Mother Jones illustration; John Mersits/CSM/Zuma
Update, September 25: In an emailed response (PDF) to Tebow’s announcement that he planned to pause his relationship with Life Surge, the company’s CEO, Jeremy Nosek, wrote that Life Surge “strongly disagrees with the characterization of our company presented in recent reporting. We will not apologize for who we are, what we believe, or the work we do.” He added, “Tim has made the decision to pause his relationship with Life Surge while his team reviews the allegations and gathers additional facts. We respect that this is his decision to make. Our respect for Tim has not changed.”
Yesterday, we published our investigation, in partnership with Pablo Torre Finds Out, about legendary quarterback Tim Tebow’s involvement with Life Surge, a Christian financial seminar company. We detailed complaints from customers who said salespeople used Christianity to persuade them to buy pricey courses, and that they had ended up losing tens of thousands of dollars. The company disputed claims of any improper sales tactics, including the use of faith as a sales strategy.
One day after our investigation, Tebow, who was on track to speak at 10 Life Surge events by the end of this year, appears to be having misgivings about his role with the six-year-old company. During an appearance at a Southeastern Conference event Friday, Tebow told a reporter with WRUF ESPN that he planned to pause his relationship with Life Surge:
Tebow’s team shared the news with him Thursday while attending an anti-human trafficking conference and said he was caught off guard by the investigation.
“I think the allegations are extremely serious and it’s something that we take very serious,” Tebow said. “For us we are having our team do an investigation but also pausing our relationship until we can learn more about the facts to be able to understand more.”
WRUF, the outlet that broke the story, is a sports radio station based in Gainesville, Florida, that serves as the broadcast home for Florida Gators, where Tebow had his storied college football career.
Mother Jones reached out to Life Surge for comment on Tebow’s decision to pause his relationship with Life Surge, but the company did not immediately respond.
Correction, September 25: An earlier version of this story misidentified the event during which Tebow said he was pausing his work with Life Surge.
