As the football season kicks off, America’s most talked-about quarterback brings his will to win to a new town and a new team. Does Tim Tebow have what it takes?
A perfect late-summer Cincinnati evening—aquamarine sky, cotton-puff clouds—and a low-stakes preseason game: This is as languorous as professional football gets. Beach balls bounce around the stadium, and a few high-decibel seconds of Nicki Minaj’s “Pound the Alarm” fail to stir the easy, contented crowd.
But when a certain quarterback takes the field—Tim Tebow, a newly minted New York Jet, the most debated, celebrated, denigrated, and all-around marveled-over quarterback in the NFL—the mood shifts. Scattered booing quickly fades to an electric quiet. Thousands of camera phones flash.
Tebow’s first play is a twelve-yard pass. A surprised cheer goes up. Two snaps later? A spinning, charging fourteen-yard quarterback scramble. “It’s a miracle!” one spectator says, only half-joking. These are Bengals fans, but already you can hear the chant begin—as if they can’t help themselves: “Tebow, Tebow, Tebow!”
Tim is used to that reaction. This 25-year-old devout Christian heartthrob has palpable charisma, a radiant magnetism that one of his fellow evangelicals might call a halo. The gossip pages—which have tirelessly documented his appearances on the red carpet—would call it heat. And yet critics point out that his arm is slow, his accuracy is poor. He simply doesn’t play like an elite NFL quarterback. “I have fun,” he says, brushing them off. “I enjoy life and getting after it. I still have a lot of joy doing this.”
Still. Because he’s been getting after it since being raised by missionary parents on a farm in Jacksonville, Florida, since joining a Pee Wee football team and “lifting” with surgical tubing attached to doors until his father relented and put a weight set in the barn. Tim was a fiercely, cheerfully competitive kid—whether playing board games with his two older sisters or every sport under the sun with his big brothers. “They loved to play in the rain and the mud,” recalls his mother, Pam, who home-schooled all five children. “They even made their own golf course in the pasture."
But Tim didn’t look like a natural quarterback; he was so big and bulky that his earliest coaches wanted him at fullback or linebacker. And yet there was only one position he dreamed about, so he and his dad sought out a team that would let him play it. Nease High School had one of the weakest football programs in the region; with Tebow at QB they won state. Next it was the University of Florida, where he took home the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore (a first) and led the Gators to two national-championship titles. And then the Denver Broncos drafted him as a backup. So much success, and yet commentators harped on his size and his bruising, physical style of play. “ ‘You’ll never make it in the NFL,’ ” he remembers them saying. “I just love that! I try to thrive off of that—off of challenges and obstacles, overcoming them.”
He overcame his critics in astonishing fashion with the Broncos last season, scrambling this way and that, eyes darting around for receivers, slinging more than a few badly off-target passes. Yet somehow, some way, he kept winning game after thrilling game—often in the final heart-stopping seconds of the fourth quarter. He sparked a nationwide insta-craze with his knee-down, fist-to-forehead victory prayer called—naturally—“Tebowing.” He took a friendly ribbing on SNL (from Jason Sudeikis’s acerbic Jesus) and admitted to a reporter that yes, he was saving himself for marriage. Heartland churchgoers, urban sophisticates, football neophytes—everyone got swept up in his will to win. “A presence that can’t be explained but can certainly be felt,” said Bob Costas at the height of his streak.
“Yeah, it was a very unique, very special, very humbling, surreal time,” Tebow remembers in early summer on a practice field at UCLA, where he has decamped for off-season training. He’s taking a breather on some bleachers in the shade, an old jersey emblazoned Florida draped across his knees. It’s striking how relaxed he is—not a trace of tension in his superhero frame—especially considering the scrutiny he’s under. Just months before, the high-profile New York Jets paid the Broncos millions to install him as the backup to their wobbly-looking starter, Mark Sanchez. Both QBs are young and photogenic—and only one of them can lead the team this season.
Tim insists that he and Sanchez get along. “It’s not fake,” he says. “I can say that honestly I’m rooting for him to do his best.” And you believe him. Tim’s upbeat energy is contagious, and his favorite word, fun—he drops it 29 times into an hour-long conversation—has an almost narcotic effect. This is fun, you think. No wonder everyone wants to hang out with him. Last spring, Tebow was the center of attention at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, and at the Met Costume Institute Gala, in a crisp Ralph Lauren Purple Label tuxedo, he made all the girls swoon. “He was sweet and really nice and totally unfazed by it all,” says the NFL-obsessed model Karlie Kloss, who made a point of being introduced. “He’s got a good sense of style, too.”
“He’s a force,” says Jon Hamm, another passionate sports fan and one of Tebow’s newfound celebrity pals. “Completely genuine—nice and funny and down-to-earth. First and foremost he wants to be a football player, not a media sensation or have a reality show.”
True—and he recently batted away rumors that he’d appear on the next season of The Bachelor—but Tim is starting to think beyond football. Going to A-list parties, employing stylists, signing with powerhouse Hollywood agency WME—it’s all part of a plan to expand his network and draw attention to the Tim Tebow Foundation, with its outreach programs to hospitals and orphanages here and abroad. “You can get looked at in a certain light, or people think, This is this type of person, he wouldn’t do this. Sometimes it’s fun breaking those norms,” he says. “There are a lot of goals and ambitions that I have in life, things I want to accomplish. Who knows? I mean—it could be politics one day. I want to have a life that can help people.”
A strapping young UCLA football player named Luke Gane passes by the bleachers and gives Tim a shy wave. Tebow practically leaps to his feet to say hello. “What’s up, man? How you doing, buddy?” Last year the Make-A-Wish Foundation flew Luke, who was afflicted with a rare life-threatening blood disorder in high school, to Denver to meet his hero. They slap hands, and Tim marvels at Luke’s fitness and size. “He’s gained 60 or 70 pounds from where he was when he was sick,” he says. “Awesome kid.”
It’s the kind of heartwarming exchange Tebow thrives on, and it puts him in a happy mood. “I definitely, definitely want a family,” he says. Except there’s no Mrs. Tebow on the horizon. Rumors swirl from time to time—most recently after track star (and fellow self-described virgin) Lolo Jones tweeted that Tim had a secret girlfriend. In his best-selling autobiography, Through My Eyes, he acknowledges he’s picky with women. Ask him what he’s looking for, and he laughs delightedly—not embarrassed in the slightest. “I’ve been blessed to have an amazing mom and two amazing sisters—so they set a very high standard,” he says. “Obviously looks play a big part. Being attracted to someone plays a big part, but there’s also so much more than that for me. It’s about finding someone sweet and kind—and that has a servant’s heart. It’s about finding a girl who likes me for me, and not because of what I do or who I am or the name.”
In the meantime, Tim most likes spending his off-field time with his brothers and sisters, “playing Taboo, Catch Phrase, Mafia, Monopoly till three or four in the morning,” he says. As for adjusting to life in New York, he’s buying a house near the Jets’ training facility in New Jersey. “The city itself is a little overwhelming,” he says. “It’s going to take a while before I actually build up the courage to drive in.”
Courage? Tebow? He gets up from the bleachers and recites a favorite quotation, one he’s taped to his wall since he was a boy: “ ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.’ ” And then: “I feel so fired up! I can’t wait to go out there and play.”
Cincinnati is his first chance, and Tebow plays only two quarters. The Jets lose, but it’s just the preseason—a time for coaches to experiment. The consensus on Tebow’s performance is mixed. He had a couple of thrilling runs up the middle, but he didn’t score a touchdown and threw an interception late in the third quarter. So for the moment the question remains—how much will Tebow actually get to play this season? “It felt good to get in there and mess around a little bit,” he says, unwinding after the press conference, secluded in a private room at the stadium. He’s dressed in a purple V-neck T-shirt and a polished, eye-catching cross. He’s already thinking about the next game, you can tell. Already thinking of the work he’s going to put in between now and that Sunday. “Even from practice on Wednesday to this game, I’m improving,” he says, a determined light in his eyes, a gentle smile on his face. “Every single day I’m getting better and better.”
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LOL at him saying he's picky about his women. We all know it's because he wants
fight4thislove and hasn't realized it yet.