Be warned: this column is, for the most part at least, going to be about why I don't like Tim Tebow. (Gasp!) If, for whatever reason, this offends you and your sensibilities, stop reading now.
Now, before I get into the swing of things, Tebow has his fair share of positive qualities, and I realize and appreciate that. For one thing, he's clutch, at least against mediocre opponents. If I, for whatever reason, was in a situation where I was coaching an NFL game against a lackadaisical AFC West squad and was down, like, 13-17 going into the final two minutes, there is no quarterback I'd rather have at the helm of my offense. Except for Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Michael Vick, Matt Stafford, Matt Ryan, Matt Schaub, Cam Newton, and possibly Tony Romo, of course.
Tebow is also a fairly nice guy in person, from what I understand, which is apparently a big deal, given most professional athletes are also professional A-holes.
And, finally, Tebow's charity work is worthy of admiration. Just ask Spectrum Senior Life Editor Aaron Mansfield, whose friend Zack McLeod is a beneficiary of the Dreams Come True Foundation, in which Tebow is involved. This is really cool, and exactly the kind of selfless, humanistic work the world needs more of.
At the same time, however, Tebow is also involved in Focus on the Family, an anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-sex education, anti-science, anti-social-realities-of-the-real-f***ing-world group. This is not so cool. This is the group, by the way, that dropped $700,000 buying airtime (plus undisclosed production costs) to run an utterly pointless ad of children reciting John 3:16 during the Broncos-Patriots game instead of, you know, feeding the poor. How Christian of them.
I've also come to resent Tebow's silence on the matter of gay rights. Tebow has repeatedly refused to open up about his stance on the issue, and has rebuffed offers from It Gets Better to do a video supporting the cause. Now, I'm not going to accuse anyone of anything, but Tebow certainly has no qualms about doing videos for anti-gay organizations. And, if it were to come out, somehow, that Tebow was himself against gay rights and marriage, the irony would be a little too much to handle, especially for me, as Tebow both regularly touches the skin of a dead pig (forbidden in Leviticus 11:6-8) and works on the Sabbath (forbidden too many places in the Bible to list).
And, honestly, I can't help but be utterly annoyed with Tebow's gridiron proselytizing. The way I see it, there's two possible stances on this issue:
One: the Christian God doesn't exist, and Tebow's actions do nothing but further perpetuate the fundamental superstition and ignorance that has caused and continues to cause most of the world's hatred and problems, in which case, Tebow should stop proselytizing.
Two: the Christian God does exist, and actually does help Tebow do super important things like toss oblate spheroids made of pig leather, but the effort of doing so may very well be preventing God from addressing other things He's very notoriously failed to do, like solve world hunger, heal amputees, successfully endorse a 2012 Republican presidential candidate, maintain the Christian faith among the most educated portions of America's population, and heal Zack McLeod, in which case Tebow should stop proselytizing.
Now, I'm not saying Tebow's a bad guy, or anything – in fact, compared to the murders, alleged rapists, dog fighters, and asshats who make up much of the NFL, it seems almost absurd to criticize him. At the same time, however, all those less-than-savory players don't spend tremendous amounts of their time and energy promoting any sort of controversy regarding their personal lives.
Honestly, it's this facet of Tebow's persona that accounts for most of why I don't care for him. Philip Rivers, for instance, is another very religious highly overrated AFC West quarterback with an unconventional throwing motion (who is apparently kind of a jerk, to boot), and I can't summon anything close to the amount of distaste I have for Tebow for Rivers, in part because not every single one of Philip Rivers' extracurricular actions on the field goes toward feeding the media's perpetuation of some invented, trivial Philip-Rivers-related controversy and/or coverage.
Ultimately, Tebow is a key player in the ongoing trivialization of discourse in a culture that's already been trivialized to the point of existential crisis. Yeah, he does some good things, but most media coverage surrounding Tebow hasn't been about those good things, it's been about "Tebowing," and Focus on the Family commercials, and yardage totals of pareidolic significance to confirmation-biased prone Christians who don't know what either pareidolia or confirmation bias is.
And, well, I can't say I'm a fan of that.
Email: eabenoit@buffalo.edu
