Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow

Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow and Nathan Whitaker.  Harper, 2011, 272 pps.  Ages 9 and up.

Review by Emily Whitten.

Tim Tebow is one of the biggest names in football these days, and one of the most divisive.  Unlike many media darlings, the fame he enjoys (or doesn’t) is based in some part to his God-given talent.  I remember the first couple of times I saw him play, I was blown away.  He reminded me of Vince Young in his national championship days–slipping through defenders so deftly that after awhile you’d start to think he could do anything he wanted.  And despite the fact that I am an Ole Miss football fan, I have had great admiration for Tebow’s talent and passion since his days at the University of Florida.  It didn’t hurt my esteem of him when I found out he is a Christian and was homeschooled, to boot.

So, when I heard he was releasing an autobiography, I soon reserved a copy at the library.  The title of the book Through My Eyes, and it’s a good summary.  In the blogosphere as well as traditional media, you’ll find a seemingly infinite number of opinions and commentary on Tebow.  All the more reason to hear from the man himself.

Before I go any further, I’ll point out is that there is one other name on the front page of Tebow’s book: Nathan Whitaker.  Like many famous people, Tebow enlisted a writer to help him tell his story.  But Nathan Whitaker isn’t just any hired wordsmith.  Mr. Whitaker is the writer who coaxed Tony Dungy into writing his NYT bestselling autobiography, Quiet Strength, after Dungy became the first African American NFL head coach to win the superbowl.  I have only skimmed Coach Dungy’s book, but much of it is very good; you can read a review of it at Tim Challies’ helpful site, Discerningreader.com.

In Tebow’s book, Whitaker again brings the world a NYT bestselling autobiography.  Again it’s the story of a Christian football hero.  And there are a few other similarities.  In both, the chapter headings include Scripture verses, and the writing is smooth and flows well.  It’s not Lewis or Tolkein, but the text is often heart-warming and thought-provoking. (To ask for more would be to miss the audience and obscure the subject.)

There are some pretty substantive differences, too.  For instance, the narrative voice in each is distinctive.  You get the feeling that this really is Tim Tebow’s book, not just another run of the mill sports biography.  The voice in Tony Dungy’s story is even-handed and measured, always careful.  Even when poking fun at a friend or revealing a character flaw in an associate, Coach Dungy is quick to cover both with forgiveness or the benefit of the doubt.  He certainly comes across as a mature, family man who extends his fathering to players, coaches, and even the readers of his book.

On the other hand, Tebow’s book is filled with a young man’s emotion and passion.  Since his story covers roughly half of Dungy’s in terms of life experience, he devotes a lot more space to his formative years.  He describes in detail the rainy Saturdays he spent in the mud with his brothers playing football, as well as the not-so-glamorous weeks he spent working on his neighbor’s chicken farm. He unpacks some of the homeschool curriculum his mom created for him to help him around dyslexia (fascinating for a homeschool mom like me!).   Even in the meat of the story–his four years at the University of Florida–we still see a young man being shaped as much as shaping others.  We follow him into the locker and weight rooms where even as a freshman, Tebow was nearly impossible to beat, and his stamina and will-power are pushed to the limit by coaches who seemed just as stubborn and relentless as he was.  Unlike Dungy, the world Tebow describes is the world occupied by most teenagers–or the one that lies just over the horizon after high school graduation.  And written in Tebow’s trademark all-or-nothing, emotional style, it is certain to hold their interest in a way that Dungy’s never could.

When I was a senior in high school, I had a friend who was a freshman at Ole Miss and who invited me to various weekend events that gave me a glimpse of what college life would be like.  As a Christian, she was able to impart special wisdom when it came to everyday challenges–modeling for me what it looked like not to drink too much at parties and to pray when confronted with feelings of self-doubt.   And as a student athlete, I saw the sacrifices it took for her to stay physically competitive, constraining everything from her bedtime to how much popcorn she ate at a matinee.  And though I eventually chose to focus on academics instead of sports, I greatly benefited from her example.

Even so, she was still a teenager herself.  And as such, she didn’t have the maturity that other Christians could have imparted to me at the time.  There were points at which she led me astray, and although I don’t blame her for it, she helped ingrain some very anti-Christian ways of thinking and living in my life during that time.

If I have a criticism of this book, it’s very much in that vein.  As you might expect, Tebow doesn’t always show the maturity of a Tony Dungy.  Most poignantly, about three or four chapters in, Dungy offers a moment in which he suddenly realized football wasn’t everything.  God was everything.  He had been a “Christian” for years, had been a “good guy” who didn’t smoke or drink throughout college and his NFL career, and yet, it took him nearly losing his football career through an illness to wake him up to that fact.

Tebow on the other hand doesn’t really have such a moment in his book.  Instead, we see a young man who is so focused on football that he doesn’t have time for a romantic relationship.  We see him lifting weights in the weight room, motivating himself through fear: somewhere someone is working harder than him, and when they meet on the gridiron, the other player will win.  (I relate this to my own personal Lose Weight Through Self-Condemnation Program, which worked quite well after my first child.  Since then I’ve come to see that just because it got results doesn’t mean it was a godly way of thinking.)

And yes, Tebow even endangers his body and tells a flat-out lie when it serves his purpose.  Once after a concussion, his coach asked him directly whether he’d been having any headaches.  After telling his coach no, he admits:

A headache had been starting to set in, but for all I know, it was from stress or a migraine, not the concussion…I was praying in the locker room that the headache, which had been getting worse and worse, would simply go away.  It didn’t.  I could barely see by the end of pregame warm-ups, it was hurting so badly.  Even though I don’t recommend for anyone to ever do this, I played….”

If Tebow had written about this with regret, I might not have mentioned it.  But he doesn’t seem to pay any penalty, either in his physical being or his spirit.  And while I realize that concussions are rather common in football, they are also nothing to play around with.  For young athletes, the temptation to lie about physical injuries is one of the biggest ones they will face, and for some of them, it may have dire consequences.  And for concussions in particular, we are only now beginning to see the impact they can have in a young player’s life, as evidenced by this article in the New York Times.

Perhaps the biggest blind spot I see in Tebow’s story is that he doesn’t seem to see what his borderline-obsessive tendencies for winning at football may be costing him in other areas.  What is he missing while he spends twice as much time in the gym as other guys?  While that may be a lifestyle some Christian kids may need to emulate for a season in their lives, what will happen when football is over?  Will they be able to be winners as husbands, fathers, and leaders in their community?  Will they have learned to balance all those difficult roles in life?  Will they be able to say with Tony Dungy that God, not football, is everything?

Bottom-line:  Do I recommend this book for young Christians?  Absolutely…in the same way I’d advise young athletes to develop Christian friends their own age.  But parents and coaches ought not to assume that he could replace the Tony Dungys in their lives.  In fact, a perfect way to complement Tebow’s book might be for dads or coaches to go through Quiet Strength: Mens Bible Study or Douglas Bond’s Stand Fast in the Way of Truth: Fathers and Sons Volume 1 with the young men in their care.