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Darrell Waltrip and the Accidental Saga of Grand Theft Tebow

Mar 4, 2010, 9:15 PM UTC

Here’s a lesson for all of us, courtesy of old NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip: â†µâ†µâ‡¥“Don’t leave your car unlocked. Because you never know what celebrity might take it.”â†µâ†µâ†µThe Orlando Sentinel has the ridiculous story of how Darrell Waltrip’s car was (mistakenly) stolen, from the parking lot of a private Nashville-area airport, by Tim Tebow, his brother Robbie and the CEO of D1 Sports, Will Bartholomew.â†µ

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â†µIt turns out, Tebow and his brother drove to the airport in their own car, meeting Jim Denton – another one of his agents – to go to the NFL Combine. The Tebow clan flew back with Bartholomew, who was told to drive Denton's car back to the D1 offices. Well, it turns out there were two black SUVs next to each other, and while Denton has a Mercedes, Bartholomew pulled out in a Lexus that had the doors unlocked and the key inside. That's when the hilarity ensued. â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥Later that night, Waltrip returned to the private Nashville airport after the NASCAR race in Las Vegas to find his black Lexus SUV gone. The only black SUV in the parking lot? A Mercedes. He asked the folks at the airport what happened to his car. They all looked at each other sheepishly.â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥“They turned to me and said, ‘Tim Tebow has your car,’” Waltrip said in a telephone interview. “I said, ‘What is he doing with my car? I didn’t tell him he could take my car.’ The guys said, ‘We thought you told him he could drive your car.’ I know the guy, but I’ve never met the man. I didn’t tell him he could take my car.”â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µIt turns out, Tebow’s agents had the car for some time without realizing it was the wrong one. When Waltrip found out that Tebow had his car – point of fact that Tebow, himself, was actually never in possession of the car – he wanted to call the cops to play a prank on the quarterback.â†µâ†µâ‡¥“I was going to call the police and have them say, ‘I thought you were a nice Christian boy. We didn’t know you were a car thief, too!’” Waltrip said with a laugh.â†µâ†µNo word yet on how this will impact his draft status, but I assume Tebow’s involvement in some inadvertent grand theft auto will be filed under “intangibles.”â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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