TEBOW

Tim Tebow and the Gators won big last night, picking up their second college football championship in three years. Their defense clearly came up big, and the offense had its moments. But I want to use this post to talk about Tebow the person. Besides maybe being one of the best players in college football history, I'm intrigued by Tebow for several reasons.

Aggression. Seeing Tebow run the ball into defense linemen and drag them along for several more yards is something to watch. The majority of quarterbacks avoid contact on their runs and slide feet first to get a safe down, and for good reason. Not Tebow. Tebow often runs like a maniacal, north-south running back, and he does it successfully.

The speech. If you watch SportsCenter, you've heard it about as many times as Allen Iverson's "practice" soliloquy. Tebow addressed the media this season after his team's one-point loss to Ole Miss in September. The main points: you will never see a player work harder than him for the rest of the season and you will never see a team work harder than the Gators for the rest of the season. The best part of the speech was that it actually came true.

Fire. In one of Florida's games earlier this season, there's a moment in between plays when Tebow comes barreling into a team huddle almost knocking over one of his teammates. He then proceeds to bark at them. I don't know what he said, but you could tell he was motivating his team and there was no mistake who the leader was in that huddle. The fire was there last night as well. After throwing a leaping pass into the end-zone for a touchdown and basically sealing the game, you could see him on the sidelines pumped up like a madman and calling on the fans to get pumped up too. Before the game started, I was rooting for Oklahoma. In the final minutes of the fourth quarter, I was rooting for the Gators.

Faith. Tebow doesn't just talk about his faith, he has lived it out. The essence of his faith is a very real and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It probably freaks out most people. Not me though, because I happen to share that same faith. He reminds football fans and the world that's watching that his faith is not simply about Christ's love for him and his love for Christ, but it's also about Christ's love for the world and how Christ wants Tebow to be a part of that. So Tebow goes to the places where that love needs to be experienced: orphanages, hospitals, prisons. Those are his summer plans. That's where you'll find Tebow on spring break. He wears his faith on his sleeve, or rather, on his skin. Last night, he bore the message John 3:16 on his face. In another game earlier this season, he had another verse from the Bible that has come to have a lot of personal meaning for me. Philippians 4:13, written not by someone who visited prisons, but someone who lived in one.