Steve Spurrier says Tim Tebow passed on joining AAF to stay with baseball
Tim Tebow, the former Heisman Trophy-winning college and NFL quarterback, is happily ensconced in the New York Mets minor league system, and eyeing a possible promotion to the majors in 2019. But there’s always that lingering question: could he ever return to football?
While we don’t know the final, definitive answer to that question, we do know that Tebow is so committed to baseball right now that he turned down an offer from Steve Spurrier, the coach of the Orlando Apollos of the Alliance of American Football, to join his team.
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Spurrier, the former Florida and South Carolina football coach, confirmed to “PFT Live” that he reached out to Tebow in 2018 about playing for the AAF, but Tebow passed. And Spurrier understood why.
“No, and I don’t blame Tim,” Spurrier said. “Tim’s got a chance to go to Major League Baseball. I think Tim’s probably headed in the baseball direction. I don’t blame him. If I were in his situation I’d probably do the same thing.”
Spurrier revealed to ESPN in June that he’d sent a text to Tebow, which gave Tebow an opening to get on board with the AAF and restart his football career. But Spurrier said that Tebow wasn’t interested. Via the Washington Post:
“I actually got in touch with Tim before I took the job,” Spurrier told ESPN’s Paul Finebaum last June. “I sent him a text and I said, ‘By the way, I’m going to be the coach of an Orlando team in this new Alliance of American Football.’”
[…]
“He basically just said, ‘Hey coach, I’m going to keep swinging the bat and see what happens,’” Spurrier told Finebaum. “And I agree that’s what he should do. If he can get to the big leagues, that’s what he should do.”
The Orlando Apollos did pretty well without Tebow, winning their first-ever game 40-6. And Tebow is continuing to swing the bat. He received another invitation to the Mets’ major league spring training in January, which means he’ll be training with established major league players.
There’s a small chance Tebow could make the opening day roster, but even if he doesn’t, there’s an even bigger chance Tebow will make his major league debut sometime in 2019. That doesn’t mean his career as a baseball player is set in stone, but it looks like Tebow is going to stick with baseball as long as he can.
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