Have you noticed that two of the most talked-about athletes today are two young professing believers named Jeremy and Tim?
What’s amazing to me about Linsanity and Tebowmania is that Jeremy and Tim have not hidden the fact that they are followers of Christ, but the media — which are largely secular — are drawn to them. It’s as though they sense the fragrance of Christ permeating from their pores.
Columnists, reporters, and pundits have taken measure of the two and come to the conclusion that Jeremy and Tim genuinely believe in the faith that defines them and approach life in a spirit of humbleness. They’ve noticed how the two refuse to “impose” their faith with preachiness or employ silly clichés (“The Man Upstairs was looking out for us today”). Instead, both athletes speak thoughtfully and reflectively, whether Christ is overtly part of the conversation or not.
Late last year, Tim was ripped by television host and political commentator Bill Maher, who profanely and rudely made fun of him — via Twitter — after the Bronco quarterback tossed three interceptions in a loss to the Buffalo Bills. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post rushed to Tim’s defense. “Anyone who listens to Tebow knows he doesn’t do Jesus talk; he’s mostly show-and-tell,” she wrote. “His idea of proselytizing is to tweet an abbreviated Bible citation. Mark 6:36. He leaves it up to you whether to look it up. When he takes a knee, it’s perfectly obvious that it’s an expression of humility. He’s crediting his perceived source, telling himself, Don’t forget where you came from. On the whole, it’s more restrained than most end-zone shimmies.”38
There are more similarities than you think between the two young athletes, even though they play different sports and come from different ethnic backgrounds. They are both under the age of twenty-five and close in age — Tim is older by one year, having been born on August 14, 1987. Each has played two seasons in the pros, and each came off the bench when their teams’ seasons were going down in flames and fans’ patience was stretched to the breaking point. Each made their career relevant by immediately winning — Tim took the Broncos on a six-game winning streak, and Linsanity ignited seven straight wins.
On the spiritual side of the ledger, Jeremy and Tim were raised by parents who were Christians before they were born, and that is notable. This means they were raised in the “admonition of the Lord” from birth and were raised under the guidance of Proverbs 22:6, which reminds parents to “start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
Jeremy said his parents brought him up in a Christian home and taught him what it means to be a believer. “But the thing I appreciate most about them is they don’t judge my basketball performance on how I do individually in terms of statistics,” he said in a March 2010 interview with studentsoul.org when he was at Harvard. “They make sure I have the right attitude, that I don’t yell at my teammates or the refs and that I’m always under control. They make sure I have a godly attitude and when I don’t, they call me out on it and make me accountable.”39
Tim, when interviewed by NFL Today host James Brown, said he was taught a similar perspective by his parents. “What my mom and dad preached to me when I was a little kid: Just because you have athletic ability and may be able to play a sport doesn’t make you any more special than anybody else. Doesn’t mean God loves you more than anybody else. We play a sport. It’s a game. At the end of the day, that’s all it is, it’s a game. It doesn’t make you any better or any worse than anybody else. So by winning a game, you’re no better. By losing a game, you’re no worse. I think by keeping that mentality, it really keeps things in perspective for me to treat everybody the same.”40
Another parallel is that Jeremy and Tim were raised in homes where their parents weren’t afraid to discipline their children when they fell out of line or showed willful disobedience. The parents understood the teaching of Proverbs 12:1, which reads, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid.” Michael Chang said that when he had disobeyed his parents as a very young boy, his father would direct him to kneel on the floor and stretch his arms in front of him. “You will keep your arms out as long as I want,” said Michael’s father. The tennis star said it always seemed like a long time before this form of punishment — known as a fa-gua in the Chinese culture — was declared over.
Learning discipline helped both Jeremy and Tim set goals and attain them, the resilience of getting back on their feet when life knocked them down, and the value of never giving up.
Jeremy and Tim show discipline in the way they answer questions from the media. They are careful not to give their opponents anything that can be used against them or their team — known as “blackboard material” that can get posted up in the opposing locker room. If you listen closely, any time they are asked about what they did to win the game or orchestrate a comeback, they quickly deflect the attention away from themselves. They turn that line of inquiry into an opportunity to give props to their teammates, coaching staff, or front office.
In fact, both have shown wisdom beyond their years in the way they handle the media. After leading the Knicks to their seventh straight win in February, Jeremy reflected thoughtfully on this phase of his life. “I want to be able to sit back when I’m done with my career and say that I gave everything I could and that I did it for God’s glory,” he told Dan Duggan of the Boston Herald. “When I say do it for God’s glory, there are a lot of things I want to do off the court in terms of the platform of an NBA player to be able to impact the world. I’m thankful for the platform, but I don’t want people to lose sight of the team, because without the team, I’m nothing.”41
See what I’m talking about? Jeremy is right about the platform part too, because playing a major sport on a national stage lends itself to all sorts of opportunities.
Take, for instance, what Tim has done with his platform. Last season, he invited young people with serious medical challenges to meet him on the sidelines before and after each Broncos game, home and away. It touched your heart big-time to see these teenagers who had life-threatening diseases or who were physically disfigured because of their illnesses light up when Tim Tebow — Tim Tebow! — entered their lives to tell them that God loved them and that Tim would be praying for them.
Those who got a chance to meet Tim were part of the Tebow Foundation’s “Wish 15” program — 15 is Tim’s jersey number — which grants wishes to kids and young people facing serious medical problems. Tim’s foundation gives him a platform to bring faith, hope, and love to those who need it and has resulted in the construction of a hospital in the Philippines — the country where Tim was born to missionary parents.
It’s hard to be supercritical of any athlete who gives back to the community and reaches out to families. I can envision Jeremy starting some sort of foundation once he catches his breath, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Getting Acquainted
It didn’t take long for the media to track down the man behind Tebowmania and see what he thought of the basketball player from New York. Reporters caught up with Tim on the green carpet at the Cartoon Network’s Hall of Game Awards. (Don’t laugh about the green carpet treatment; Shaquille O’Neal, soccer star David Beckham, and a bevy of pro athletes from different sports were in Santa Monica, California, for the star-studded event.)
“I really like him,” Tim said. “I respect him a whole lot. I’ve had the pleasure to really get to know him over the last few weeks. What a great guy he is. I just wish him the best of luck. How he handles himself and how he carries himself, I think he’s a great role model. And I’m proud of him.”
He added that he had not met Jeremy in person. When asked what advice he could share about how Jeremy should handle the sudden burst of popularity, Tim replied, “I think he’s handling himself great, and I think he can take care of himself. I’d just say keep being true to him, keep working hard, and don’t listen to everybody else.”42
Don’t be surprised if there is a summit meeting — I’m having some fun here — between Jeremy and Tim in the not-too-distant future. But they have “connected,” according to a breathless report in that arbiter of pop culture, People magazine.
“They’re two of the biggest names in American sports — and now, they’re friends,” declared the lead sentence in People’s article. Adrian Tam, the person I mentioned earlier as Jeremy’s spiritual mentor at the Asian American Christian Fellowship at Harvard, was the one who dished. “They’ve spoken over the telephone,” Tam said. “Jeremy’s been a fan of Tebow for a while, but only recently were they able to connect. His comment to me was that Tim is a really great guy and that he’s very inspired by him.”43
Let’s hope they get a chance to hang out together soon. I’d love to see Tim show Jeremy his work at the orphanages in the Philippines (which would draw worldwide media attention), or watch Jeremy introduce Tim to China and Taiwan, where hundreds of millions of Chinese would be exposed in a subtle way to what is really important in their lives.
So those are similarities between the two, but what is the biggest difference between Jeremy and Tim? I believe it’s the fact that Tim has played on the field of fame far longer than Jeremy. This is a guy who was the subject of an hour-long ESPN documentary called The Chosen One — when he was in high school. Every football fan knows that Tim lowered a shoulder and led the Florida Gators to two national championships and won the Heisman Trophy, so Tebowmania has been on the lips of sports fans for the better part of six years. Tim has a lot more game experience with this popularity thing.
An E-Mail I’d Like to Write Someday
To: bigshotproducer@hollywoodstudio.com
From: mike@mikeyorkey.com
Subject: Jeremy Lin pitch
Hollywood has a long tradition of producing feel-good sports movies about athletes who overcome rejection, pilot the unexpected come-from-behind victory, or triumph by making the team, winning the championship, or going the distance against all odds. I’m thinking of films like Rudy, Invincible, The Blind Side, and Rocky I, II, III, IV, and V. Sure, they’re formulaic, but overcoming hardship, adversity, and life’s bad breaks is something we’ve all had to deal with.
Can we do lunch next week? I’ve got an idea to pitch your way.
Maybe my idea isn’t so far-fetched. Steve Tisch, the co-owner of the New York Giants and producer of the film Forrest Gump, was asked if Jeremy Lin’s story could translate to film.
“There are possibilities,” Tisch replied. “Can Will Smith or Tom Cruise play him?”44
But God prepared Jeremy, slowly but surely, for Linsanity. During Jeremy’s senior year at Harvard, when he turned around a moribund program into a winner with a 21 – 8 record, Jeremy was featured in Sports Illustrated, Time, and dozens of other periodicals and online outlets.
The publicity wheel spun ten times faster when he made the Golden State Warriors and became the first Asian-American of Chinese/Taiwanese descent in the NBA. When I spoke to him, I casually asked how many times he had been interviewed — meaning how many “sit-downs” or phone conversations he had had with reporters.
“Oh, I have no idea. I did probably well over a hundred interviews,” he replied.
“What is the question you got asked the most?” I asked.
“Talking about my story. What it’s like being an Asian-American in the NBA or being a Harvard student in the NBA, something along those lines.”
Poor guy … but it is a great story.