Recently Florida won the college football BCS championship, and it's lead by a vocal, apparently devout, Christian quarterback -- Tim Tebow.Here's a clip from an article about him:
"As a 15-year-old, Tebow preached to 10,000 high school students in the Philippines. "It gives me a sense of purpose of how to handle things knowing that football is not the most important thing," he said. "People always ask me, 'How do you handle the pressure, and how do you handle this or that?' Being places where I've been with people who are there trying to fight for their next meal, I think that's pressure, not trying to win a football game.""
A lot of athletes talk about their religious faith, but I haven't heard of too many coming from the mission field. Does this mean that football scouts are now scouring missionary outposts for future players?
BTW, some time it would be funny for a player to put a really obscure verse under his eyes... just a thought.
3 comments:
If you have not seen it, check out this video from ESPN. The amazing part for me is that they let Tebow make a clear declaration of the Gospel.
There's an Evangelical named Warner who's supposed to be a pretty good QB.
You say, in jest, "Does this mean that football scouts are now scouring missionary outposts for future players?"
As someone who was a missionary for 25 years, and had had two sons who were three sport athletes in high school, I would say not likely!
It is impossible for an MK who goes to high school overseas to play major college football, and close to impossible for them to play any level of college football. Tim Tebow left the Philippines at a fairly young age. Football is not played anywhere else in the world besides the USA, and it is not possible to begin playing football at 18 or 19 and play at a college level.
With the specialization of most sports in US high school, I would say it is very unlikely (but possible) for an MK to be able to play any sport at a Division 1 school. I don't know of any in the last 15 years. However, at the lower levels it is possible. My son is all conference in track (shot put) at an NAIA school, and I know of numerous MK's playing various sports at Division 3 schools.
For some arcane MK information, probable the best MK athlete who graduated who graduated from high school overseas is Dan Landry who played volleyball at UCLA and was an All American on UCLA's national championship team in 1993. Dan also played for the USA national team.
Scott Grandi
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