It was about 5 a.m. at this end of the Arabian Peninsula when Tim Tebow hooked up with Demaryius Thomas on the 80-yard scoring pass on the first play of overtime, beating the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-23 in the playoffs.

By the time I got to the offices of The National later in the morning, something odd was happening.

People were talking about Tim Tebow. And not just the Americans.

Such is the Legend of Tim Tebow that he prompts conversation, speculation and cogitation some 8,000 miles from Denver. In a country where even most of the Westerners know little or nothing about “American football.”

Around noon, an English guy from east London who works in the business section came over to me, in sports. Up till that moment I knew him to be interested only in the West Ham soccer team, which is located in the Cockney part of town. But he wanted to know if I had heard when a replay of the Broncos-Steelers game would be shown locally.

“I heard that it was a real cracker of a game,” he said.

As the day went on, a guy from Scotland had the winning play up on his computer, and a guy from England was looking over his shoulder, and they were talking about how this Tebow guy was really clutch, and one of them later asked me what I thought about it all.

(I said that it seemed like the Steelers were so worried about stopping the run that they were showing a lot of single coverage in the secondary, which made it easy for Thomas to get open.)

Someone else took issue with “this 80-yard pass … he didn’t throw the ball 80 yards. So why do they call it an 80-yard pass?”

(Another American explained that a pass play is measured by how many yards it gains, not by how far the ball travels in the air. “Looks like he passed it about 10 yards.” Said the Yank: “No, it’s more like 30.”)

Mind, any long discussion about the NFL … it just doesn’t happen here unless you’re talking to a Yank or a Canuck.

And someone else asked me when Tebow would be playing next.

I would not have you believe that the Arabs and the south Asians in the UAE have the slightest idea what Tim Tebow is up to. They do not.

But awareness among Westerners is rising. Aussies, Irish, South Africans, Germans …

Tim Tebow is creating a kind of global “expat Western” buzz. A Briton asked me, “Do you think he can beat New England?”

After marveling, again, that Europeans cared, I said, “I don’t know, but at this point I wouldn’t bet against him.”