Why Does The World Hate Tim Tebow?

Read the headline of this article, and you will inevitably chuckle to yourself, and say something to the effect of, "Because he's a douche bag."  Well, I've had this said about me plenty of times, and I'm not a douche (debatable, I guess), so why is it so true about Tim Tebow?


As I watched then #2 Alabama take down then #1 Florida and saw Tim Tebow weeping earnestly on the sidelines, I immediately began receiving a barrage of texts from happy onlookers.  My dad, both brothers, even my sweet mother, numerous college friends and even people I don't know that well but that know that I hate Florida.  I should explain to those that don't know me that I am a Miami grad, and my brother went to Florida State, so I guess a certain level of hate for the Gators is allowable in my case.  But we're not focused on UF, although I do have a special hate in my soul for Urban Meyer, but that's for the article I will write when he bails on UF for Notre Dame.


But its not that everyone hates Florida, it's that everyone hates Tebow specifically.  I cannot remember a college football player that has garnered so much hate from so many people of different shapes, colors, sizes, and fan bases.  Somehow, this home-schooled, hard core Christian kid from Jacksonville became the whipping boy for college football fans and even casual sports fans around the country (Newman and me included).


But let's take a look at the kid.

Timothy Richard Tebow was born August 14, 1987 in the Philippines.  His parents are Bob and Pam Tebow, who were both missionaries.  Timmy nearly didn't make it out of the womb, as potential complications from an infection nearly caused Pam Tebow to lose the pregnancy.  Against medical advice, Pam  had the baby, and Tim Tebow was born.


Because of the family's extensive mission work and Christian roots, the Tebows decided to home school their kids.  This did not stop Tim Tebow from playing for Nease High School in Jacksonville.  He proceeded to break nearly every record in the state of Florida for passing and running by a quarterback.  He also won a state title for Nease in Fall 2005.  His records were then broken in subsequent years by Miami recruits Robert Marve (Tampa Plant High '07, now with Purdue) and Jacory Harris (Miami-Northwestern High '08).  But Tebow was already on to the University of Florida.


There he split time with Chris Leak and won a national title his freshman year, being used most often as a running quarterback.  When Leak graduated, Tebow took the college football world by storm.  His sophomore year will be legendary for years to come.  More than 20 TDs passing, more than 20 rushing.  He won the Heisman, but his own success did not mean team success.  The Gators went 9-4 and lost to Michigan in the Capital One Bowl.


In the off season, Tebow circumcises a filipino child (timeline approximate....errr....guessed).


His Junior year was not as impressive, but Florida went 12-1 and won another title, beating Oklahoma.  Midway through the season, Florida lost to Ole Miss, and Tebow gave what is known as "the speech."  He apologized to Florida fans and media in attendence and swore that the Gators would play harder than any team in history for the rest of the season.  After the season, Tebow's image and words were put up on a plaque outside the stadium, immortalized at the Swamp forever.


In the off season, Tebow travels to prisons in central Florida trying to convert convicts.  Sports Illustrated chronicles his efforts.


This year, Tebow and the Gators were not as strong as years passed, but they managed to ravaged a terrible SEC East and pick up wins over SEC West teams like Mississippi State and LSU.  'Bama was a different animal, however, and the Tide destroyed UF 32-13.


Tebow will win neither a national title nor a Heisman this year (probably).


So, what spawned the hatred of the talented Christian kid similar to that of the beast?  You'd think Tebow's number was 666 instead of 15.


I think the problem that we all have with Tebow is not really a problem with Tim Tebow at all.  It is a problem with ourselves.  The same way women hate Pamela Anderson; the same way the Taliban hates Americans; thats the same way college football fans hate Tim Tebow.


Now what do I mean?  Are all of you, my imaginary readers, supposed to be jealous bitches or muslim fundamentalists?  Of course not.  But if you ever watched Bay Watch with a girl and watched her roll her eyes and say,"I don't get it.  This show sucks." then you might understand me.  If you've ever watched some grainy, interpreted video on CNN with some bearded dude declaring "Death to the Infidels." you might understand me.

Women hate Pam Anderson because of all that she represents.  In the mid '90s, it didn't matter what that girl did, men were all over her.  Her huge breasts, tiny waist, and 5'7", 107-pound frame were the fantasy of many a young and old man.  Women simply saw her as a big-breasted slut who had their boyfriends thinking of her instead of them.  They hated her because they knew that the sexual possibility represented by Pamela Anderson was more than they could ever muster.  No matter who the girl was and no matter what she did to herself, she was not touching the sexually iconic Pammy.  Even when Pam Anderson did things incomprehensible to most females, like deepthroat a 13-inch wang like Tommy Lee's, men still found this incredibly attractive, and women hated that men found this attractive.


They hated Pam Anderson for being wildly successful while doing all of the things that would get them isolated and kicked out of whatever circle of friends they had.  They hated Pam because they had no desire to be her but yet everything that they desired not to be (dumb, blond, slutty) was something that men somehow found overwhelmingly desirable.  The problem wasn't with Pamela Anderson, she was just making gobs of money and being worshipped by men everywhere (including Borat, retrospectively).  The problem was with the women who couldn't stand who she was and so decided she was worth hating.


Then you can take  a look at us, the lucky Americans who live in comfortable, air conditioned/heated homes and drink fresh water and have plenty of food while some poor schlubs live in caves, never cut their hair, and go hungry for entire months out of the year (Ramadan).  You're telling me that if we set a Taliban down in the middle of a huge loft apartment in New York City and gave him everything he wanted for 2 years that he wouldn't grow to enjoy it?  Maybe his religion would not allow this, and maybe the primordial guilt would rise up inside him and force him to leave the experiment before the two year term was complete.  But this still proves my point.


That point is that islamic fundamentalists don't hate our luxury and excess, they hate where they come from.  Al-Qaeda (and yes, I know that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are two very separate entities) would love to have marble floors, track lighting, and a room that is always 70 degrees if their Lord so commanded.  They hate that we have them because of the inhuman capitalism that helped procure them.  If the Afghans could find some way to live in the lap of luxury and not concede their religious principles, I believe they would do it in a heartbeat.  But they can't.  And we live this way and we try to get them to live this way, and they can't stand it because they hate what our way of life symbolizes.  They cannot be like us because of the way they choose to live their lives, and so they cannot stand to coexist with us.


Pam Anderson?  The Taliban?  What does this have to do with Tim Tebow?  Well, as I said before, our hate for Timmy Tebow is not borne of his own doing.  The kid is lucky to be alive.  He has worked his ass off to be the best college football player in America collectively over the past four years (better players there have been, but none that stayed all four years).  He has worked as hard to win football games as to win the hearts and minds of convicts for Jesus Christ.


And we hate this.


If this kid existed in a cultural vacuum, he'd be a God.  A good looking, intelligent, religiously inclined, extremely athletically talented, determined kid would do well in an America that did not have so many self-confidence issues.  But Tebow may be the ideal that we all consciously or unconsciously rebelled against in high school.  He somehow has everything, and we keep waiting for that incredible wall of faith to crack.  We keep waiting for a DUI, or a hooker, or a sex tape, or a 2:30 AM, low speed car crash while on pain pills (well, Tiger IS only a couple of hours from Gainesville).  We keep waiting for Tebow to get knocked off of his high perch and down here with the rest of us sinners.  He's just too perfect. 


Like women hate Pam Anderson, we hate Tebow because he exemplifies something we cannot achieve.  Like islamic fundamentalists hate Americans, we hate Tebow because he is able to live his life in a way that we choose not to because it goes against what we are accustomed to (I'm speaking now, to Christians like myself who aspire to be good but make many poor decisions on a yearly basis to keep us from ascending to the level of, say, Tim Tebow).


When you take away the "speech," the Heisman, the national titles, the convict conversions, the circumcision, the virginity until marriage claim, the state titles, the state records, the national records, and the ceaseless excitement on the sidelines, America cheered and texted and high fived as a 22 year old kid cried his eyes out on the sideline.  In that moment, Tebow was no different than a little leaguer in mid August, and we cheered it on like we were all about to win the lottery.


It was (is) shameful.  And I hate Tim Tebow.  But maybe I just hate myself.


I hate Tim Tebow. I hated all the media hype. I hated the coverage. I hated "the speech". I hated the on field theatrics. I hated the "God Bless" after his interviews. I hated every one yard touchdown run. I hated every wobbly pass. I hated the the Bible verses and the black eye paint. I hated the winning, and the winning, and the winning.


But I don't really hate Tim Tebow. I sports hate him. Let the much more apt Bill Simmons explain the concept:

"If you're not familiar with the term, "sports hate" is an underrated part of fandom. Everyone has guys they don't like, and more importantly, guys they enjoy not liking. The reasons are unique to us. There doesn't have to be anything rational about it. Sports hate can be triggered by one incident, one slight, one game gone wrong, anything.

If you read my basketball book, you might remember me making roughly 500 jokes about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was my least favorite athlete of all time. I loved rooting against him. Everything he did bothered me: every expression, his goggles, the way officials constantly bailed him out, even the monotony of his skyhook -- and his Lakers uniform made me sports-hate him even more. When he announced his battle with leukemia this week, you know what happened? I felt terrible for him and hoped he would recover soon. I may have disliked him as a player, but still, my life as a sports fan was always more interesting with Kareem in it. Again, there's a difference between real hate and sports hate.


As fans, fundamentally, we need to root against certain players. Need to be bugged by them. Need to have our least favorite guys fail in the clutch just so we can say, "See, I told you, he sucks when it matters!" Need to taunt our friends who root for their teams. Need to see the pouty look on their faces when things go wrong. Need to say things like, "He'll never get it, he's a loser" and "He's selfish and that's that." Need to be definitive about people we don't like. And why. And for as long as we can possibly keep it going."

I don't genuinely hate, or even dislike, Tebow. I don't think anyone really does. They factor in all the media coverage and everything I outlined at the beginning of my response and simplify it by singling out Tebow. In the end, it's easy and fun to sports hate the guy. He's not the first one to get this phenomena on a national stage or the worst ( see JJ Reddick ) or the last. All these people, myself included, who have bad mouthed the guy for four years would also gawk if they saw him in person, ask for an autograph, or want to take a picture. So I disagree with Mitch, while eloquently put and makes sense, when he writes that it is inherent flaws in us that make us hate Tim Tebow.

We sports hate him. And you can bet your ass we'd all have loved him, be buying his jerseys, kissing his feet, and wearing black eye paint if he played for our team.