Okay. Confession time: I don’t follow college sports.

So the name “Tim Tebow” doesn’t ring any bells with me. But this guy is on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and evidently a very big deal.

So it was an even bigger deal when this muscular, wildly popular jock admitted to a gaggle of reporters — one of whom dared to ask the question — that he is saving himself for marriage.

The Orlando Sentinel’s blog got the scoop:

You no longer need to wonder if the devoutly spiritual Tim Tebow is a virgin.

Now you know.

Responding to a question from radio reporters at SEC Media Days Thursday about whether he is saving himself for marriage, Tebow laughed initially and then said seriously, “Yes, I am.”

When another reporter stumbled through and couldn’t finish a follow-up question, the 21-year-old University of Florida quarterback laughed and said, “I think you’re stunned right now. You can’t even ask a question. … I was ready for that question, but I don’t think ya’ll were.”

I don’t know about you, but this just makes me respect Tebow even more. In a sports world where far too many young athletes are having children out of wedlock, the most popular player in America proudly admits he is saving himself for marriage.

Meantime, the Sports Illustrated cover story delves deeper into Tebow’s faith:

At a time when Americans are leaving organized religion in large numbers, according to a 2008 Pew Research poll, Tebow is leading his own personal counterinsurgency. “Every Sunday we have a service for our players and their families,” says Meyer, who remembers when “three or four kids would show up. Now the room’s full.” Since Tebow’s arrival on campus, and in large part because of him, Florida has launched a series of community-service initiatives. Even as the football program has suffered an embarrassing string of arrests, the number of hours players devote to charitable causes has dramatically increased. “Our community service hours are completely off the charts,” says Meyer, who describes his quarterback’s influence on the team as “phenomenal.”

Only slightly less remarkable was the decision by [Gator coach Urban] Meyer and his family last summer to take a Tebow-inspired missionary trip to the Dominican Republic. It had begun to prey on Meyer’s conscience that he luxuriated on a cruise ship or sat on a beach while his starting quarterback spent his vacation working in a Filipino slum. Thus did the Meyer clan sign on for six days of servitude in the Dominican—and end up loving it. “Tim has done a lot of things to open my eyes,” says the coach, “and that’s one of them.”

Even Meyer would admit, however, that the Tebow Effect can be disruptive. Various Gators assistants were approaching DefCon 1 in the hours before last January’s BCS title game against Oklahoma: Fifteen or so players were not in their rooms at the team hotel and couldn’t be found. It turned out they’d been summoned to Tebow’s room, where the quarterback admitted that the immense pressure of the looming title game had begun to distract him, wear him down. Thumbing through his Bible (the one with timmy inscribed on the cover), he’d chanced upon a passage in Matthew that gave him a measure of calm and that he wanted to share with them: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

The verses had the desired effect, relaxing the assembled Gators so much that a kind of impromptu revival meeting broke out. Soon the entire group had broken into song. Casting his mind back to that day, Tebow recalls informing his teammates that they would beat the Sooners “not because we’re the better team or because we’ve worked harder,” although he believed those things were true. “We’re going to win because we’re going to handle it the right way, we’re going to be humble with it, with God leading us.”

There’s much more, of course, at the SI link. And a grateful wave of the deacon’s stole to Salesian Fr. Steve.