I have resisted commenting, at the very least while turning it all over further in admitted “slight confusion”, but the FACT is I still don’t know exactly what to think or say about the news about TT being offered the opportunity to try and make Urban Meyer’s Jaguars team as a TE.
Everything about this “confuses“ me, I suppose:
The position, the unprecedented time elapsed since he last played organized football—not to mention MEYER’S true motives.
Perhaps it is this last point that most threw me. It’s true I don’t trust the guy: Though my Gator-born loyalty and long, deeply held love and respect for Tim, and the feeling that certain general prejudices and conservative misconceptions among meddling NFL general managers (who know a whole lot less than they THINK about talent and building winning teams)—and those of one in particular, a certain John Elway, perhaps the most vindictive, narrow/minded and destructively ego-ridden executive of them all—we saw our favorite son cut off and locked out while still in his prime, personable competitor that he is saw the former #15 finding public success and (thanks to prodigious versatility—not to mention wide-ranging talent) even further athletic opportunity in subsequent years.
But another shot in the NFL after THIRTEEN YEARS?!!
Even as a “big, bruising receiver”, one who no DOUBT “knows the game”, it challenges the assumed “normal limits”.
It WOULD be one hell of a story of perseverance AND overcoming adversity, to say the least; I suppose that everything we as Gators know of the man, have witnessed ourselves, have to grant that “if anyone MIGHT pull it off”, it could be TIM
TEBOW.
The only thing it might be compared to would possibly be Michael Jordon’s flitlrtations with professional baseball, though there have been a handful of other “second acts”...Hershal Walker’s Olympian efforts (with bobsledding), or Bo Jackson’s and “Primetime” Saunders’ varied respective interests beyond football come to mind, but these were all much more proximal (if not damn near simultaneous) in time. This would be a stupendous achievement, if successful.
I understand what might drive a once-prime athlete, especially one who felt his path had been wrongly truncated, one who’d maintained his training regimen (as TT has had occasion to do, btw).
What is less clear are Urban Meyer’s motivations in offering him this chance. And as Gators we KNOW that this is one slippery, Machiavellian dude who knows how to feign sincerity and manipulate athletes’ loyalties: He has successfully pushed Tenow’s buttons for mostly his own benefit more than once before now, too. So I can’t help but have my reservations...
However, Tim Tebow is a grown man, by now experienced and presumably seasoned enough in the cynicism of modern big time sports from enough different angles to take care of himself, one would hope. But hope (and ego) are weaknesses in all of us to some extent.
I hope and pray for a happy ending here. I don’t care what anyone “out there” thinks or says: As far as I’M concerned, the (no longer QUITE so) young man DESERVES a shot at “one more chance to thrill us ALL!”
Everything about this “confuses“ me, I suppose:
The position, the unprecedented time elapsed since he last played organized football—not to mention MEYER’S true motives.
Perhaps it is this last point that most threw me. It’s true I don’t trust the guy: Though my Gator-born loyalty and long, deeply held love and respect for Tim, and the feeling that certain general prejudices and conservative misconceptions among meddling NFL general managers (who know a whole lot less than they THINK about talent and building winning teams)—and those of one in particular, a certain John Elway, perhaps the most vindictive, narrow/minded and destructively ego-ridden executive of them all—we saw our favorite son cut off and locked out while still in his prime, personable competitor that he is saw the former #15 finding public success and (thanks to prodigious versatility—not to mention wide-ranging talent) even further athletic opportunity in subsequent years.
But another shot in the NFL after THIRTEEN YEARS?!!
Even as a “big, bruising receiver”, one who no DOUBT “knows the game”, it challenges the assumed “normal limits”.
It WOULD be one hell of a story of perseverance AND overcoming adversity, to say the least; I suppose that everything we as Gators know of the man, have witnessed ourselves, have to grant that “if anyone MIGHT pull it off”, it could be TIM
TEBOW.
The only thing it might be compared to would possibly be Michael Jordon’s flitlrtations with professional baseball, though there have been a handful of other “second acts”...Hershal Walker’s Olympian efforts (with bobsledding), or Bo Jackson’s and “Primetime” Saunders’ varied respective interests beyond football come to mind, but these were all much more proximal (if not damn near simultaneous) in time. This would be a stupendous achievement, if successful.
I understand what might drive a once-prime athlete, especially one who felt his path had been wrongly truncated, one who’d maintained his training regimen (as TT has had occasion to do, btw).
What is less clear are Urban Meyer’s motivations in offering him this chance. And as Gators we KNOW that this is one slippery, Machiavellian dude who knows how to feign sincerity and manipulate athletes’ loyalties: He has successfully pushed Tenow’s buttons for mostly his own benefit more than once before now, too. So I can’t help but have my reservations...
However, Tim Tebow is a grown man, by now experienced and presumably seasoned enough in the cynicism of modern big time sports from enough different angles to take care of himself, one would hope. But hope (and ego) are weaknesses in all of us to some extent.
I hope and pray for a happy ending here. I don’t care what anyone “out there” thinks or says: As far as I’M concerned, the (no longer QUITE so) young man DESERVES a shot at “one more chance to thrill us ALL!”
