You Gotta Love Tim Tebow
Welcome to Waldo, Fla., home of a giant flea market (NORTH CENTRAL FLORIDA'S LARGEST!), a superb antiques village (OPEN 7 DAYS) and one of the most devious speed traps in the world. Over the course of a quarter mile on the way into town, the speed limit plunges from 65 mph to 35. Word is, Waldo's finest aren't real big on giving out warnings.
There, just north of the antiques village, a southbound semi sat on the shoulder on a recent July evening, its driver a picture of surliness as an officer wrote him up. Cruising past in the opposite direction in his customized white GMC van, Jim Williams issued this instruction to one of his seven passengers: "Tim, duck your head."
"Yes, sir," replied Florida quarterback Tim Tebow from his uncomfortable—and illegal—position on the floor of the vehicle. When the traveling party turned out to have one more member than the van had seats, the most valuable player on the defending national champions had insisted on being the one to ride without a seat belt.
Williams is an electrical contractor who has volunteered in the state's Department of Corrections for 35 years. He was ferrying Tebow and three other Gators to the Lawtey Correctional Institution, one of Florida's four "faith-and-character-based" prisons. There would be prayers and singing, and gospel music from the prison's own band. But the highlight of the night would be a 25-minute oration by Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, who would stress the importance of "finishing strong" and conclude with an invitation for inmates to come down from the bleachers to be his "brothers in Christ" and be born again.
"It's one of my favorite things to do," Tebow said during the drive, making it sound as if he were bound for Walt Disney World rather than this razor-wire-ribboned stalag 35 miles northeast of Gainesville. "You're talking to guys who have no hope, no support, who have been totally written off by the world."
Watching Tebow zip passes into the seams of opposing defenses, lower his shoulder in short yardage and exhort his teammates like King Henry V on St. Crispin's Day, one might think that he was put on this earth just to run coach Urban Meyer's spread offense. Watching him pace the floor of a gymnasium packed with 660 wayward men hanging on his every syllable is to realize that regardless of what position Tebow eventually plays in the NFL, and for how long, the football phase of his life is merely a means to a greater end.
The man on the other end of the line is calling from the Philippines. He has taken time fromhis missionary work to reply to a reporter's e-mailed questions. Now Bob Tebowhas a question of his own: "Have you heard the story of Timmy'sbirth?"
Even if you have, it's worth hearing from the mouth of his father: "When I was out in the mountains in Mindanao, back in '86, I was showing a film and preaching that night. I was weeping over the millions of babies being [aborted] in America, and I prayed, 'God, if you give me a son, if you give me Timmy, I'll raise him to be a preacher.'" Not long after, Bob and Pam Tebow conceived their fifth child. It was a very difficult pregnancy. "The placenta was never properly attached, and there was bleeding from the get-go," Bob recalls. "We thought we'd lost him several times." Early in the pregnancy Pam contracted amebic dysentery, which briefly put her in a coma. Her doctors, fearful that medications they had given her had damaged the fetus, advised her to abort it. She refused, and on Aug. 14, 1987, Pam delivered a healthy if somewhat scrawny Timothy Richard Tebow.
"All his life, from the moment he could understand, I told him, 'You're a miracle baby,'" Bob recalls. "'God's got a purpose for you, and at some point I think He's going to call you to preach.'
"I asked God for a preacher, and he gave me a quarterback."
It's a good line, and a welcome injection of levity from a man who takes his religion very seriously. But it's fast becoming obsolete. Having covered Tim for three years, I would say he's the most effective ambassador-warrior for his faith I've come across in 25 years at SI.
Why? A big reason, Tebow believes, is his style of play. A lot of otherwise jaded inmates "respect the way I play the game," he speculates, "so they'll keep an open mind, give me a chance." As Florida State coach Bobby Bowden noted after watching number 15 carry half his defense into the end zone on a touchdown run last season, Tebow "brings a little Bronko Nagurski to the quarterback position."
But while Tebow will happily discuss his religion, he has no use for the hard sell. That's not his style. "He's not going to come up and force anything on you," says David Nelson, the Florida senior wideout who accompanied Tebow to Lawtey along with Gators cornerbacks Adrian Bushell, a freshman, and sophomore Janoris Jenkins, and who introduced Tebow to the prisoners. "He wants people to see what he believes through his actions. He wants them to say, 'I see the way you live your life, the passion you have, the fun you have, and I want what you've got.'"
It helps that Tebow does not resemble the dour ascetics of Grant Wood's iconic painting American Gothic. When he wasn't saving souls or signing autographs at Lawtey, Tebow was chatting up prison officials and their wives and children or cracking wise with Nelson. (The wideout's passion for spreading the word rivals Tebow's, while Bushell and Jenkins were making their first prison visit at the strong urging of their quarterback.)
At a time when Americans are leaving organized religion in large numbers, according to a 2008 Pew Research poll, Tebow is leading his own personal counterinsurgency. "Every Sunday we have a service for our players and their families," says Meyer, who remembers when "three or four kids would show up. Now the room's full." Since Tebow's arrival on campus, and in large part because of him, Florida has launched a series of community-service initiatives. Even as the football program has suffered an embarrassing string of arrests, the number of hours players devote to charitable causes has dramatically increased. "Our community service hours are completely off the charts," says Meyer, who describes his quarterback's influence on the team as "phenomenal."
Only slightly less remarkable was the decision by Meyer and his family last summer to take a Tebow-inspired missionary trip to the Dominican Republic. It had begun to prey on Meyer's conscience that he luxuriated on a cruise ship or sat on a beach while his starting quarterback spent his vacation working in a Filipino slum. Thus did the Meyer clan sign on for six days of servitude in the Dominican—and end up loving it. "Tim has done a lot of things to open my eyes," says the coach, "and that's one of them."
Even Meyer would admit, however, that the Tebow Effect can be disruptive. Various Gators assistants were approaching DefCon 1 in the hours before last January's BCS title game against Oklahoma: Fifteen or so players were not in their rooms at the team hotel and couldn't be found. It turned out they'd been summoned to Tebow's room, where the quarterback admitted that the immense pressure of the looming title game had begun to distract him, wear him down. Thumbing through his Bible (the one with TIMMY inscribed on the cover), he'd chanced upon a passage in Matthew that gave him a measure of calm and that he wanted to share with them: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
The verses had the desired effect, relaxing the assembled Gators so much that a kind of impromptu revival meeting broke out. Soon the entire group had broken into song. Casting his mind back to that day, Tebow recalls informing his teammates that they would beat the Sooners "not because we're the better team or because we've worked harder," although he believed those things were true. "We're going to win because we're going to handle it the right way, we're going to be humble with it, with God leading us."
So it struck a discordant note to see this Christian warrior flagged for a penalty following a 13-yard run late in the fourth quarter. Rather than turn away after a fusillade of profanity from Oklahoma safety Nic Harris, Tebow says, "I let the Gator speak for me." His theatrical Gator chomp in the direction of Harris drew what is believed to be the first unsportsmanlike conduct penalty of his life. It isn't always the Almighty speaking through Tebow, it turns out. Sometimes it's an oversize reptile.
The Tebows moved from the Philippines to Florida when Tim was three. He grew up country strong, doing chores on the family's 44-acre spread outside Jacksonville. All five of the Tebow children were homeschooled by Pam, the daughter of an Army colonel. To meet Pam is to understand where Tim gets much of his mental toughness. Pam emphasized selflessness and compassion—lessons underscored during the kids' annual summer visits to the Philippines, where they worked in their father's ministry. Founded in 1985, the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association boasts a staff of 45 Filipino pastors who have preached the Gospel to more than 15 million. The ministry has also helped start 10,000 churches and opened an orphanage that houses more than 50 children.
Under the heading What We Believe, the BTEA's website details the conservative brand of Christianity it is spreading. The ministry espouses a literal interpretation of the Bible ("This is to say the written Word of God is totally without error of any kind"), supports the teaching of Creationism ("We believe God created the heavens and the earth ... out of nothing in six 24-hour days") and is convinced of the inevitability of the Rapture followed by a seven-year tribulation period. "During this time the antichrist will appear," says the BTEA. Some will be saved, but "many will be martyred."
Asked if there is any wiggle room for people nagged by doubts about, say, the creation of the world in six days or the imminence of the Rapture, Bob strikes a warm,inclusive note. "You don't have to believe everything I believe to be saved," he says. "You just need to believe in the Lord Jesus and trust him to give you the free gift of eternal life, and you can figure out Genesis and all that other stuff later."
A few minutes before arriving at Lawtey, Williams reminds his passengers to leave their phones behind. "They have two cellphone dogs," he says. "The prisoners smuggle 'em in and do business with 'em, so the Florida legislature made it a third-degree felony to have a cellphone in prison."
A guard across the parking lot greets the visitors with an enthusiastic Gator chomp. At the main gate officers collect driver's licenses from the visitors and hand them electronic monitoring devices to be attached to their waistbands. "If you're about to get shanked," Tebow tells Bushell and Jenkins, "you push this button." They think he's kidding, but they're not sure. As if to reinforce their doubts, a guard says, "This ain't the Swamp. We ain't playin' here."
When Tebow finally takes the mike, he is greeted by raucous cheers and more Gator chomps. He asks the convicts, "Who's got the best hands in here?" A tight-end-sized ward of the state claims that he does and runs a pattern under the near baseline. He muffs a pass from Tebow that, to be fair, was thrown slightly behind him.
In a speech punctuated by exclamations of "Amen!" and bursts of static from guards' radios, Tebow relates how, regardless of the venue—weight room, off-season workout, practice field or game—the Florida coaches are always on the Gators to "finish strong." He notes how this ethos fueled a fourth-quarter comeback against Alabama in the SEC title game, then helped break a 7–7 halftime deadlock against Oklahoma.
Yes, the emphasis on finishing strong applied to football, Tebow says. "But more important," he adds, telegraphing his transition, "it applies to life.
"A lot of you have started the first, second and third quarters really bad," he says, and the room falls silent. "You might be losing. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Because it's about how you finish!"
When the cheering fades, Tebow shares with the inmates the fact that as a young boy he cared more about sports than about his Savior. "I told myself, I don't need Jesus," he says. "I was full of pride. It was all about me." If he could see the light, they can too. But, he continues, "you might say, 'I don't want that gift. I'll be fine—I don't need any help!'" Then he asks the convicts a question:
"If you were to die right now, where would you be?" By which he means, in which direction would your soul be headed? "For me," he says, "I have an answer to that question. I am one hundred percent certain I'm going to go to heaven because I have Jesus Christ in my life."
When the speech is over, Tebow is introduced to a wiry inmate named Jeremy Bensen, who within seconds is sharing the initial difficulty he had "trusting in God." The Scripture that got him over the hump, he says, "was Proverbs 3: 5 and 6." He begins to recite—"Trust in the Lord with all your heart"—and Tebow chimes in, "In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your path." They finish together, then smile a bit sheepishly across the table at one another like the nerds for Jesus they are.
After Tebow has spent a half hour signing memorabilia; after he and his teammates have gathered for a picture in the foyer outside the warden's office; and after Bushell has tried to sabotage the shot by goosing Tebow and Tebow has mumbled, "Here we are in prison and I've got Adrian grabbing my butt," cracking up the entire room, Williams assesses the evening's harvest. "Fourteen salvations and two rededications," he announces. "Not a bad day's work." Fourteen men accepted Tebow's invitation to follow his righteous path.
Back on Highway 301, headed for Gainesville, Williams estimates that he has taken Tebow to about a dozen prisons. "His mama trusts me with him," the older man explains. "She doesn't want him to spend his limited time speaking to Kiwanis clubs. She wants him speaking to people who are not Christians, people who are going to hell."
"You should come with us to death row," he tells a reporter on the drive back to Gainesville. "It's gonna be great!"
On July 21, in fact, Tebow and Williams planned to head to the Florida State Prison in aptly named Starke. There, Tebow hoped to be allowed to speak to the 30 or so prisoners awaiting execution. The more incorrigible the inmate, the more Tebow relishes the chance to save him. "Sometimes it's those guys at rock bottom who are the ones looking for a change," he explains. If Lawtey was an early-season nonconference opponent for Tebow, death row was akin to Death Valley, as LSU's Tiger Stadium is known.
This is in keeping with his father's disregard for danger in his quest to serve. Bob Tebow regularly takes his message to islands where he is not necessarily welcome. "I quit [reading] the State Department's advisories a long time ago," says the man who joked that he asked the Lord for a preacher and got a quarterback. The truth is, he got both.