3/23/12 – 3/23/12 – Photo of Tim Tebow (left) from the 2005 Championship season at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post)
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Tebowmania might feel like a recent craze everywhere else, but not here.
Not where it was invented.
This sprawling city on the edge of the Atlantic — at 875 square miles, it’s the largest in the contiguous United States — has been in the thrall of arguably its most famous son for almost a decade now, practically since the first time Tim Tebow threw a pass in Nease High School’s 2002 spring game.
Tebow went on to win the Heisman Trophy, two national titles at the nearby University of Florida then the imagination of the entire country during his magical ride with the Broncos last season, but that incredible run hardly surprises those in Jacksonville who knew him “back when.”
“Nothing Tim does surprises me,” former high school teammate Ryan Lewis said this week. “It’s very hard to be on the same team as him or even be around him and not buy into the whole Tim Tebow phenomenon. It’s more powerful than you know.”
So the local disappointment was palpable this week when Peyton Manning’s arrival in Denver suddenly made Tebow available, but the sport’s most popular figure and most polarizing player wound up with the Jets instead of a homegrown Jacksonville Jaguars player.
While exactly how that happened remains in dispute (Tebow claimed he wasn’t given a choice as to his trade destination; Broncos VP John Elway strongly disagrees), the fact the homecoming so many here had dreamed of and pleaded for wasn’t happening cast a pall.
Tebow was born in the Philippines to missionary parents, but he grew up in Jacksonville, still lives here, still belongs to the powerful First Baptist Church here, and always will be associated with this unlikeliest of locations for an NFL franchise even if he never plays for it.
For many in this former paper-mill town not far from the Georgia border, that’s hard to swallow.
“They’re crestfallen,” said Frank Frangie, a longtime Jacksonville radio talk-show host. “People here see him on the ‘People’s Choice Awards,’ see that he turned down ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ see that he was in People magazine.
“He’s become a national brand, and people who aren’t necessarily diehard football fans know who he is and would have started coming to the games if he was traded to the Jaguars. So from that standpoint, there’s a real disappointment on the part of a lot of people.”
It isn’t just Tebow’s heightened celebrity since leading the Broncos to the playoffs in often uncanny fashion last season that has Jacksonville so bummed he’s bound for Broadway instead of home.
Though Tebow’s quarterbacking skills have no shortage of very vocal critics in the NFL, an equally loud subset of people here felt adding Tebow was just what the struggling, nondescript Jaguars needed to turn themselves around both on the field and at the box office.
Perennially mentioned as a candidate to move to Los Angeles, the Jaguars have won one playoff game since 1999, went 5-11 while changing coaches last season and cover up thousands of seats with tarps to avoid TV blackouts despite having among the cheapest average ticket prices in the NFL.
Even worse, the Jaguars are a non-entity on the national stage, ranking at or near the bottom of the league in merchandise sales, fan interest and national TV ratings. The fact this city of 1.3 million — roughly half the size of Brooklyn — hosted a Super Bowl in 2005 remains almost a big of an upset as it landing the franchise in the first place.
To his devoted followers in Jacksonville, Tebow could have solved all that. That fan club includes new Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, who said last month he “100 percent” would have drafted Tebow in 2010 had he been in charge.
Yet a sizable segment of Jaguars fans, many of whom dislike the University of Florida and Tebow’s connection to the Gators, angrily challenge the Tebow-as-savior notion and were overjoyed Tebow apparently chose the Jets.
The mere mention of Tebow’s name prompted boos during an event for hundreds of Jaguars season-ticket holders at Everbank Field earlier this week, and those fans stayed silent after new coach Mike Mularkey explained why the team was unable to swing a trade with Denver.
But Khan pushed hard for Tebow, ordering his reluctant general manager, Gene Smith, and Mularkey to pursue a deal, and it’s easy to see why simply from a business perspective.
“It might sound hard to believe, but Tebow-mania is bigger now than when it was when he was at Florida,” Frangie said.
That really is hard to believe, considering Florida already has erected a Tebow statue and a plaque commemorating a famous Tebow post-loss vow — and he hasn’t even been gone from the program three seasons.
But it’s true, and it’s not just sports-radio hosts saying it. Stores here stock Tebow merchandise and Jaguars memorabilia in virtually equal parts, and Jacksonville sports bars reported overflow crowds for Tebow’s games with the Broncos last season.
As recently as two months ago, thousands of fans lined up to pay $160 each for Tebow’s autograph and to pose for pictures with their idol at a mall event in Jacksonville. Tebow needed four hours to accommodate the throng and still couldn’t get to everyone.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been around anyone quite like him,” said Joey Wiles, a longtime high school football coach in nearby St. Augustine.
Wiles is something of a celebrity locally for being the only coach to go undefeated against Tebow in high school (4-0). Wiles also remains miffed that his school district allowed Tebow — who was home-schooled until he went to college — to play for Nease despite Tebow’s parents suspiciously moving him into temporary digs in an area zoned for a different school.
But even Wiles sounds rapturous talking about Tebow, at times claiming Tebow changed his life.
“He made me a better coach,” Wiles said. “He made me get out of my comfort zone as a coach, and he ultimately made us a better program.
“Tim will even have an impact on the people on that Jets coaching staff with his charisma. Just you watch.”
Wiles still recalls the first time he saw Tebow as a transfer freshman in 2002 during Nease’s spring game. It was the equivalent of the scene in “Jaws” when Roy Scheider’s character witnesses the killer shark for the first time and tells his partners they’re “gonna need a bigger boat.”
Tebow was already 6-feet-2 and 220 pounds as a 15-year-old, and the sight of him casually throwing passes 70 yards in warm-ups before running the then-new spread option offense so spooked Wiles that he drove home and did something he had never done in two decades of coaching.
“I immediately picked up the phone that day and called [Oklahoma coach] Bob Stoops, who’s a great defensive mind, and asked him if I could come out there and get some pointers on how to stop this guy,” Wiles said. “Tebow’s still the only player who’s ever caused me to do that.”
Even Tebow’s open faith would have been a perfect fit here.
That devout Christianity might be controversial elsewhere, but it hardly causes a second glance in a town long dominated by the massive First Baptist Church, where Tebow and his family are members and whose pastor, Mac Brunson, is a national figure in religious circles.
Alas, Tebow in Jaguars teal won’t be happening — well, not anytime soon. But there are those who think Tebow going to New York instead was the best thing for all involved.
“Everybody knows him here, knows his message,” Wiles said. “Jacksonville would have been the easy thing for him. I’m glad he chose New York, just because it’s a bigger challenge for him. And there’s nothing Tim Tebow loves more than a challenge.”
bhubbuch@nypost.com