We’re still on vacation, so we have another “How I Became a Fan of Tim Tebow” story to share with you. Today’s story comes from a Texas Girl who chose to remain nameless… there’s nothing to hide here

I’m a Texas girl who grew up a Notre Dame fan in an obsessive old-school Catholic, original Subway Alumni family. And while I will die a Notre Dame fan there are a couple of other teams I’ve casually followed over the last couple of years. And yes there is enough love to go around.

While Saturdays revolved around the ND game, my dad had grown up in Alabama and had a small spot in his heart for the SEC. I could never bring myself to root for Alabama and I grew up with enough LSU fans to know I didn’t like them either. Don’t even get me started on my intense dislike of Bobby Bowden. And thus some how casually rooting for the Gators made sense and they became my favorite SEC team.

I really became a Tebow fan, however, in 2007. It was the Kentucky game. It was actually the first Gator game I watched that season. Tebow had already proved he could be the starting quarterback and I was playing catch up. I was hanging out at my then boyfriend’s apartment. He was a huge NFL fan but had little interest in college ball and so I had full control over the TV that afternoon. As I watched the game and he started on a late lunch for us in the kitchen I can remember yelling at him from the living room…this Tebow guy is kind of awesome. So that was the moment.

If I looked a little deeper the truth is Tebow arrived at a time when it seemed my true football love was doing everything it could to break my heart. I never liked ND’s QB Jimmy Clausen. A fact I hadn’t hidden since the first day he arrived at ND. He was a little too cocky. Seriously, a hummer and high school rings? As a fan you want the players you root for to love the game as much as you do and give it everything they have. That dynamic is the heart of college football. The sport is like any other venture one takes on in life, if you aren’t going to give it everything you have than why show up? For the fan to believe the player has to believe too …. and Clausen always seemed so vacant….so above it all. I admit I may have been a tad bit hard on the guy, but as a fan it’s what I felt.

To me Tebow was the anti-Clausen. The passion, the grit, the determination….you never doubted it. So in some respects Tebow filled a much needed void. While ND’s lost to Navy later that year broke my heart in a way it hadn’t been broken since the 1993 lost to Boston College, Tebow helped to mend it just a bit.

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