Osi Umenyiora has caught Tebow fever, too.
The Giants defensive end, upset by recent accounts of his fellow NFL players getting into trouble with the law, told the Bergen Record on Tuesday that new Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow “sets an outstanding example.”
“I think if more people would focus and try to be like him and carry themselves the way he does, I think this league could be better,” said Umenyiora, who was speaking at M&M’s World in Times Square where he was helping unveil the candy’s new personalized printer.
Last week when Umenyiora returned from a trip to Nigeria, he tweeted: “I go to Nigeria for a week, and when i came back, HALF the NFL has been arrested. What happened???”
“My phone wasn’t working over there and as soon as I turned my phone on all these reports started coming in about all these people getting arrested.,” Umenyiora said Tuesday. “For the life of me I can’t understand it. It’s just ridiculous. … People need to be more focused and more grateful for what it is that they have.
“Coming from where I came from and seeing what I saw, all that poverty, people who have nothing, they would cut off both their legs to be given the opportunity that these people have. To be messing around like that is real unfortunate.”
Hence the Tebow reference. The popular yet divisive signal-caller is a devout Christian and the son of former Baptist missionaries.
“I know everybody likes to make fun of Tim Tebow, talk about him, but he sets an outstanding example,” Umenyiora said.