On the team flight back to Denver after a 35-28 win, players passed around screenshots and video of Moreno's lachrymal moment. "Guys were joking around," says rookie running back
Montee Ball, "saying that they heard Knowshon slobbering and sobbing all over the place." At least three Twitter accounts were created for Knowshon's Tears. Back in Belford, N.J., where Moreno spent his adolescence, his grandmother and guardian, Mildred McQueen, started getting phone calls soon after CBS showed the tears, from friends and family.
They wanted to know, Why is Knowshon crying?
