Tim Tebow Is Expected To Be A Star Witness In His Trainer’s Performance-Enhancing Drugs Case

Tim Tebow

Getty Image / Mark Brown


It has been 1,476 days since Tim Tebow last played a down in the NFL (09/03/15). That’s roughly 2,125,440 minutes since he was a real football player but Tebow has been everpresent in the sports world since leaving the gridiron and trying to make it as a Minor League Baseball player.

He has also transitioned into a football commentator and he’s pretty good with analysis, fans like him, that is until last week when he dropped the world’s absolute dumbest take on why NCAA athletes shouldn’t get paid. Tebow’s back in the headlines this week and once again it is not what you’d classify as favorable coverage.

Tim Tebow’s expected to be subpoenaed and called as a star witness in two performance-enhancing drugs-related cases involving Tebow’s trainer Ian Danney. This trainer helped Tebow with a muscle injury in 2016 and Tim praised his work as “Ian’s magic” in the swift recovery. Tebow has also praised “Danney Ball”, one of the trainer’s workouts, on a Scottsdale local news segment.

Now, Tebow’s expected to be called as a witness alongside NFL player James Harrison and chemist Patrick Arnold (from the BALCO doping debacle) in a case against Tebow’s trainer Ian Danney. One of the cases involves Olympic bobsledder Gea Johnson who listed Tebow as a witness and another involves NFL defensive linemen Corey Liuget who alleges the trainer injected him with a banned growth peptide in 2016 that led to the player being suspended for 4 games.

In a separate lawsuit in California, Oakland Raiders defensive lineman Corey Liuget has accused Danney of injecting him with a banned growth-hormone peptide without his consent, causing Liuget to be suspended by the NFL last year. Danney pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions 46 times in July during pretrial deposition testimony, including whether he gave injections to Tebow and former NFL player LeRon Landry, according to court documents. Landry is out of the NFL after being suspended three times for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing drug policy. (via)

As far as we know, Tebow never failed a drug test in the NFL and he’s squeaky clean. But his close work with the trainer is believed to be of value in these cases.

In the other case, bobsledder Gea Johnson’s, she ‘tested positive for the banned stimulant Nuvigil’ back in 2016 as a cyclist and relayed the information to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency which raised the question of where this trainer would’ve gotten these banned substances:

After telling USADA that Danney was her source for this controlled substance, an arbitration panel in 2017 found that she had produced sufficient evidence to prove that she had obtained the Nuvigil from Danney. The panel said “these facts raise questions about where Mr. Danney obtained a prescription medication in such quantities” but said those questions weren’t material to her case. The panel issued her a 21-month suspension for the violation.

In her lawsuit, she said she relied on Danney to guide her in the drug’s use and used it to help battle fatigue. Danney stated in a court filing that Johnson “took the Nuvigil upon the advice of her physician who was licensed to prescribe the medication.” (via)

The reason this news has spiked over the past 24 hours is because of this latest development in the cases. The deadlines to call these witnesses were missed but the judge agreed their testimonies could be valuable and ok’d the subpoenas.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford denied that request Monday, noting that Ginsberg had missed the deadline to cut off such depositions Aug. 2. But he encouraged Ginsberg to subpoena them to trial and said the witnesses were important.
“Call them to trial,” Guilford told (lawyer) Ginsberg in a court hearing here Monday.
Ginsberg replied that he would. (via)

Not to be lost in this is NFL legend James Harrison also expected to receive a subpoena and appear as star witness int he case. Here’s an explanation on that from MSN:

“James Harrison was a long-time client and friend of lan Danney’s who was present and worked with Gea Johnson and observed her job functions over a period of many years,” said the e-mail from attorney Bill Gilbert. “He knows the inner workings of lan Danney’s enterprises, and the illegal activity that lan engaged in that created the anxiety and fear that led him to retaliate against Gea Johnson when he learned she was reporting his illegal actions to USADA.” (via)

One of the things that really blows my mind in all of this is how these professional athletes are spread all across the nation and were all using the same trainer based out of Arizona, and how that must’ve been one of the most expensive options possible. Tebow was living in NYC for a while and there are plenty of world-class trainers in New York. Harrison has his entire team’s resources at his disposal.

How can one trainer ever be worth enough to either fly to Arizona or fly them to you? I don’t get it. But this is also way above my head in terms of training and muscle recovery so maybe this guy truly is a genius.

For a full rundown of the ongoing lawsuits, you can click here to read the report on MSN.