UF icon Tim Tebow shares Father’s Day tribute with Gator Nation
Former Florida QB Tim Tebow’s father instilled in his youngest son a passion for the Gator Nation
With Father’s Day on Sunday, Tebow delivered a video message to his legion of University of Florida fans thanking Bob Tebow for his love, support and guidance.
“I can tell, my Dad is my biggest hero, my biggest role model, the greatest leader in my life, someone that has put everybody around him, their needs, as more important than his own,” Tebow said. “What he would want to do, I would want to do. The University of Florida has been such a big part of our life. Being a Gator was something that has been part of my life, since literally my first images, because it was something my mom and dad love. Because they did, I did.
“I think that’s what made my time at Florida so special; it was more than a game. It was sort of way of life.”
Gator Nation is indebted to Bob Tebow, too.
Bob Tebow met Tim’s mother, Pam, at college in Gainesville. Tim’s January 2006 arrival on campus would set an unprecedented course for the Florida football program.
During Tebow’s four seasons, the Gators won 2006 and 2008 national titles, while Tebow won the 2007 Heisman Trophy, set the SEC record with 145 touchdowns (88 passing, 57 rushing) and innumerable UF records, including 482 passing yards during his final game, the 2010 Sugar Bowl.
The elder Tebow was at his son’s side for much of the ride. When Tim Tebow was an early enrollee during 2006 spring practice, his father even was out on the practice field and at times in the huddle with the offense and coach Urban Meyer.
Tebow soon would thrive as a first-year freshman, becoming a key component of the 2006 team as a change-of-pace quarterback to senior who was virtually impossible to stop short-yardage situations.
Given the full reins of Meyer’s team in 2007, Tebow accounted for 51 touchdowns to become the Gators’ third quarterback to win college football top individual award, joining former Heisman winners Steve Spurrier and Danny Wuerffel.
In 2008, Tebow led arguably the program’s greatest team to UF’s third overall national championship.
Tebow, 33, recently reunited with Meyer with the Jacksonsville Jaguars, not far from the farm outside of Jacksonville where Bob and Pam Tebow raised their children. The family’s patriarch spent ample time abroad and founded an orphanage in 1992 as part of missionary work in the Philippines.
The Tebows were in the Philippines in 1987 when Pam contracted amoebic dysentery, the leading cause of death in the country, while pregnant with Tim, the couple’s fifth child, leading to them considered an abortion.
Tim Tebow soon was born in the Filipino town of Makati and has performed his share of missionary work in the distant archipelago.
“Dad would be gone for part of the year and fly by and be exhausted and still would never miss a game,” Tebow said on the video.
Bob Tebow has struggled with his health in recent years.
In 2016, the Tebows revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. A Facebook post in April 2020 shows Bob, Pam and Tim Tebow each holding one of Tim’s dogs.
Bob Tebow remains as important in his son’s life than ever, his impact on Tim Tebow going well beyond the football field.
“You don’t want to make sports the be all, end all because it’s not,” Tebow said. “What I love even more than what a game could ever give me is the relationships. The relationships with my family and today the relationships that we get to celebrate, and that most importantly is with my dad.
“To this day I call him to ask his advice. I call him to get wisdom. I call him to seek counsel because I still want to make him proud. I still want to honor him.”
Tebow became visibly emotional and a bit choked up as he concluded the nearly two-minute video with this, “I think that was pretty cool when I was at Florida, having him have the chance to watch me play. Hopefully, I honored him with that.”
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Edgar Thompson at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com .
