Tim Tebow has a way of driving media types nuts. [1] The Heisman Trophy Winner, two-time NCAA football national champion and back-up quarterback for the Denver Broncos says seemingly innocuous things about his Christian faith and the journalistic eye-rolling [2] begins.
This time, Tebow was responding to the assessment of some NFL watchers that he lacks the talent to permanently win a starting QB job. "My family and my friends have been bothered by what's gone on," Tebow said to the Denver Post, "and I tell them to pay no attention to it. I'm relying as always on my faith. [3]"
CBS Sports.com's Gregg Doyle couldn't let that public display of piety go unsneered at, and fired off a column titled, "Unbelievable - Tebow believes faith equates to starting in NFL [4]."
"What if God's plan for Tim Tebow [5] is to be Kyle Orton [6]'s backup? Anyone ever think of that?" Doyel began. He protested that he wasn't "against religion" and he thinks the world of Time Tebow personally. That out of the way, Doyel got down to what can only be willfully misinterpreting Tebow's beliefs. Tebow is rightfully confident, Doyel wrote, "But his confidence isn't only in himself. It's in his God. Tebow has basically said, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'I'll be a starter in this league because God loves me that much.'"
Really? Is that what Tebow meant? That, in Doyel's words, Tebow's faith "will be rewarded with a starting job in the NFL?" Not that, whether he starts or not, he has faith in God's plan? Doyel didn't say whether he tried to find out.
And even if Tebow meant it the way Doyel interpreted, what of it? Pro athletes say far worse things all the time, even the ones who can form a sentence. There's just something about Tebow.