Heisman winner Tebow enjoys rock-star status at SEC Media Days

There was no lack of Tim Tebow fans at the first day of the SEC's preseason gathering. Stewart Mandel/SI Stewart Mandel's Mailbag Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

HOOVER, Ala. -- Florida grad Michelle King and her two small children staked out their spot at the foot of the Wynfrey Hotel's escalators around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the first day of the SEC's annual preseason media circus. Emma King, whose seventh birthday is Friday, held up an orange-and-blue lettered poster board that read: "All I Want 4 My Birthday Is to Meet Tim Tebow."

By 12:45 p.m., when a pair of vans pulled up to the front of the hotel carrying the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and his coach, Urban Meyer, Emma had been joined in the lobby by about 150 other autograph-seeking fans, all of whom were left disappointed when the Florida contingent was whisked straight to an elevator to meet with the assembled media upstairs.

Finally, around 2 p.m., some two-and-a-half hours after arriving, Emma got her birthday wish. After some finagling between a school and hotel official, her family was discreetly plucked from amidst the throng and escorted to the second floor where, in a hidden alcove away from the media horde, the Gators star was introduced to his awestruck young fan, who broke into tears as he signed her Florida mini-helmet.

SEC Media Days only come once a year, but moments like these are an every-day occurrence for Tebow. More so than any college star in recent memory, Tebow has engendered rock-star adulation for his emotional, old-school playing style, while at the same time eliciting widespread admiration for his off-the-field exploits.

In the seven-plus months since earning college football's most prestigious trophy, Tebow has hung with Brett Favre, attended the ESPYs and made a friendly Florida-Tennessee wager with his favorite country star, Kenny Chesney. More notably, however, he's taken missionary trips with his family ministry to the Philippines, Croatia and Thailand. He's visited with terminally ill children in hospitals, preached to inmates at the Gainesville Correctional Institute, and, in a much-chronicled story, performed circumcisions on impoverished children at a Filipino medical clinic.

"If I can change a kid's life for the better, that's more important than to me than going out there and beating Georgia or Florida State," Tebow said Wednesday. "[Winning those games] is very special to me, but it doesn't come close to having the ability to put a smile on a kid's face."

For about a half-hour here Wednesday in a hotel ballroom, a group of several hundred reporters -- many of them automatically programmed to be jaded about almost anything -- sat in visible rapture of the 20-year-old standing before them.

"I don't mean to be cynical," one writer said to Tebow, "but between winning the [2006] national championship, winning the Heisman, saving the world in the Philippines and all, did you ever, like, sneak a cigarette when you were in high school? Do you ever do anything wrong?"

Tebow, as he does often, flashed his trademark grin, chuckled ... then offered a serious, measured response.

"Sometimes football becomes peoples' [entire] world, and they can't even see outside of it," he said. "But if you really look at it, it's just a game that people get very excited about. I'm one of those people, but fortunately, I've been blessed to have the ability to see outside of that ... My passion, even more so than football, is what I can do with the platform that football gives me."