Gator Zone’s Tim Tebow story has been pulled; protecting Tebow’s image?
A story published by Gator Zone either Friday or Saturday last week has been pulled from its website, likely because it generated unwanted attention.
The article discussed Tim Tebow’s speech at the Gators Boosters board last Thursday, and two quotes from Tebow received attention. We published a story on Sunday about Tebow ridiculing the New York media for getting gossip stories about him wrong. On Monday, we published a story about Tebow jabbing Brady Quinn and Notre Dame.
Tebow’s quotes were published by many blogs, so they’re not going away, but the article — which was the original source of the quotes — is gone. Pro Football Talk tried to get to the bottom of the situation, but they didn’t get any response.
We’re guessing one of two things happened.
One, maybe the speech was the kind that was supposed to be closed to the media. Coaches or players generally open up more when they’re talking to what they feel is a private group, so maybe Gator Zone violated some sort of policy by publishing comments from what was supposed to be a closed-media event.
Two, and this is highly likely, Tebow’s handlers got on Gator Zone’s case and pressured them to pull the story. Tebow’s handlers are protective of his image and want him to appear like the nice guy who doesn’t say anything bad about others.
Even though many people love hearing him talk some smack, his PR folks, which are charged with protecting his multi-million dollar brand, probably don’t like it.
Allow me to say that it was stupid to pull the story for two reasons. One, the damage had already been done. The quotes were picked up by several sites and aren’t going away. Pulling the article only prolongs the issue and draws more attention to it. Two, Tebow is real and not the perfectly behaved virgin, praying robot they want us to think he is. He has feelings and he talks some smack. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there is something wrong with them trying to make us think that he doesn’t. It also puts more pressure on Tebow to be perfect.