Perhaps no player captured more public attention this football season than Tim Tebow, the last choice quarterback of the Denver Broncos. He replaced Kyle Orton, the starting quarterback, early in the season. Tebow was so low on the Broncos totem pole that at one point, their front office had considered jumping rookie quarterback Adam Weber from the practice squad to the starting position. Orton quarterbacked the first four games of this season, losing three of them. Therefore yielding to the fans, the quarterback job was given to Tebow who engineered seven wins in the next ten games. All seven of those wins were 4th quarter comebacks. With Tebow as quarterback, the Broncos finished their season with an 8-8 record and made it into the playoffs.
Tebow, who was the first round pick of the Broncos, brought to Denver a college record in which he quarterbacked the University of Florida to two national titles, won the Heisman trophy (he was a finalist two other years), and won many other awards for himself and the Florida Gators, while racking up 9,286 passing yards, 2,947 rushing yards, and 145 total touchdowns. He also brought to Denver an overt witness of his Christian faith which he had demonstrated in college with scripture references on his eye black, a practice since banned by the NCAA. Other on-field examples of his Christian discipleship include pointing heavenward and kneeing for prayer as gestures of thanks when his team had cause for celebration in a game – a practice that is euphemistically referred to as “Tebowing.”
Tebow is a good guy on and off the football, a quality all too absent among the over-paid, over-idolized, and over-indulged professional athletes today. The legal scrapes of Plaxico Burris and Michael Vick, both of whom did jail time for some of their high jinks, are well-known. The sordid scandals at Syracuse and Pitt State also come to mind. Ben Roethlisberger has been involved in two sexual assault cases, and for violating the NFL personal conduct policy, he was suspended without pay from playing in the first six games of the 2010 season. Ray Lewis was indicted in an Atlanta murder in 2000 for which he was fined $250,000 by the NFL – the largest non-substance abuse fine ever levied. In the decade between 2000 and 2010 there were 500 NFL player major arrests – about one per week. And last year Sports Illustrated tracked the public arrest records of professional and college athletes over the eight-month period from January 1, 2010 to August 31, 2010 and documented 125, more than one every other day. That number did not include minor arrests.
I could go on, but you get the point.
Now comes a guy who lifts the spirit of the game and, one hopes, the spirits of the fans. I’m unaware that Tebow has ever trash-talked, intimidated, or mocked another player. Yet in the game against Detroit, the Broncos offensive line, which won’t win any awards for protecting their quarterback, allowed Tebow to get sacked seven times, one of which was laid on by linebacker Stephen Tulloch. A film clip shows Tebow struggling to get up while Tullock took a knee in apparent mockery by “Tebowing.” When a news reporter asked him about it later, Tebow said, "He was probably just having fun and was excited he made a good play and had a sack. And good for him!" Yet following the heart-stopping Denver victory over the Minnesota Vikings, Tebow was asked which was the most satisfying congratulatory comment he had received for his win, and he brushed the question aside to tell about a young leukemia patient in Florida who had been moved during the week to terminal hospice care and how excited he (Tebow) was to mention the boy’s name on national television and tell him that he cared.
Each week Tebow flies a person who is suffering with a serious disease or dying to Denver along with family or friends. He pays for a rental car that is waiting for them at the airport and a room at a nice hotel, pays for their meals, gets them free field level seats, visits with them before and after the game in the Denver family room, which is off-limits to the press, and sends them on their way with a basket of gifts.
One such guest was 16-year old Bailey Knaub who has had 73 surgeries for Wegener's granulomatosis, an incurable inflammation of blood vessels that affects the nose, lungs, kidneys and other organs. She has had the condition since she was 7 and it has cost her one lung. Her cousin wrote a letter to the Tebow Foundation about Bailey whose hero is Tim Tebow. When he called her a couple of weeks ago to ask if she and her family would be his guests for the playoff game against the Steelers, she couldn’t believe it. Meeting him was a dream come true and she and her entire family, including siblings, had their picture made with Tebow in uniform before the game just so she could prove to her friends that it happened. Tebow's faith in God was the same as hers, she said, and he was as humble as she thought, as generous as she hoped, and as genuine as he's always appeared to her.
"I had all these ideas in my mind, and it just confirmed everything in my mind," Bailey said. "It was just like 10 times more. It was everything I could have imagined. It was perfect." Tebow gave her a Bible and spent personal time with her and her family before the game. At his request, Bailey joined Tebow for a sit-down televised interview conducted by CBS' James Brown for the NFL Today pregame show that was aired before Denver’s game the following week with Tom Brady’s New England Patriots.
After the Steelers game, which Tebow won in overtime with a pass and 80-yard run to Demaryius Thomas, Tebow left the field for the Broncos family room where he met Bailey again with her family. "Here he'd just played the game of his life," Bailey's mother said, "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey." He grabbed Demaryius and pulled him in the room, and he asked John Elway and Coach Fox to come and meet her. About her day with Tebow, Bailey later recalled:
It was the best day of my life. It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises.
Tebow, the son of missionaries, has a heart for people who aren’t as fortunate as he is. At the end of his college football career at Florida, he attended a football awards ceremony at Walt Disney World where he met 20-year old Kelly Faughnan, a Tebow college football fan. She was wearing an “I love Timmy” button at the ceremony which someone noticed and asked her if she would like to meet her hero. Kelly has a brain tumor that has left her with hearing loss and constant conspicuous tremors. Tebow met her and her family and spent a good while talking with them before asking Kelly if she would like to be his date for the award ceremony the next evening. She accepted and Tebow, with a trembling Kelly on his arm, walked down the awards red carpet together.
I could go on and tell about 9-year-old Zac Taylor, a child who lives in constant pain. Tebow visited him in the hospital and whispered a “secret” hospital prayer in his ear. Or I could tell about Jacob Rainey, a 6-foot-3, 215 pound high school quarterback. He had attracted the big name college scouts’ attention while playing high school football, just as Tebow had done in high school. But unlike Tebow, a freak tackle in a scrimmage ruptured an artery and required his leg to be amputated. Tebow flew Jacob and his family to Buffalo where they watched their host get his clock cleaned 40 to 14. After the game, Tebow met the Rainey family with a grin: “Well, that didn’t go as planned,” and immediately shifted the conversation to the Raineys – did they have fun watching the game, what would they like to do before returning home? Or there’s 55-year old Tom Driscoll who was Tebow’s guest for the Cincinnati game. Driscoll is dying of brain cancer.
Isn’t it a big distraction to spend so much time with these people before and after a game in a sport that puts careers and championships on the line every week? Most players are so focused before the game that they hardly speak to each other, and after a game they are so up or down, depending on its outcome, that it’s hard for them to think about anyone else. Not so with Tebow.
It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference.
And this kid is only 24 years old.
I’m not an apologist for Tim Tebow. His book, Through My Eyes: A Quarterback's Journey, certainly convinced me that he is a remarkable young man with a life-shaping childhood, but there are many people in and out of the NFL who do admirable things. San Diego quarterback Phillip Rivers and his junior high school sweetheart-wife are devoted to their church and speak to rallies of young people about spirituality and sexual abstinence. Tony Dungy’s faith is well-known, and his mentoring of troubled athletes helped Michael Vick find redemption and a job on the Eagles team. Retired 49ers quarterback Steve Young, a descendent of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young, works with underprivileged children through his foundation. Kurt Warner and his wife Brenda are devout evangelical Christians. Kurt was named by Sports Illustrated the best role model on and off the field in the NFL in 2009, and the following year he received the Bart Starr award for outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field, and in the community. With the award, Starr said, “We have never given this award to anyone who is more deserving." And who hasn’t heard of the late great, bone-crushing Reggie White, the Hall of Fame Green Bay defensive end who was called the Minister of Defense for his faith and evangelical preaching? Reggie went to his reward too early at age 43 from a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.
Yet Tebow’s humility – dropping to a knee to give thanks and pointing heavenward after a touchdown – drives his critics nuts. Remarkably, the end zone shimmies by other players – some of which border on obscene – don’t seem to bother them. The football talking heads may complain about Tebow’s wounded duck passing, his slow delivery in the pocket, and his jittery scrambling out of the pocket that doesn’t seem to know what to do, but it’s his overt faith and belief that football is a just a game and not his god that really sets their teeth on edge.
In a recent survey 43% of the respondents believed that God was helping Tebow and the Broncos to win and many thought the playoff game defeat of the Steelers was nothing short of a God-given “miracle.” But Tebow has never said that he prays to win or that God helps him to win. Dropping to a knee to give thanks, praying on the bench, and singing hymns to himself on the sidelines at times is his way of acknowledging that he has received something that he hasn’t earned. Sure, some might say that training camp, studying films and playbooks, working hard to be in peak condition is justification for a player to claim he’s earned his success. But God says, “The gold is mine and the silver is mine … the land is mine and you are my tenants. Remember God, for he gives you the ability to produce wealth.” Tebow knows that everything he receives is a gift from the one who owns everything, so anything he receives is cause for thanks.
The cynic believes when something is too good to be true, it’s usually not true and Tebow is too good to be true.
Therefore, Saturday Night Life followed up the Denver win over Chicago with a skit in which Jesus visited the Broncos team in their locker room after the game complaining that too often he had to bail them out in the 4th quarter because of their horrible play in the other three quarters. “I, the Son of God, am responsible for your wins,” he asserts. The flippant Jesus character tells the obsequious Tebow character to “take it down a notch” in his religious fervor. I checked YouTube to verify that the skit was more or less as the press reported and noticed that it has had slightly over one million hits. When Tebow wore John 3:16 in his eye black during the 2009 BCS championship game, Google had 90 million hits in the following 24 hours searching for the verse.
Bill Maher, one of Tebow’s most virulent critics, is euphoric when Tebow’s religious magic doesn’t work. In MaherWorld a Tebow touchdown is a score for the evangelicals whereas a score by the other team chalks one up for the atheists, which Maher claims he is. Toward that end, after Tebow threw his third interception, Maher tweeted during the Christmas Eve Broncos game with Buffalo, “Wow, Jesus just (expletive) Tim Tebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is Tebowing, saying to Hitler, ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.’”
I know of no other NFL players who rate websites like TimmyTebowSuck.com or TebowHaters.com. Who else is disliked with such ferocity to deserve a twitter account like @WhyTebowSucks or an “I Hate Tim Tebow” Facebook page? An Orlando radio station even launched a crudely-named campaign in which one of its female employees declared her intent to sabotage Tebow’s pledge to save his virginity for marriage by taking it by force if necessary. And when all else fails, the critics can ask (and have) how else can a 24-year old millionaire 6-foot-3, 245 pound quarterback who attracts young good-looking women in droves continue to wear a purity ring unless …. he is gay?
Tebow helped give Broncos fans a thrilling season this year, including an improbable win in the wild card playoff game against Pittsburgh. To pull off another improbable win in the divisional playoff against the New England Patriots with a second-year quarterback playing in his first real season would be unthinkable. For all intents, that game was over in the first ten minutes. But Tebow had taken a 1-4 team to an 8-8 season plus a playoff win. That’s something to be proud of.
Will Tebow lead the team next year? "Of course, he's our guy," Broncos rookie safety Rahim Moore said. "People put too much pressure on him. He's going to have some good, some bad. I believe in him, and I would like him to be our quarterback. Our team jells around him."
John Elway, head of football operations was more tepid in his confirmation of Tebow’s future on the team. Tebow will be the starting quarterback when the team starts training camp for next season. That’s all Elway would commit. Like Tebow, Elway is learning a new job because, like Tebow, he can be fired. His less than enthusiastic endorsement of the 24-year old who brought the Broncos back from the dead suggests that who John Elway would really like to see as quarterback … is another John Elway.
In the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, a mythical golf tournament brings together Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones together in a match-up with the central character, Rannulph Junuh. In the club house dressing room before the last round of the tournament, Jones reveals to Junuh that this is his final competitive match. “I've got a wife, three children, and a law practice,” Jones says. “It's time to stop. It's just a game, Junuh.” Jones was returning to the real world.
If football were his only goal in life, as it is for so many who play this game, perhaps including John Elway, Sunday’s thrashing by the Patriots would have made it a long flight from Boston back to Denver. But as the Bobby Jones character understood, it’s just a game. In Tebow’s words:
It still wasn't a bad day. It still was a good day, because I got to spend some time before the game with Zack McLeod [a 20-year-old Cambridge native who suffered a traumatic brain injury playing football] and make him smile, and overall when you get to do that, it's still a positive day. Sometimes that's hard to see, but it depends what lens you're looking through. I choose to look through those lenses, and I got to make a kid's day, that's more important than winning the game. So, I am proud of that.
Now that the season is over for him, is Tebow glad to get out of the glare for a while and away from the critics who delighted in every setback he suffered this year?
There are pros and cons with everything. Sometimes, you don't want it all. You just like to be able to go to dinner, hang out with friends, be a normal 24-year old. So that makes it sometimes hard. But I wouldn't change it for the world, because by having that, I have the platform to walk into a hospital and share with kids, I have the opportunity to hang out with Zack before a game, I have the opportunity to go build a hospital in the Philippines or to do a lot more important things than football.
St. Francis of Assisi said preach the gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.
That’s what Tim Tebow is doing.
Tebow, who was the first round pick of the Broncos, brought to Denver a college record in which he quarterbacked the University of Florida to two national titles, won the Heisman trophy (he was a finalist two other years), and won many other awards for himself and the Florida Gators, while racking up 9,286 passing yards, 2,947 rushing yards, and 145 total touchdowns. He also brought to Denver an overt witness of his Christian faith which he had demonstrated in college with scripture references on his eye black, a practice since banned by the NCAA. Other on-field examples of his Christian discipleship include pointing heavenward and kneeing for prayer as gestures of thanks when his team had cause for celebration in a game – a practice that is euphemistically referred to as “Tebowing.”
Tebow is a good guy on and off the football, a quality all too absent among the over-paid, over-idolized, and over-indulged professional athletes today. The legal scrapes of Plaxico Burris and Michael Vick, both of whom did jail time for some of their high jinks, are well-known. The sordid scandals at Syracuse and Pitt State also come to mind. Ben Roethlisberger has been involved in two sexual assault cases, and for violating the NFL personal conduct policy, he was suspended without pay from playing in the first six games of the 2010 season. Ray Lewis was indicted in an Atlanta murder in 2000 for which he was fined $250,000 by the NFL – the largest non-substance abuse fine ever levied. In the decade between 2000 and 2010 there were 500 NFL player major arrests – about one per week. And last year Sports Illustrated tracked the public arrest records of professional and college athletes over the eight-month period from January 1, 2010 to August 31, 2010 and documented 125, more than one every other day. That number did not include minor arrests.
I could go on, but you get the point.
Now comes a guy who lifts the spirit of the game and, one hopes, the spirits of the fans. I’m unaware that Tebow has ever trash-talked, intimidated, or mocked another player. Yet in the game against Detroit, the Broncos offensive line, which won’t win any awards for protecting their quarterback, allowed Tebow to get sacked seven times, one of which was laid on by linebacker Stephen Tulloch. A film clip shows Tebow struggling to get up while Tullock took a knee in apparent mockery by “Tebowing.” When a news reporter asked him about it later, Tebow said, "He was probably just having fun and was excited he made a good play and had a sack. And good for him!" Yet following the heart-stopping Denver victory over the Minnesota Vikings, Tebow was asked which was the most satisfying congratulatory comment he had received for his win, and he brushed the question aside to tell about a young leukemia patient in Florida who had been moved during the week to terminal hospice care and how excited he (Tebow) was to mention the boy’s name on national television and tell him that he cared.
Each week Tebow flies a person who is suffering with a serious disease or dying to Denver along with family or friends. He pays for a rental car that is waiting for them at the airport and a room at a nice hotel, pays for their meals, gets them free field level seats, visits with them before and after the game in the Denver family room, which is off-limits to the press, and sends them on their way with a basket of gifts.
One such guest was 16-year old Bailey Knaub who has had 73 surgeries for Wegener's granulomatosis, an incurable inflammation of blood vessels that affects the nose, lungs, kidneys and other organs. She has had the condition since she was 7 and it has cost her one lung. Her cousin wrote a letter to the Tebow Foundation about Bailey whose hero is Tim Tebow. When he called her a couple of weeks ago to ask if she and her family would be his guests for the playoff game against the Steelers, she couldn’t believe it. Meeting him was a dream come true and she and her entire family, including siblings, had their picture made with Tebow in uniform before the game just so she could prove to her friends that it happened. Tebow's faith in God was the same as hers, she said, and he was as humble as she thought, as generous as she hoped, and as genuine as he's always appeared to her.
"I had all these ideas in my mind, and it just confirmed everything in my mind," Bailey said. "It was just like 10 times more. It was everything I could have imagined. It was perfect." Tebow gave her a Bible and spent personal time with her and her family before the game. At his request, Bailey joined Tebow for a sit-down televised interview conducted by CBS' James Brown for the NFL Today pregame show that was aired before Denver’s game the following week with Tom Brady’s New England Patriots.
After the Steelers game, which Tebow won in overtime with a pass and 80-yard run to Demaryius Thomas, Tebow left the field for the Broncos family room where he met Bailey again with her family. "Here he'd just played the game of his life," Bailey's mother said, "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey." He grabbed Demaryius and pulled him in the room, and he asked John Elway and Coach Fox to come and meet her. About her day with Tebow, Bailey later recalled:
It was the best day of my life. It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises.
Tebow, the son of missionaries, has a heart for people who aren’t as fortunate as he is. At the end of his college football career at Florida, he attended a football awards ceremony at Walt Disney World where he met 20-year old Kelly Faughnan, a Tebow college football fan. She was wearing an “I love Timmy” button at the ceremony which someone noticed and asked her if she would like to meet her hero. Kelly has a brain tumor that has left her with hearing loss and constant conspicuous tremors. Tebow met her and her family and spent a good while talking with them before asking Kelly if she would like to be his date for the award ceremony the next evening. She accepted and Tebow, with a trembling Kelly on his arm, walked down the awards red carpet together.
I could go on and tell about 9-year-old Zac Taylor, a child who lives in constant pain. Tebow visited him in the hospital and whispered a “secret” hospital prayer in his ear. Or I could tell about Jacob Rainey, a 6-foot-3, 215 pound high school quarterback. He had attracted the big name college scouts’ attention while playing high school football, just as Tebow had done in high school. But unlike Tebow, a freak tackle in a scrimmage ruptured an artery and required his leg to be amputated. Tebow flew Jacob and his family to Buffalo where they watched their host get his clock cleaned 40 to 14. After the game, Tebow met the Rainey family with a grin: “Well, that didn’t go as planned,” and immediately shifted the conversation to the Raineys – did they have fun watching the game, what would they like to do before returning home? Or there’s 55-year old Tom Driscoll who was Tebow’s guest for the Cincinnati game. Driscoll is dying of brain cancer.
Isn’t it a big distraction to spend so much time with these people before and after a game in a sport that puts careers and championships on the line every week? Most players are so focused before the game that they hardly speak to each other, and after a game they are so up or down, depending on its outcome, that it’s hard for them to think about anyone else. Not so with Tebow.
It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference.
And this kid is only 24 years old.
I’m not an apologist for Tim Tebow. His book, Through My Eyes: A Quarterback's Journey, certainly convinced me that he is a remarkable young man with a life-shaping childhood, but there are many people in and out of the NFL who do admirable things. San Diego quarterback Phillip Rivers and his junior high school sweetheart-wife are devoted to their church and speak to rallies of young people about spirituality and sexual abstinence. Tony Dungy’s faith is well-known, and his mentoring of troubled athletes helped Michael Vick find redemption and a job on the Eagles team. Retired 49ers quarterback Steve Young, a descendent of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young, works with underprivileged children through his foundation. Kurt Warner and his wife Brenda are devout evangelical Christians. Kurt was named by Sports Illustrated the best role model on and off the field in the NFL in 2009, and the following year he received the Bart Starr award for outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field, and in the community. With the award, Starr said, “We have never given this award to anyone who is more deserving." And who hasn’t heard of the late great, bone-crushing Reggie White, the Hall of Fame Green Bay defensive end who was called the Minister of Defense for his faith and evangelical preaching? Reggie went to his reward too early at age 43 from a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.
Yet Tebow’s humility – dropping to a knee to give thanks and pointing heavenward after a touchdown – drives his critics nuts. Remarkably, the end zone shimmies by other players – some of which border on obscene – don’t seem to bother them. The football talking heads may complain about Tebow’s wounded duck passing, his slow delivery in the pocket, and his jittery scrambling out of the pocket that doesn’t seem to know what to do, but it’s his overt faith and belief that football is a just a game and not his god that really sets their teeth on edge.
In a recent survey 43% of the respondents believed that God was helping Tebow and the Broncos to win and many thought the playoff game defeat of the Steelers was nothing short of a God-given “miracle.” But Tebow has never said that he prays to win or that God helps him to win. Dropping to a knee to give thanks, praying on the bench, and singing hymns to himself on the sidelines at times is his way of acknowledging that he has received something that he hasn’t earned. Sure, some might say that training camp, studying films and playbooks, working hard to be in peak condition is justification for a player to claim he’s earned his success. But God says, “The gold is mine and the silver is mine … the land is mine and you are my tenants. Remember God, for he gives you the ability to produce wealth.” Tebow knows that everything he receives is a gift from the one who owns everything, so anything he receives is cause for thanks.
The cynic believes when something is too good to be true, it’s usually not true and Tebow is too good to be true.
Therefore, Saturday Night Life followed up the Denver win over Chicago with a skit in which Jesus visited the Broncos team in their locker room after the game complaining that too often he had to bail them out in the 4th quarter because of their horrible play in the other three quarters. “I, the Son of God, am responsible for your wins,” he asserts. The flippant Jesus character tells the obsequious Tebow character to “take it down a notch” in his religious fervor. I checked YouTube to verify that the skit was more or less as the press reported and noticed that it has had slightly over one million hits. When Tebow wore John 3:16 in his eye black during the 2009 BCS championship game, Google had 90 million hits in the following 24 hours searching for the verse.
Bill Maher, one of Tebow’s most virulent critics, is euphoric when Tebow’s religious magic doesn’t work. In MaherWorld a Tebow touchdown is a score for the evangelicals whereas a score by the other team chalks one up for the atheists, which Maher claims he is. Toward that end, after Tebow threw his third interception, Maher tweeted during the Christmas Eve Broncos game with Buffalo, “Wow, Jesus just (expletive) Tim Tebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is Tebowing, saying to Hitler, ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.’”
I know of no other NFL players who rate websites like TimmyTebowSuck.com or TebowHaters.com. Who else is disliked with such ferocity to deserve a twitter account like @WhyTebowSucks or an “I Hate Tim Tebow” Facebook page? An Orlando radio station even launched a crudely-named campaign in which one of its female employees declared her intent to sabotage Tebow’s pledge to save his virginity for marriage by taking it by force if necessary. And when all else fails, the critics can ask (and have) how else can a 24-year old millionaire 6-foot-3, 245 pound quarterback who attracts young good-looking women in droves continue to wear a purity ring unless …. he is gay?
Tebow helped give Broncos fans a thrilling season this year, including an improbable win in the wild card playoff game against Pittsburgh. To pull off another improbable win in the divisional playoff against the New England Patriots with a second-year quarterback playing in his first real season would be unthinkable. For all intents, that game was over in the first ten minutes. But Tebow had taken a 1-4 team to an 8-8 season plus a playoff win. That’s something to be proud of.
Will Tebow lead the team next year? "Of course, he's our guy," Broncos rookie safety Rahim Moore said. "People put too much pressure on him. He's going to have some good, some bad. I believe in him, and I would like him to be our quarterback. Our team jells around him."
John Elway, head of football operations was more tepid in his confirmation of Tebow’s future on the team. Tebow will be the starting quarterback when the team starts training camp for next season. That’s all Elway would commit. Like Tebow, Elway is learning a new job because, like Tebow, he can be fired. His less than enthusiastic endorsement of the 24-year old who brought the Broncos back from the dead suggests that who John Elway would really like to see as quarterback … is another John Elway.
In the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, a mythical golf tournament brings together Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones together in a match-up with the central character, Rannulph Junuh. In the club house dressing room before the last round of the tournament, Jones reveals to Junuh that this is his final competitive match. “I've got a wife, three children, and a law practice,” Jones says. “It's time to stop. It's just a game, Junuh.” Jones was returning to the real world.
If football were his only goal in life, as it is for so many who play this game, perhaps including John Elway, Sunday’s thrashing by the Patriots would have made it a long flight from Boston back to Denver. But as the Bobby Jones character understood, it’s just a game. In Tebow’s words:
It still wasn't a bad day. It still was a good day, because I got to spend some time before the game with Zack McLeod [a 20-year-old Cambridge native who suffered a traumatic brain injury playing football] and make him smile, and overall when you get to do that, it's still a positive day. Sometimes that's hard to see, but it depends what lens you're looking through. I choose to look through those lenses, and I got to make a kid's day, that's more important than winning the game. So, I am proud of that.
Now that the season is over for him, is Tebow glad to get out of the glare for a while and away from the critics who delighted in every setback he suffered this year?
There are pros and cons with everything. Sometimes, you don't want it all. You just like to be able to go to dinner, hang out with friends, be a normal 24-year old. So that makes it sometimes hard. But I wouldn't change it for the world, because by having that, I have the platform to walk into a hospital and share with kids, I have the opportunity to hang out with Zack before a game, I have the opportunity to go build a hospital in the Philippines or to do a lot more important things than football.
St. Francis of Assisi said preach the gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.
That’s what Tim Tebow is doing.
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