Tim Tebow: Raising a man of character Florida QB Tim Tebow has learned from his father, Bob, the importance of faith in his life.
Dave Curtis
Sentinel Staff Writer
June 15, 2008
JACKSONVILLE
Of all the great nights in Florida quarterback Tim Tebow's life, the one in New York stands out most to his father, Bob. More than winning a national championship in Glendale, Ariz., more than accounting for seven touchdowns in Columbia, S.C., young Tim best lived out his dad's hopes when he accepted the Heisman Trophy at a Times Square Theater.
With his four siblings in town, his role model by his side and friends from home ready to join a party afterward, Tebow took his place as one of college football's greatest players. And then he turned to a national television audience and thanked Jesus Christ.
"People took shots," Bob Tebow said of that night. "They have negative things to say, that he doesn't need to bring that [religion] stuff up. To me, that was the best part of my parenting. That was exactly what I raised him to do."
Here on Father's Day, it's commonplace to compare children to their dads, to reflect upon how close the little ones resemble the man who helped make them. Few fathers anywhere have sculpted their child's life as much as Bob Tebow has done with Tim, his four other children and the young people he attempts to serve through his ministry, the 23-year-old Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association.
"All the character I have is because of him," Tim Tebow said. "He lives it out daily."
A plan from the start
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Bob Tebow relaxes in an easy chair. He wears a golf shirt, jeans and white Reeboks, and he laughs a bunch, especially when talking about his own college days. Like his son, though, the jokes are soon subbed out for a serious discussion of faith -- over two hours, Bob quotes from five books of the Bible, chapter and verse, and seemed ready to cite 50 more from memory if needed.
In one of the references, a passage from Psalm 127, Bob Tebow presents the basic philosophy for being a dad. The text compares the parent-child relationship to the one an archer has with his arrows.
"You would fashion that arrow, change the weight of the head or the feathers or what have you," he said, "until it flies straight and true toward the target. Your life depended on it, because that's what the archer took to battle."
The target, he says, only in part involves touchdown runs and third-down completions. It has more to do with praising God, which Tim Tebow has done at several turns, most notably on national television in December when he accepted the Heisman Trophy.
The flight path toward the target has been much-publicized, atypical, and on occasion controversial. By homeschooling all five of his children, Bob Tebow anointed his wife, Pam, as their lone pre-college educational instructor. He helped dub former Gators quarterback Danny Wuerffel as Tim's primary role model.
He chose Tim's coaches, too, shifting his son from playing defense at Trinity Christian to quarterback in Coach Craig Howard's spread option offense at Nease, where Tim played for a state-championship football team representing a school he never attended. And he helped whittle Tim's choices at the next level to two God-fearing but unproven major college head coaches -- Alabama's Mike Shula and Florida's Urban Meyer.
All along, Bob has kept a visible presence in Tim's flight despite frequent, ministry-related overseas travel. Bob Tebow never missed one of Tim's high school games and hit almost every practice. These days, he aims to attend at least one Gators practice per week, usually on Tuesdays.
Bob Tebow says he has befriended several players at Nease and UF, but claims no official role in either program. His presence has prompted other parents to notice how he monitors his son's career and life. Bernie Sanders, whose son played sports with Tim Tebow for nine years, said he doesn't remember Tim living like a normal teen -- dating some girls, hanging out with the boys, enjoying the usual social life.
"It seemed like Bob pretty much controlled that part of it," Sanders said. "He had Tim wait longer than most kids to be exposed to some of those things on their own. But he didn't hide it. He'd say, 'He'll have time for that down the road.' "
Instead, Tim Tebow spent part of his time learning the Bible, something Bob Tebow didn't experience much with his father. Robert Ramsey Tebow was a "workaholic," Bob said, who moved the family from Alabama to California to Florida as he developed a business in sales and finance.
"Growing up, I knew my goal was to get a job and make a million dollars," he said. "By the time I was in my third year [of college], that desire was gone. Money didn't interest me. My whole value structure had changed."
Called to minister
The attitude switch started just after Christmas in 1964, when 16-year-old Bob attended a Young Life conference in Gatlinburg, Tenn. He had signed up for a ski trip, Bob says now, but warm weather in the mountains kept the snow away and forced the group inside for presentations and lectures. Through those, Bob Tebow became a Christian. The choice shaped the rest of his life.
In college at Florida, he co-founded Campus Crusade for Christ and embraced a future as a minister. He built it from scratch, and football was part of his ministry back then, too, before he went to an Oregon seminary.
"I played quarterback, you know," he said, and then he smiled wide.
Bob Tebow did work some behind center, for The God Squad, which reached three UF intramural championship games during his time in Gainesville. This Tebow, though, never got a ring -- he went 0-3 in the finals, losing each time to the B.F. Bombers, a group of Miami kids who had played together since elementary school.
"Lost one of them 6-0," he said. "Should have won that one."
In football, that's the best Bob can put up against his baby boy Tim's amazing accomplishments. But as an evangelist, a role in which Bob has excelled in his aim of introducing the Christian faith to millions around the globe, son has a chance to match or exceed his father's reach. And that has been part of the plan for Tim since he first learned to throw a football.
The Tebow family spent five years overseas after Bob had sold most of the family's belongings and moved his wife and four children to the Philippines in 1985. Tim was born there, and his father would start to plan how his newly-formed BTEA would change the country. Many of the projects, including Uncle Dick's Home, an orphanage constructed in the early 1990s that now houses 40 parent-less children, were introduced despite a severe lack of funding.
"I consider Bobby a modern-day Peter," said Mike Hogan, the first president of the BTEA board and the tax collector in Duval County. "He just forges right ahead with great faith. It's intimidating sometimes. He's just so confident in God's will in his life."
God's quarterback?
Confident, too, are the children, all five of whom have contributed to an association that Hogan estimates has reached millions of people, most in third-world countries. But thanks to Tim's football success, he has a capacity to influence more lives than his brothers and sisters, or even his mother.
Bob Tebow knew that reality when Tim was a young boy and shared it with his son. Become an NFL quarterback, he'd tell Tim, and you can call any high school coach in America and ask to visit his high school team. And once there, sprinkle faith among football talk, and see how many embrace the Gospel.
Over the past six months, Tim Tebow has faith-shared in Europe and Asia, preached at a couple prisons and delivered a sermon to 3,000 youths and parents at a rally in Starke.
"I had to keep my sunglasses on," Pam Tebow said of watching her youngest boy deliver the message. "There were tears behind them."
For Bob, it goes back to the Bible and the passage from Psalms.
Nights like the Heisman acceptance, Bob said, Tim Tebow hitting the target. And as Tim's popularity grows, the chance to repeat that will multiply in frequency and scope. It's something Bob Tebow has envisioned since Tim was a small boy.
"Timmy has it built into him," Bob said, "that he is on a mission from God to affect people's lives."
Dave Curtis' Swamp Things blog can be read at OrlandoSentinel.com/swampthings, and he can be reached at dcurtis@orlandosentinel.com.
