Tim Tebow is one of the most well-known and successful college football players of all time.
During his time at Florida, the quarterback became a superstar worldwide. He won two national championships with the Florida Gators. He won the Heisman Trophy in 2007 and was a two-time Maxwell Award winner in 2007 and 2008. He went on to have moderate, albeit brief success in the NFL before pivoting to baseball, where he currently plays in the New York Mets’ farm system.
But Tebow is forever known as a Florida Gator, and his No. 15 jerseys still are seen on college football Saturdays. Tebow, of course, didn’t make a dime from those jersey sales.
And that’s exactly how he wants to keep it.
Tebow gave an impassioned argument on ESPN’s “First Take,” against college athletes being able to profit off the use of their name and likeness, a hot topic surrounding college sports recently thrust back into the spotlight after California’s State Senate passed the Fair Pay to Play Act.
“I feel like I have a little credibility and knowledge about this because when I was at the University of Florida I think my jersey was one of the top-selling jerseys in the world. I think it was like Kobe, LeBron and I was right behind them and I didn’t make a dollar from it. But nor did I want to. Because I knew going into college what it was all about,” Tebow said Friday. “I knew going to Florida, my dream school where I wanted to go, the passion for it. And If I could support college, support my team support my university, that’s what it is all about.
“But now we are changing it from us, from we, from my university, from being an alumni where I care, which makes college football and college sports special; to it’s not about us, it’s not about we, it’s just about me. And yes, I know we live in a selfish culture, where it’s all about us, but we’re just piling on to that. We’re turning it into the NFL — where who has the most money, that’s where you go.
“That’s why people are most passionate about college sports than they are the NFL,” Tebow added. “That’s why The stadiums are bigger in college than they are in the NFL because it’s about your team, it’s about your university, it’s about where my family wanted to go. It’s about where my grandfather had a dream about watching Florida win an SEC Championship. And you’re taking that away so young kids can earn a dollar, and I just feel that’s not where college football needs to go.”
Tebow makes an honest and well-intentioned argument, but having passion to play at your dream school and not being left out to dry financially should your college career not go according to plan don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Not everyone gets to be like Tebow, who had ESPN begging to hire him when his professional football career didn’t work out.
For someone as well-spoken as Tebow, it’s a surprisingly narrow-minded argument that fails to see the bigger picture of what many prospecting college athletes face.
