Ace college quarterback learns from RP experience

WASHINGTON – One of America’s top college quarterbacks Tim Tebow has seen so much poverty and despair during missionary visits to the Philippines he can’t imagine getting stressed out over college football’s national championship game.

“Pressure is not having to win a football game; pressure is having to find your next meal,” said Tebow who was born in the Philippines in 1987 and in his youth traveled from village to village on missionary trips with his father talking to thousands of students.

“Even though we love it so much, football is still just a game. A lot of people bleed over it and love it, and I’m one of those people. But at the end of the day, I know what’s more important, and pressure is definitely not football,” Tebow told Amy Shipley of the Washington Post in an interview on the eve of the championship game between his No. 1 Florida Gators and No. 2 Oklahoma Sooners on Thursday.

Tebow won the Heisman Trophy in 2007 which is given annually to the country’s most outstanding college football player and he is considered a top NFL draft prospect.

He remembers the first time he faced a large crowd of about 5,000 students in the Philippines he trembled with nervousness.

On Thursday he will be watched by 70,000 fans at Dolphin stadium in Miami and by tens of millions of people on television but that doesn’t faze him.

Tebow, the third of five children, was born in the Philippines to Christian missionaries Bob and Pam Tebow and moved with his family to the United States when he was three.

He began the first of now-annual missionary trips with his father when he turned 15 and his first outing was before assembled high school students at a village in South Cotabato where he spoke about his Christian faith.

“I did enjoy every part of it, but at the same time, some of it are extremely sad,” said Tebow of his experience in the Philippines. “For some people, it can be pretty overwhelming. At the same time, the people you are able to help, you get a lot of joy from.”

Despite the emphasis on their missionary endeavors, the Tebows embraced their third son’s fascination with football, a game he began playing at six.

“I learned as a college student that whatever platform you have . . . you can take that platform and influence people for bad or influence people for good,” Bob Tebow told Shipley.

“In our country, people look up to, and listen to, football players. Is that right? They do, so it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong,” said Bob Tebow.

“I wanted all of my kids, not just Timmy, to use whatever they were good at for God’s glory,” he added.