I love tim tebow too, but…
Posted: January 12, 2009 at 2:44
I’d planned on writing about this column by Carlos Frias from the Palm Beach Post at some point this week, but I think Deadspin’s Dashiell Bennett kind of hit it on the head with this piece. That said, I have some more fan-oriented thoughts to share.
My parents met at the University of Florida. They got married there. I was born on campus while my dad was finishing up his residency. I love Gator football with the kind of mindless passion that you only get with College sports. I love the fact that Tebow’s coming back for another year, and I certainly think he’s got a definite shot at being considered the best player in UF history, if not one of the best in all of college football.
But Frias and everyone else who covers the sport needs to relax a little bit. It’s fun to talk about him as if he actually is superman, but there’s a point where it gets to be too much, and a headline like Superman Tebow is human after all is definitely too much (Frias isn’t the only one guilty of this kind of thing, and probably had nothing to do with the headline, but this article just happened to be the most obvious). It’s ridiculous to put this kind of praise on any athlete, but especially on one at the college level. He’s a great player. He sounds like a great person. The fans (and sportswriters) love him, but he’s still a kid (hell, he’s younger than I am) and while he seems like he’s pretty well-grounded, at some point he might start to believe too much in his own legend.
Remember Josh Hamilton? Sometimes people break under pressure, and not everyone gets the happy ending.
All that aside, I can’t wait for next season.
You completely missed the point, man. I know. I wrote it.
The point of the story is Tebow is a man, a regular guy, a 21-year-old freckly faced kid carrying the burden of expectations for tens of thousands of people who think he walks on water.
The mythical figure others make him out to be is there, in that story, just a bruised, battered kid who, at the end of the night, can’t even muster the strength take one more picture with a fan, “the illusion that supermen do not bruise.”
Here’s the whole point of the story which you apparently missed: Cut the kid a break. He’s just a man. “It’s not always easy being Superman.” Understand?
Carlos, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to what amounts to the random musings of a bored and marginally employed writer.
I wasn’t trying to attack you or your piece specifically with this post. Though I admit it probably is unfair that I used your article as a jumping off point for my thoughts on something that a lot of writers have done.
It sounds like you and I were trying to say the same thing, but I chose to focus on your words and not on your intent. In my defense, I’d been hearing a lot of Tebow-worship, to the point that it all started to blend together. I could have chosen any article to base this on, or just used the announcing crew from any game the Gators played this season, but yours had the unfortunate luck of getting stuck in my head for repeated use of the word “superman.”
Anyway man, I apologize if I offended you. It’s really nothing personal (I save my abstract hatred for people like Matthew Stafford) and hope you won’t let my comments take anything away from what was, regardless of anything I said, a well written piece that did an excellent job of capturing the unseen side of all the post-game jubilation.
Thanks for the clarification.