Tim Tebow is for real

Florida has not been one of my favorite football teams probably because over the years they have beaten our Georgia Bulldogs a good number of times. However, when Tim Tebow was their quarterback they were one of my favorite teams except when playing the Dogs.

Tebow is now the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos and some of his detractors say his religious beliefs are fake and scripted, Arnie Stapleton wrote in an article recently for the Associated Press.

Tebow has no problem professing his faith and talking about how he was more excited about building a children’s hospital in the Philippines than he was in leading the Broncos to a last minute win over the New York Jets.

Tim was born in the Philippines to parents who were missionaries and taught him never to shy away from professing his faith. He feels compelled to share his story of salvation just as Reggie White and Kurt Warner have done when playing professional football.

Before Tim became the Broncos’ starting quarterback they had won one game and lost four. When this column was written with Tim as a starter they had won four games and lost one. Despite guiding the Broncos back to some winning ways his distracters say he is a phony, fake and a goody two shoes.

His teammates and coaches who see him when the cameras aren’t around say he is a sincere, praise the Lord and pass the football kind of guy with the world at his feet and his head nowhere near the clouds.

“He really is genuine and the emotion and the passion that you see him out there playing with, he has the same passion off the field with those type of things, the charity things and the missionary things,” receiver Eddie Royal said. “He just lives that way. Like I said there’s nothing fake about Tim Tebow.”

“He’s real,” Coach John Fox agreed. “He walks the walk. A guy like that in today’s society, in my mind, ought to be celebrated, not scrutinized to the level that he is.”

Even with what his teammates and coaches say, for a guy who was raised on a farm, home schooled by his parents and listened to Frank Sinatra’s songs to pump himself up before games, Tebow still has plenty of detractors.

Champ Bailey says the same thing about Tebow that Royal says, “You know the thing is, there are reasons that people could dislike other athletes. Like, say for instance, a lot of people could love T. O. But there are reasons for people not to like him. But when people don’t like Tim, you try to understand why they don’t. Some people have a problem with Tebow wearing his religion on his sleeve.”

In his autobiography, “Through My Eyes” Tebow wrote: “It’s not always the easiest thing to be the center of attention of so much spilled ink. You read glowing things and it doesn’t feel deserved. You read things that are critical and it cuts you to the bone.”

Tim tells about lessons learned from his mother who home schooled her five children in Jacksonville, Fla. He talks about baseball, how he doesn’t like soft drinks or have time to date and about how religion was always a priority in his life. “For as long as I can remember this was instilled in me: to have fun, love Jesus and others, and tell them about Him,” he wrote.

Tebow says that he tries to take the applause and the boos in stride. “You are going to have people that praise you and people that criticize you and everything in between,” he says. “I am grounded upon my faith, my family. Football is what I do for a living and what I do for fun,” he says.

Yes, Tim Tebow is my kind of a professional quarterback as well as the many other players and coaches who are not afraid to tell and teach others about the importance of knowing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.