No Significance to Tebow Wearing 85
The Claim
Tim Tebow wears the #85 jersey in memory of Aaron Hernandez.
News posted on
Emerging story
On May 20th Twitter user @Dr_McCockiner posted that Tim Tebow “is wearing #85 to ‘honor’ his former friend/teammate Aaron Hernandez.” Hernandez died of a suicide attempt in 2017. Others across social media began parroting the claim.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation revealed there is no evidence that Tebow wears #85 for Hernandez. The two originally started as teammates on the University of Florida’s 2007 Gators team, Hernandez wore number 81 during those years. The two did not play on the same team while in the NFL. Hernandez only wore number 85 on his jersey in his rookie year of the NFL, as well. His preferred number was 81, which he wore at the University of Florida, and he changed to it as soon as it was available and happily gave number 85 away.
Tebow wearing number 85 as tight end for the Jaguars is reportedly just a random occurrence and is probably not permanent. Tebow brings in a lot of revenue for a team and, once the announcement of his jersey number was made, it immediately became a best seller. It is speculated that the Jaguars want to get Tebow into number 15 as soon as possible to even further increase jersey sales. NBCSports reports that Tebow seeks number 15 for his jersey and says the number is special to him. He wore 15 when he played at the University of Florida and even during his Major League Baseball career, though it did have to change when he played for the New York Mets.
Hernandez and Tebow were friends while Hernandez was alive: Tebow even got Hernandez out of a bar fight once. Hernandez was known to be troubled and was eventually arrested on murder charges. He was found dead from suicide in his prison cell on April 19, 2017.
