I want to preface this by saying I was NOT a Tim Tebow fan during his college career. Having married into and fully adopted LSU-fandom, I rooted AGAINST Tebow and the Florida Gators most vehemently while he QB’d that team.
That being said, I now find myself rooting FOR Mr. Tebow, despite the fact that I have no real preference for the Denver Broncos. And I find myself kinda confused by this.
I suspect a lot of it comes from my general support of underdogs. I like it when people or teams succeed even though all the talking heads who presumably “know” things are saying that they won’t or worse yet, “can’t”. I rather like it when determination and hard work are able to overcome shortcomings in natural talent or ability. I like it even more when the underdogs credit those other than themselves, or the team effort as the key to their success.
And that pretty much sums up Tim Tebow.
His performance in last night’s playoff game against the Steelers was…not amazing…but very good. And different – certainly different than what I’d seen in the previous few games. It looked a lot to me like they just let him loose. Like they said to him, “Okay kid. You’ve been at this most of the season and you don’t seem to like the limitations we’ve put on you for calling and executing plays. Tell you what – you go out and you call the game YOU want to play. I don’t think we have anything to lose. We either win or we don’t and if you think you can get us the win, have at it.” I saw him make passes — deep passes – that I hadn’t seen him make very often until yesterday. They weren’t all brilliant. Some of them were really pretty mediocre. But some of the back-shoulder throws to the deep receivers were right were they needed to be. In stride. Out of the reach of the defenders. They were the passes that everyone said he couldn’t make.
So as of yesterday evening, he’d earned the right to look straight into the camera and say, or at least imply, “I told you so.” But he didn’t. He credits the people around him, and yes, God, for his success. I even like to think that he’s a little uncomfortable as being the “face” of the Broncos success this year, despite his leadership position at quarterback. He knows it’s not all him and says as much. And he doesn’t thank God for winning the game. He thanks God for giving him the ability to play well and give his team the opportunity to win.
And there’s the thing about him that seems to rub people the wrong way. The “God” thing. The way he wears it on his sleeve and makes sure everyone knows how he feels about God and Christ and his religious beliefs. You can be sure that lots of people along the way have told him to maybe tone that down a little. That it’s going to create enemies, and limit his marketability. Teammates, maybe coaches, likely his agent and other PR-savvy folks.
But he doesn’t. He states what he believes and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about it. You have to respect that.
But this “God” business makes people dislike him, and I understand why. I’m sure that if I spent any time with Tim, I’d eventually get rather annoyed with his proselytizing to me about how important it is to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and saviour and blah blah blah. But I don’t have to spend time with him and I don’t have to listen to him preach to me. I just have to watch him play football and prove the nay-sayers wrong.
Do I believe he’s going to be a great quarterback? No.
Do I believe he’s going to be the BEST quarterback that HE can possibly be? Absolutely. And I think that’s an important reason why I like him.
In this era of Maurice Claretts and JaMarcus Russells, it’s damned refreshing to see a highly-touted college player get to the pros and actually WORK at being the best he can be. In a game full of players with million-dollar talent and five-cent heads, it’s nice to see someone who understands how much work is involved to excel at the sport. He doesn’t take any of it for granted and he knows that playing professional football for a living is a privilege, not a right. And he didn’t have to go to prison to realize it! <koff koff Michael Vick koff koff Plaxico Burress koff koff>
Tim Tebow is smart enough to know he’s not the best, and smart enough to know that he needs to listen to people who know more than he does. He understands that he has shortcomings, and that he has to work hard to overcome them. He knows that despite the ridiculous paychecks, this is a job and you have a responsibility to work at your job and that success is never a given. Success should never be assumed. Success is a result.
And that’s what we WANT out of our sports heroes I think.
I grew up an Orioles fan in the era of Cal Ripken. And the thing that made Cal Ripken great, to me, was that despite being a fantastic player, he still worked really really hard at his position. He had natural talent and natural ability and probably enough of that to succeed without having to work too hard at it. But he DID work at it, and that’s what made him the best. Good Enough never was. There was always Better.
And the greatness of Cal Ripken, as stated by George Will, is NOT 2161 or 2632. The greatness of Cal Ripken is 3. In 1990, he committed only 3 errors in 162 games at shortstop, one of the most error-prone positions on the field. That comes from hard work, studying scouting reports, positioning yourself properly on the field, and executing your job the way you are supposed to.
And then there was the streak – made possible, in part, by Ripken’s belief that you show up for work. Period. And yeah – maybe a little Divine Intervention helped ol’ Cal out too. Consider that there were times in his career where he did get injured, but a rainout managed to give him an extra day or two to heal up so he could continue the consecutive game streak. There were injuries that happened to fall just before the All Star break, so he could rest up before the second half of the season began.
But I don’t think God, if there is one, gives a damn about baseball, or football, or the Denver Broncos or even <gasp> Tim Tebow. I think if there is a God that he/she has bigger things to worry about than whether or not some sports figure does well or gets to show the masses how the Great Being helps them along. Google “Darfur” and see if God has better things to do.
But faith and prayer permeates football — lots of players kneel down to pray after that touchdown catch, and nearly all locker rooms have a moment of prayer before heading out to “the battlefield.” So just because Tebow wears it on the outside more than most doesn’t make his beliefs uncommon within the realm.
I mean you like who you like and you dislike who you want, and as a sports fan, you don’t even need a good reason for it. Christ, I’m a Jets fan and when people ask me why, the best answer I can give them is “Because they’re the red-headed stepchild of NY sports”, and “Vinnie Testaverde”. It probably really goes all the way back to Joe Namath for me, but I don’t know. I don’t understand either, and I don’t have to. I just like who I like.
So yeah — I like Tim Tebow. And I’ll root for Tim Tebow. I’m anxious to see what comes of him over the next few years. I’ll be curious to see just HOW good he can get, with the proper coaching and all the hard work I know he’ll put into it, and with some more professional experience under his belt. And I’ll be curious to see whether he is successful and if so, whether his success ever stops sports analysts from telling me why he shouldn’t be successful.
