Timmy Tebow could not believe what he was seeing or hearing.

He looked around the field, and some of his teammates were picking at the ground without even paying attention. How was that possible, he wondered? There's a game going on. Focus on the game. He heard players say they were out there for the snow cone they would get after it was over. Not Tebow. The competition was all that mattered at the moment.

He heard his coach say, "You don't have to play to win, just play to have fun," and he could not comprehend the mindset. It's not fun if you don't win, he said to himself. He was dumbfounded.

He also was five years old. He was playing T-Ball for the White Sox (he actually remembers) in a Jacksonville league. And he already had what his high school football coach would refer to as "competitive greatness." The problem was he did not have anyone to lead yet.

"He knew all the sports and all the rules and exactly how to play them," said Pam Tebow, his Mom. "There were some young kids on his team who had no clue why they were there, He could hit the ball and catch the ball and was so frustrated that no one else knew what they were doing."

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Freshman tight end Aaron Hernandez was having a big day at a Florida spring practice this past April, getting open repeatedly and catching everything thrown his way. On one play, though, he drew the wrath of the man tossing him most of this passes.

Fourteen years removed from his days as a T-Ball terror, Tebow will start at quarterback for Florida as a true sophomore this fall. He received more attention in his freshman season than maybe any non-starter in the history of college football, earning rock-star status in Gainesville as a heralded recruit-turned-short-yardage running specialist in place of then-senior Chris Leak.

But he has not really changed since his first days in organized sports. He plays as hard as he can in every second of every practice or game, and he wills his teammates to exhibit the same energy and focus. Only now, he has an appreciative audience.

After watching Hernandez catch a pass near the sideline, run about 30 yards and step out of bounds to avoid a hit, Tebow raced up the field to yell at him.

"Aaron, you're the freaking tight end," he screamed. "Run somebody over."

Hernandez, listed at 6-2 and 239 pounds, listened and learned. He could have popped in a video from any game last year and watched the 6-2, 229-pound Tebow practicing what he, preached.

"I should have tried to make something happen, which Tebow always wants you to do," he said. "I don't know why I ran out of bounds, probably to save some legs or something. Tim is one of my great friends down here. He's a tremendous leader. He helps everyone a lot. That's the type of leader you need."

Moments like that one sell coaches on Tebow immediately. His next start will be his first, but he makes teammates believe in him and themselves instantly. He did it for three years at Ponte Vedra Nease High, which he led to its first-ever state championship in 2005, and he is doing it at Florida, where he played a significant role in the Gators' run to the national championship last season.

UF coach Urban Meyer and offensive coordinator Dan Mullen trusted him enough to insert him on a fourth-and-1 at Tennessee midway through the fourth quarter even though it was his first SEC game. Tebow bulled his way for two yards, setting up the go-ahead touchdown in a dramatic 21-20 victory and establishing his identity as Robo-quarterback for the rest of the year.

Getting spot duty, he rushed for 469 yards (a 5.3-yard average) and a team-high eight touchdowns on 89 carries, running over defenders rather than around them.

Fans love him. Tebow faced a gauntlet of well-wishing autograph seekers as we walked from the practice field to the stadium every day in the spring.

His coaches love him. Speaking at a Gator Gathering in March, Meyer said he called Tebow over spring break in Jacksonville because he needed "a little Vitamin Tebow" � some rah-rah talk on the phone.

The Gators feed off that fire.

Instead of getting irritated when Tebow criticized him, Hernandez was inspired. Unlike other emotional quarterbacks, Tebow never crosses the line into arrogance.

He's competitive yet compassionate. He's energetic but easy to take.

"He has a Pied Piper effect," said Nease coach Craig Howard. "Other players begin to work harder because Timmy works so hard. When you get into competition, he's a warrior. He never concedes. He never wants to lose. He's just an outstanding competitor."

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Both sides of Tebow were nurtured by his family. He was the fifth and last child of Bob and Pam Tebow, who married the same day she graduated from UF because her father had told her she could not wed until she finished college.

The broad outline of Tim Tebow's childhood is well-known. He was born in The Philippines two years after his father, a Jacksonville pastor, took the family there to preach God's word and establish a mission. They returned to Jacksonville when he was 3. His mom home-schooled her two daughters (Christy and Katie) and three sons (Robby, Peter and Tim), who were each born about three years apart and range from age 31 (Christy) to 19 (Tim).

Clearly, Tim Tebow did not take the normal path to college football stardom. He was fortunate that Florida is one of only 16 states that allow home-schooled kids to play varsity sports at traditional high schools, thanks to a law that passed in 1996.

His three years at Nease, where he set the state prep record for passing yards (9,940), total offense (12,960 yards), completions (631) and touchdowns (159), helped him emerge as one of the nation's elite recruits. His life experiences shaped him as a unique individual.

In high school, Tebow spent three weeks of every summer doing missionary work in the Philippines, talking at schools and marketplaces and medical clinics with church groups. They were close to his favorite three weeks of the year, particularly the time he spent at an orphanage his father helped start in the 1990s.

"Everybody who goes, they come back different," he said. "You think you're going over there to help them, and they really in turn help you."

The orphanage, called Uncle Dick's Home for a friend of the Tebows who helped sponsor it, began when a mother in the area died in childbirth and the father ran away. Her grandfather took the baby and threatened to throw it in the river because he didn't want it.

When Bob Tebow heard about the impending tragedy, he set in motion a long, complicated process that ended in the orphanage opening several years later. That baby, named Queenie, was the first resident. She is in college in the Philippines after graduating No. 1 from her high school class.

The orphanage has grown to 50 kids.

"The stuff they've gone through is unimaginable and just heartbreaking," Tim Tebow said. "They are satisfied with what they have and are thankful for it. Material goods are not what make them happy. It puts things in perspective. Every day you can get caught up in little silly things, worrying about this and worrying about that. But when you think back about being with them, they have nothing and they never complain about it."

Although he has not done any fieldwork in the Philippines since arriving at UF in January of 2006, Tebow says his experiences there help his performance on the football field. Why would he get rattled in front of a 104,000 fans at Neyland Stadium when he realizes life has bigger issues?

"I want to win so bad, but at the same time you realize there are things more important than sports," he said. "That really helps keep me focused and allows me to not get too discouraged when bad things happen on the field."

He didn't leave his good works behind in the Philippines. Tebow likes to visit hospitals in Gainesville to talk to kids, and he used Florida's open date last October to comfort a dying child in Jacksonville.

His parents heard about a 10-year old girl with leukemia who was a huge Gator fans and wanted to meet Tebow. He and his mom went to see her on the weekend, and he established a relationship. She died in January, but Tebow had visited her again a few days earlier.

"He's just real tender," his mom said. "People I don't even know will stop me and tell me some story about how kind Timmy was to their little boy or a patient in the hospital."

Most hotshot quarterbacks with his history of success would have an ever-expanding ego.

He won a state championship as a senior in high school. He won a national championship in his freshman year at UF. He is an unchallenged starter entering his sophomore year. He was already a legend before his first day on campus after choosing UF in an intense recruiting battle with Alabama in December of 2005, capturing fans' fancy like no signee since Emmitt Smith in 1987.

He has let none of the attention go to his head and even is content to tool around Gainesville in a car that would cause headaches for the normal college student. He drives a '95 green Ford Thunderbird, a gift from his parents before his senior year in high school. The tint matches Nease's primary color.

"He never says a word about it," Pam Tebow said. "We did that with all our kids. Then, when they buy their first car, they are really grateful. But when they get it from mom and dad, they are grateful, too, to have something to drive. It drives fine. It has air conditioning. What more could you want?"

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Click "target="_blank">Here to view this Link.The gentle side of Tebow disappears when competition starts. That is part of his family legacy, too.

Bob Tebow raised his children to be caring, dedicated adults who are not obsessed with worldly possessions. He also raised them to be winners in everything they attempted.

Robby, his oldest son, and Peter, the middle son, played linebacker for Jacksonville Trinity Christian. Robby was good enough to get a football scholarship at Carson-Newman, a Division II school, despite fracturing his arm three times in the same year and breaking his collarbone more than once.

Peter, a senior who will graduate from UF with a computer engineering degree next spring, was too small to play college football, but he almost matched his weight (about 165 pounds) in tackles (162) as a senior at Trinity Christian.

Growing up as the baby in the family toughened Tim. When he played basketball with his older brothers, games of "21" were as physical as football.

"There's no mercy in our family," Bob Tebow said. "Katie, every once in a while, will show you mercy, but everyone else will cut your throat."

The competitiveness extended past sports to board games. Playing Monopoly was chancy because emotions became too heated. A game of Risk often degenerated into a war zone. Bob Tebow taught chess to all of his kids, but he never let them beat him. At a recent family get-together at his home on a farm outside of Jacksonville, he challenged anyone to play him.

"There were no takers," he said. "It's pretty dog-eat-dog around here. They knew the outcome."

Tim worked just as diligently as his brothers and was a better athlete. His father said he threw a baseball hard enough that it hurt to catch when he was 6. He was so good at basketball, one youth-league coach had to tell him to stop scoring in a game so anybody else could score.

But his first love was football. Combine his natural ability with his work ethic, and the result was a record-setting quarterback.

"I love playing football so much, and if you love doing something, you can't not go as hard as you can," he said. "If I ever went out there and didn't give 100 percent, I'd feel bad. It's worse than what anybody else can say to me. It's inside me. I just grew up with that type of learning and that type of character."

Pam Tebow stressed good nutrition with all of her kids, but she did not have to say a word to her youngest son. He avoided all junk food.

"As a kid we never had to motivate him � ever," she said. "He took his nutrition to the extreme because it would help him be a better athlete. He really is highly motivated."

In Tebow's first year at Nease, he broke his right leg late in the first quarter with his team trailing 17-0 against St. Augustine Pedro Menendez. Unaware of the injury's severity, he played the rest of the way and ran for a tying touchdown in the fourth quarter before Nease lost on a last-second field goal. X-rays after the game revealed a jagged break, not just a hairline fracture.

During Tebow's senior year, he heard his right ankle pop on a play against Lake City Columbia in a game for the district championship. He refused to come out, led Nease to the win and rested the following week.

"My heart fell in my stomach," Howard said. "I told him he was the toughest son of a gun I ever saw in my life.

He'll get no argument from Meyer, who watched Tebow pile-drive LSU safety Jessie Daniels toward the goal line on a 15-yard run last season and finish the possession with a fourth-a-goal sneak into the endzone. After having Tebow through two spring practices and one fall season, he's become one of his biggest fans.

"The thing that makes Tim Tebow different than really any player I've ever been around is his drive, his toughness and his competitiveness," Meyer said. "He's an extremist."

Meyer's favorite story about his quarterback involves the tug of war in Tebow's first month on campus. He is not only quarterback-tough. He's tough for any position.

"Last February we had our mat drills and we were doing our workouts and I called the team together and said, 'Pick your toughest offensive player against your toughest defensive player,'" Meyer said. "The offense got together and picked Tebow. He had only been there for three weeks. That's the respect he earned just because of the way he works. He's the hardest worker I've ever been around."

Tebow's version is different. The Gators had finished a winter conditioning workout on the practice field when they had the tug of war to determine if the defense or the offense would run dashes.

The offense chose Tebow and former UF lineman Ronnie Wilson. The defense chose Joe Cohen and Brandon Siler. Tebow and Wilson won in about 15 seconds.

"That was a really fun day," Tebow said. "No one wants to run dashes after you've finished the workouts."

Meyer and Mullen actually wanted Tebow to tone it down a notch during the spring. A linebacker can be emotional from start to finish in a game, but the starting quarterback has to stay under control. Tebow idolized Danny Wuerffel as a kid, but if Wuerffel's calm demeanor was all about perfect precision, Tebow acted out a passion play in his first year, bouncing around like a hyper-active kid.

He threw only 33 passes in 2006, but after Mullen tweaked his throwing motion to quicken his release, he will air it out often this fall. Senior wide receiver Andre Caldwell was impressed with his deep ball, a regular feature at Nease.

"Everything happens so much faster in college," Tebow said. "In high school you could drop back and scan the field. Here, you have to know what's going on and be alert and ready to go. My goal is to get it out of my hands and into the hands of the playmakers as quick as possible."

Tebow still has a church bulletin Wuerffel signed in Jacksonville and a hat Wuerffel signed at Fan Day in his room at the family farm. He is emulating Wuerffel in the classroom, boasting a 3.8 GPA entering the summer. He acts like Wuerffel off the field, signing anything and everything because he knows how disappointed he would have felt as a kid if a player had turned down his request for an autograph.

To keep pace with Wuerffel, he will have to win another SEC championship this year. Danny Wonderful, the most admired player in UF football history, rang up a ring every year, but just when it appears Tebow cares too much, his hyper-competitiveness turns into kindness again.

It is just as important for him to channel Wuerffel off the field as on it.

"How you treat people is going to last a lot longer than winning a championship," he said. "I'm working on that every day.

"It's hard to believe for some people, but it's more important than football."