Tebow's Memoir Climbing Amazon's Bestsellers List
Six hundred people stood in a long line at Books-A-Million in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., on Monday to meet former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, who now plays for the Denver Broncos. The 2007 Heisman Trophy winner signed copies of his memoir, Through My Eyes, that was just released this week by Harper Collins.
The book has steadily climbed the Amazon.com bestsellers list since its release. It’s currently No. 25 overall and No. 1 in several sub-categories, including football (American).
Under normal circumstances, he would probably be considered too young to write a memoir, but he’s already had some incredible experiences – including the Gators winning two BCS national championships while he was there, becoming the first sophomore in NCAA history to win the Heisman trophy, and being chosen in the first round of the NFL draft. But none of those accomplishments would have happened if it weren’t for the circumstances surrounding his birth.
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Tebow was born to Christian missionary parents. They brought their four children to the Philippines and Bob, Tebow’s dad, prayed for a fifth child – a son who would become a preacher. Pam, Tebow’s mom, experienced a difficult pregnancy and a doctor advised her to abort the baby. She refused and 23 years later, the Tebows' fifth child is a preacher of a different sort who wears a Denver Broncos uniform and speaks genuinely about his faith.
“People often seem to think that when you’re following the Lord and trying to do His will, your path will always be clear, the decisions smooth and easy, and life will believed happily ever after and all that,” says Tebow in his memoir, as excerpted by USA Today. “Sometimes that may be true, but I’ve found that more often, it’s not. The muddled decisions still seem muddled, bad things still happen to believers and great things can happen to nonbelievers.”
Tebow spoke about his memoir and the way he does sports in a video on the Harper Collins website.
“My philosophy since I was a little boy is hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work as hard,” Tebow said. “I think the biggest example is just how I go about living every day, and honestly, practicing. When people say, ‘Why do practice so hard?’ or ‘Why do you run every sprint so hard? You don’t have to do it. You’re in good enough shape.’
“Well, it’s not just because I’m doing it to get in better shape or I’m doing it to be a leader,” he added. “No, I’m doing it because everything I do, I want to set the mark that, this is how I do it because I do all things for the glory of God.”
A USA Today review of the book gives readers a taste of what they can expect from the book.
“The book, written with co-author Nathan Whitaker, starts each chapter with a Bible verse and is laced with as much with ‘glory to God’ as it is with pages of grit-and-grunt details of Tebow’s trademark punishing workouts,” the review says. “He trains relentlessly, determined to confound everyone who has questioned whether he can make it as a quarterback in the NFL.
“So Eyes is for anyone who ever felt a sense of defiant determination in the face of skeptics.”
