TOO MUCH LOVE
Why is Tim Tebow now playing baseball? We’re all responsible.
I am the reason Tim Tebow is not on an NFL roster today. And so are you. And you … and you … and you … and the thousands of others who bought tickets last weekend for a minor-league baseball series in Kissimmee, Fla., between the Florida Fire Frogs and the St. Lucie Tebows, er, Mets.
This struck me as I was interviewing Fire Frogs manager Ralph “Rocket” Wheeler. Granted, he was ecstatic Tebow would be drawing a big crowd to Osceola County Stadium, but I could sense he wanted to talk about his team and his players and, yet, I kept firing question after question about Tebow:
Are you surprised Tebow is doing so well as a baseball player?
Do you feel Tebow is taking the spot of a legitimate major-league prospect?
What about the Fire Frogs selling the $50 “Tim Tebow VIP Experience” in which fans get perks like
a souvenir bottle of dirt from the actual batter’s box where Tebow will stand this weekend?
“I have no idea,” Wheeler said about the Tebow marketing promotion. “That’s not my department. My department is to get our guys ready for the major leagues. I know there’s a lot of hype for Tim Tebow, but we’ve got a lot of good players on our team.”
And the vast majority of them are younger and better prospects than Tebow — except nobody wants to talk about them or buy a $50 bottle of their commemorative dirt to put on the fireplace mantel. This, my fellow Tebow lovers, is why our boy Timmy is a marketing bonanza in minor-league baseball instead of a quarterback in the NFL.
Much too beloved for his own good
I’m convinced that our constant clamoring for Tebow, his immense popularity and cult following are why he was cast out of the NFL. He was too beloved for his own good.
Go ahead and call me a Tebow homer if you want, but it still bothers me that Timmy Terrific never got the chance to mature and develop like other young NFL quarterbacks who were drafted in the first round.
And, yes, it still bothers me that the hopeless hype-less Jacksonville Jaguars wouldn’t take a chance on Tebow — a hometown hero who grew up in Jacksonville to become a Florida Gators legend and one of the greatest college football players of all time. If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a million times: Why didn’t the Jaguars, a franchise that has been irrelevant for a decade, roll the dice on Tebow, build an offense around him and give him three years to develop as they did Blaine Gabbert, who was 5-22 as Jags starter?
It still bothers me, too, that so many terrible quarterbacks receive chance after chance after chance (yes, Gabbert and Brandon Weeden are still on NFL rosters) and Tebow never did. Football is a sport where teams have shown they will win at all costs but yet nobody was willing to take a chance on the ultimate winner? Really? Seriously?
All he did was win
All Tebow ever did as a quarterback was win — a state championship in high school, two national championships and a Heisman Trophy in college and a playoff victory during his only season as an NFL starter.
Never in history has there been a quarterback chosen in the first round of the NFL draft who was given less of a chance to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. Look it up: Other than Tebow, there’s never been a quarterback who compiled a winning record (8-4) as a starter, took his team to the playoffs in his only year as a starter and never again started another game.
The reason for this is simple: NFL coaches didn’t think Tebow was good enough to justify the hype and hullabaloo that came with having him on the roster. Don’t tell me Tebow wasn’t at least good enough to be a backup QB for the Browns or the Bills. Except NFL coaches don’t like it when their backup QB is a cultural icon and sells more jerseys than the starting QB.
In a certain sense, Colin Kaepernick is the Tim Tebow of today’s NFL. He obviously has the skill set to at least be on a roster, but coaches don’t think he’s good enough to justify the clamor and commotion he would create.
Tebow is too revered for his own good; Kaepernick is too reviled.
You see, NFL coaches are traditionally stern, stodgy, paranoid control freaks who try to limit every distraction and diversion that takes away from the ultra-serious business of football. They simply don’t like it when a player creates a sideshow around their team.
Personally, I believe more of these perennially pathetic NFL franchises should start running their operation like a minorleague baseball team.
The St. Lucie Mets and Florida Fire Frogs showed us that a Tebow sideshow is better than no show at all.