Not Your Typical Gator QB

Even a nominal sports fan has heard of Florida QB Tim Tebow. The young man has a Heisman Trophy from 2007 and has led Florida to 2 national titles. If you have ever watched him play, he is more like a fullback than a QB. Of course, at  6ft 3in and 240 pounds he is well equipped to be the battering ram type player. Whether or not it translates to  pro football stardom remains to be seen, since he does not play an NFL style game.

But somehow I don’t think he minds  a whole lot. His  story is  rather  well known, son of a missionary to the Philippines, who survived  a  potentially life threatening birth to become a star athlete. But I like his non football side even more. His dad considered him a miracle baby since had prayed diligently for a preacher. Although God gave him a  quarterback, he could very well end up being both a preacher and a  quarterback. He makes mission  trips  to the Philippines and elsewhere and has an active  and somewhat effective prison ministry.  Perfect?  Of course not  and makes no claim to be.   A good representative of his school and college sports in general, to be sure. After all, the cover article  in last week’s Sports Illustrated by Austin Murphy had very little in the way of negatives.

Here  is what I find interesting . One of the blogs that i read regularly is Get Religion. Their focus is on how religion and religious topics are treated in the media, for good or bad. Their post on the SI article wasn’t bad although they noted that more critical questions could have been  asked  and that    it was almost a  fawning piece. Some of the comments I read made a similar point. True, the article was overwhelmingly complimentary, but so what? All too often, both college and pro sports stars make off the field news for other reasons. (Fill in your own choices here. ) And interestingly enough, if the “bad boy” in question produces results on the court or field and draws fans, i.e. makes the team money, this boorish behaviour or worse is often overlooked.

So, here we have an All American QB at a famous party school who writes scripture verses in his eye black- a problem, not for me. Guess I won’t have  a  problem  if  Florida has a successful season, unless they beat the Tar  Heels in the national championship game. I would have to draw the line there.