Jeff Rice:
One of Talor Battle’s favorite commercials is the spot Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow did for an energy drink a couple of months ago.
“They said I couldn’t win a Heisman,” Tebow’s voice says, cutting through montages of the player wearing thick metal chains around his neck or flipping a giant tractor tire. “They said I couldn’t win a national championship. … They said I couldn’t play in the league.”
Tebow, who went on to do all of those things, concludes the segment by saying:
“Appreciate it.” Then a message flashes across the screen: Find your fuel.
Battle ate it up. And though the message was one he had already carried with him through most of his young life, he needed a reminder of it last spring, when the Portland Trail Blazers told him after his only workout for a pro team that it was in his best interest to return to Penn State for his final season, and that his NBA prospects weren’t great.
“I used what they said to me as fuel, and that’s the way I go about my whole life,” Battle says. “When people say, ‘You can’t do this’ or ‘You can’t do that,’ it makes me want to show people that I actually can.”