It has been an up and down season for Tim Tebow, quarterback of the NFL’s Denver Broncos.
He had a stretch where he won six games in a row, which included six fourth-quarter comeback wins. People spoke of Tebow mania and of “Tebowing”, the term used to describe his way of kneeling and praying after scoring a touchdown. Then he lost the last three games of the season, and we wondered how long it would take for Denver to replace him. He won his first playoff game against Pittsburgh and Tebow mania again went into high gear. Then, the Broncos were trounced 45-10 by the New England Patriots in the playoffs.
A recent monthly poll by ESPN found that Tebow was the most popular athlete in America, beating out the NBA’s Kobe Bryant and fellow NFL quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. His jersey is the No. 2 bestseller, trailing only that of Rodgers. Tebow has caught our fancy more than any football player this year. Several other young quarterbacks had up-and-down years, but we didn’t get as involved in their plights.
We care about Tim Tebow. He is one of those athletes, like Tiger Woods or Muhammad Ali, that provoke a strong response, either extremely positive or extremely negative. The question is: Why do we care about him so much more than other young football players?
Mike Missanelli recently wondered about the mystery of Tebow’s appeal in an article posted on Philly.com, noting, “In my many years of covering sports, I have never seen such a marginally talented athlete so overhyped. With Tebow routinely falling to his feet on a playing field, the sporting public has fallen to its feet.”
Tebow is not tall, handsome or glamorous like other quarterbacks. He is like a fullback trying to be a quarterback; when he goes back to pass, he has one of the slowest releases in the Western Hemisphere. He is a blue-collar quarterback.
In that respect, he is reminiscent of the character in the movie “Rocky”, and its sequels. Like Rocky, Tebow is viewed as an underdog, a humble person–an everyman–who has a burning fire within. Like Rocky, he has a chip on his shoulder and wants to prove everybody wrong. That may indeed be part of his appeal. There may be a part of all of us that wants to prove everybody wrong, too.
A poll by Poll Position found that 43 percent of respondents thought that divine intervention was at least partly responsible for Tebow’s success. This poll gives us another clue with respect to his appeal. He is the person who people have been waiting for–a sort of modern Messiah. Indeed, in his recent speech to his teammates before their game with the New England Patriots, he compared himself and his team to the Biblical story of David and Goliath.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, I would call what is happening with Tebow–and also the tremendous appeal of Muhammad Ali and Tiger Woods–as the Messiah Syndrome. People are always looking for that person who they can believe in, who they can attach their hopes and dreams on. Tebow, Ali and Woods are all renegades who bucked the establishment–as Jesus did–and seem to be marching to a different drummer.
Ali did not fit the mold of the heavyweight champion; he was a clown among a world of bruisers and bullies who proclaimed himself a Muslim, refused to serve in the army due to his faith, and generally defied the powers that be. Tiger Woods was an African American in the largely white world of professional golf, and one that did not fit the mold of the gentleman golfer. And Tebow, of course, does not fit the mold of the quarterback.
Sigmund Freud seemed to be hinting at the Messiah Syndrome when he speculated that all of us develop what he called the “ego ideal”, a part of our ego that is split off and largely unconscious. It represents the unfulfilled wishes of childhood. Freud thought that this ego ideal tended to fasten itself onto figures, usually political leaders, who come along and appear to embody and gratify those unfulfilled wishes. He cited Jesus as such a figure.
Indeed, Tebow’s childhood was from the start different than most of our childhoods. His parents were Christian missionaries in the Philippines when Tim was born, his father having started the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association, which employed 50 Philippino Evangelists. Tebow and his four siblings were each home-schooled by his mother all the way through high school–schooling in which the #1 subject was always the Bible. Religion was and remains the cornerstone of his life, taking priority over all else, including sports.
As the youngest of five children, his mother may have overprotected and indoctrinated him more than her other children, which in turn may have cultivated in him a Messiah Complex (an over identification with Jesus Christ) given rise to the Messiah syndrome.
The Messiah Syndrome perhaps explains the phenomenon that is Tim Tebow, the aura he projects, and our obsession-like devotion many fans have to him. He is one of those larger-than-life figures that resonate with our deepest unconscious dreams and wishes. In a sense, he is the one we have all been waiting for, the one we can pin our frustrated hopes on. But, in order for us to do that, he has to keep proving the authorities wrong. He speaks for the people, but he can only do so if he has a pulpit.
The Denver Broncos organization sent our word last week that Tebow would be the starter next season. So it is ordained: Tebow will continue to provoke from us strong feelings of love or hate. And as long as he is battling the odds, we will continue to put our faith in him.
Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D. is a licensed psychoanalyst, professor of psychology and author of 20 books, as well as an avid sports fan.