Look, I know he had the goal-line fumble at the spring game. But we’ll assume he’ll have that corrected and will start when the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors come to town.

Obviously, no Gator tailback has won the award. Emmitt was always in the discussion, but he really wasn’t there. Blame mediocre Florida teams and a merry-go-round of offensive coordinators for that. But why has this trend occurred? Class, let’s look at Gator football, circa mid-1960s.

The Ole Ball Coach is the starting QB for the team, coached by Ray Graves. With his accomplishments in a very wide variety of sports before coming to UF, he provides a precursor to Tim Tebow 40 years later. Some lab coat types interested in exercise physiology have invented a cocktail of water, salt, sugar, and electrolytes designed to stop muscle cramping and dehydration; they strike a deal with Stokely Van Camp, and the Gatorade marketing machine is born.

But in spite of Steve Spurrier’s considerable talent, the true Heisman favorite lives over 900 miles away. Six years before leading Miami to a perfect record and a Super Bowl title, Robert Griese takes snaps in spring practice at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He’s got the arm and the leadership to succeed.
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One of the more interesting debates on the Gator roundtable is whether Tim Tebow can join Ohio State legend Archie Griffin in the Multiple Heisman club.

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Here’s another guest appearance from renowned O&B Huer Vince Gagliano.

With a few days before Kentucky, let’s talk gridiron.

I am frequently amazed at the number of sportswriters who have Percy Harvin winning the 74th Heisman Trophy. This is going to be a bitter pill for Florida fans to swallow, but #1 on the field probably won’t be #1 in the votes.

Here are 8 reasons why, in memory of his old number.

1. Wide receivers have a tough time winning the Heisman, period.

Even though the trophy goes primarily to offensive players, quarterbacks and running backs take the lion’s share of the trophies (page Barry Sanders) With the exception of Reggie Bush, quarterbacks have won every year in the 2000s.

Nevertheless, it’s not impossible. Notre Dame’s Tim Brown and Michigan’s Desmond Howard staked claims to the trophy in 1987 and 1991.

It could have been worse. When Howard won, the runner-up was FSU’s Casey Wheldon.
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Tebow wins yet another honor: the AP Player of the Year Award.

Now that Tim has won the Davy O’Brien and Maxwell Awards, has been named to various All-SEC and and All-American teams, and of course brought the Heisman Trophy back to Gainesville, how does it feel to win this latest honor?

“That’s cool,'’ Tebow said.

Aha!  So it is possible to get a little bit jaded winning every award in existence and the entire world bowing at your feet, telling you how great you are.

No doubt Tebow’s in full practice mode for the upcoming battle with the Wolverines, and doesn’t really want to think or talk about laudations anymore.  As most coaches will tell you, buying into praise and compliments will result in a fat, happy, and complacent player.  I’m sure Michigan would take it if they could get it.

For anyone who perused this site and others linked by GatorPilot and myself, Tim Tebow’s winning the Heisman was not surprising at all. Tebow was long considered a lock for the trophy and although the final tally was closer than some predictions (yet greater than others) the result was exactly as we expected, even down to the regional breakdown. The fact that Tim managed to win the trophy despite having to overcome a number of voters who openly declared they would not vote for a sophomore or wouldn’t vote for a quarterback unless they were in national championship contention (Matt Flynn or Todd Boeckman???) proved that the old guard of is losing its grip on the throat of college football. In its place are coaches who develop new styles of play and stray from convention, players who have vastly different styles and strengths than in previous generations and a media that embraces this new revolution within the game.

Congratulations to Tim Tebow. Nothing is left to be said about the man and his on the field accomplishments. Instead I wanted to discuss some of the often insane, irrelevant or ridiculous assertions I’ve heard in the past few weeks.

1) Darren McFadden (or Colt Brennan depending on who made the claim) should have won because they were a better pro prospect.
What the hell??? This is one of the funnier assertions by supporters of other players. Apparently the Heisman Trophy winner should correlate with the number one pick of that particular year’s NFL Draft. I can see how these people would also feed into the sophomore bias because most sophomores can’t be drafted and therefore would be ineligible for the award. This also means that last year Troy Smith shouldn’t have won the award but neither would have McFadden. Another SEC player, Jamarcus Russell should have won the award. In fact the last three winners should have been Alex Smith, Mario Williams and Russell. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I wonder how many supporters in Hawaii or Arkansas would propose this if it meant the award went to Glenn Dorsey instead of their guy. Not that Dorsey isn’t a credible Heisman candidate.

2) Daniel/McFadden/Brennan/Dixon/Ryan/White should have won because they were an integral part of their team’s success and without them their team wouldn’t have had anywhere the season they had.
No F**kin’ kidding!!! Here’s the point, if you are good enough to be a top Heisman candidate then doesn’t it kind of go without saying that you are probably having a HUGE impact on your team’s overall success? Does Arkansas win 8 games without DMac? Do Oregon, BC, WVU or Mizzou reach a No. 1 or 2 ranking without their player? Of course not. But that’s like saying New England wouldn’t be as good without Tom Brady. No sh*t Sherlock, brilliant point, thanks for bringing that to our attention. EVERY player who was mentioned for the Heisman is a GREAT PLAYER!!! That’s why they are MENTIONED! The idea that a team might not be as good if you take away their best player (who is also one of the best in the nation) is really not the kind of dazzling insight or earth-shattering revelation that some people on the internet think it is.

3a) Tim Tebow has inflated stats because his touchdowns are 5 yards or less.
This is one of those “I will make my player look better by degrading yours” type arguments. Most players who have multiple touchdowns do so because they are given the ball when the team is in the red zone. What makes it even more compelling is that Razorback fans like to bring up the AVERAGE TOUCHDOWN DISTANCE statistic when proclaiming McFadden over Tebow. The point is that the average distance of Tebow’s touchdowns is 4.3 yards while McFadden’s is 17.9 yards. The key here is that it is the AVERAGE component. Obviously if you run in 7 touchdowns from a yard out but have another 80 yard touchdown are people really going to look at the 11 yard “average” and say to themselves, “Daaaayyyyymmmnnn . . . . look at how many 11 yard touchdowns that Joe Smith has! He’s deadly from the 10 yard line!!!” Are people not supposed to understand what “average” means? Like people won’t remember what they saw on the field or be able to read the box score and see the actual game summary? The truth is that Tebow has 10 touchdowns from 5 yards or further and more touchdowns outside of 5 yards (6) than McFadden (5).

This was a leading Razorback argument despite the fact that McFadden had 9 of his 15 TDs from 5 yards or less. It’s true that DMac had more long touchdown runs - 80, 73, 56, etc. There’s no denying that McFadden is far superior in space and has game breaking speed. But 60% of DMac’s 15 TDs were also from 5 yards or less. Shouldn’t he be penalized for that too? If this was such a huge criteria how about Patrick White??? That guy is AMAZING in the open field. Of his 14 rushing TD (almost the same number as McFadden) only five were from 5 yards or less. EIGHT were from more than 10 yards, SEVEN were from 20 yards or more and THREE were from 35 yards or more out. I guess the Hogs must be HUGE fans of Pat White . . . right Arkansas fans??? Or do you have another type of qualification that eliminates Pat White before you bring out the touchdown distance argument?

3b) Tim Tebow scores so many touchdowns because Florida purposely gives him the ball near the goal line for short yardage touchdowns.
First off, the ultimate rebuttal here (and one that ends any real debate) is if it’s so GODD*MN EASY then why doesn’t everyone do it? Is Urban Meyer such a brilliant mind that he’s the first to see . . . “Wow, let’s try running the quarterback up the middle down by the goal line and we’ll score thousands of uncontested points. The defense will refuse to try to tackle a QB down there because of traditional ideals of honor and chivalry (thou shalt not touch the quarterback near the goal line).” I particularly like this clown from ‘The Dooley Dose’ who states “Running 4 yards up the middle on a spread out defense is not as impressive as it appears in college football.” First of all, just ask Chase Daniel how easy it is to score in that situation against a good defense (like Oklahoma). It’s a little tougher than just snapping the ball and skipping daintily into the endzone. Twice Chase tried to score from one yard out and was stuffed by the Sooners in the Big 12 Championship game. Gosh Chase, don’t you know it’s sooooooooooo easy??? Most defenses forget the quarterback even has the ball. (more…)

Tim Tebow. Goodness gracious, sakes alive.

Is it possible that Tim has become Gator Nation’s favorite son? With two years left to play?

Yes. Quite possible. Quite probable.

Our love for Wuerffel knows no bounds, of course. And Spurrier… well, that pent-up emotion is being kept in the holding tank ’til the day Spur-Dog finally leaves that wretched South Carolina gig — and college football — behind for good. But it will surely flow again. Someday.

But in two short years, Tim Tebow has stolen our hearts and captivated our minds.

As a freshman he played a key role in defeating Florida’s arch-rivals, won an SEC championship, and accounted for two TDs in the Gators’ national championship romp. Now, as a sophomore, he’s broken SEC records for running backs, national records for quarterbacks, and won every award a signal-caller can win, including the crown jewel of them all: the Heisman Trophy.

“Tora! Tora! Tora!” is code used by the Japanese in WWII to indicate that “complete surprise” was achieved.

Tim Tebow was a surprise attack.

Our expectations for the super soph were extraordinarily high. He came into the 2007 season with the weight of worlds on his young shoulders.

He started well; got even better; turned it into overdrive; and then punched on the afterburners. Tim Tebow exceeded everyone’s wildest dreams by approximately 500%.

51 total touchdowns. 4,000 total yards. A 9-3 regular season record with a chance for a 10-win season if Florida defeats Michigan in the Capital One bowl. Tebow brought his team agonizingly close for a chance to win it all again; but football being a team sport, coming up short, in this case, can’t be laid at Tim’s feet.

7 touchdowns against South Carolina. 5 against the hated FSU Seminoles. Tebow led an offense which stacked 59 points on Tennessee, who went on to win the SEC East.

He did these things as a sophomore. He’s just barely 20 years old.

It doesn’t seem like he can be any better at what he does. But he has two years to surprise us all again.

Tora! Tora! TEBOW!

Our friend Chris Huston, aka “Heisman Pundit” is at the ceremony in New York liveblogging the awards presentation. Enjoy.

The big gun is still trained on that bronze target in the stratosphere but Tebow’s historic night out at the College Football Awards Show could be a precursor of great things to come.

Reader Vincent Gagliano sent the following note to our O&B Hue Mailbag shortly after the awards ceremony:

A sign of things to come?

No sophomore won the Davey O’Brien until Tebow did it this year.

Is the Heisman next?

Tebow actually won three awards, all of them highly prestigious and hard as hell to win as a sophomore. (Note that the announcer in the above video incorrectly states that Tebow is the second sophomore to win O’Brien Award; he is the first.) He is the recipient of this year’s Maxwell Award, given to the “College Player of the Year”. He was selected as the quarterback for the Walter Camp All-American team. And he won the crown pre-Heisman prize, the Davy O’Brien Award for the nation’s best college quarterback, which as Vincent correctly pointed out, is a good sign that our boy will win the biggest prize of them all.

Simply put, Tim won every award and honor a quarterback can get. So far.

The truth — which ESPN isn’t keen on reporting since it makes for a rather anticlimactic finish — is that the Heisman Race is already over. Tim Tebow will rewrite history when he wins the award on December 8th.

How can we be so sure?

StiffArmTrophy.com takes most of the guesswork (and some might complain, much of the excitement) out of the final week or two leading up to the Heisman Trophy Presentation Ceremony by keeping track of publicly announced ballots by sportswriters and talking heads across the country. Over the past five years they’ve correctly predicted the Top 2 — and usually the Top 4 — in order, and were accurate within less than 1.5% to 4.0% of the final tally.

This year, with 209 ballots and 578 recorded votes as of December 6th, 2007, Tim Tebow has 123 first place votes while Darren McFadden has 55. Tim Tebow’s expected to win decisively with 72.5% of the votes while McFadden will get around 53.8%. June “Trust me, my quarterback is the best player” Jones’ guy, Colt Brennan? 5 first place votes (13.4%). I guess voters weren’t as impressed by Brennan’s body of work as was his coach.

So: it’ll be Timmy. It’s not a landslide like it was for Troy Smith or Reggie Bush, but it’s a very comfortable lead in a race that really wasn’t that close to begin with.

There’s not a more deserving player in the nation. I fully expect to see #15 retired by the time Tim leaves UF — hopefully as a senior — with many more awards and CHAMPIONSHIPS to come.

Congratulations, Tim Tebow!

All Tebow, all the time, baby.

Chase Daniel is a good quarterback. He’s no Tim Tebow. Hell, he’s no Sam Bradford for that matter. Oklahoma’s talented freshman clearly outplayed the Tiger QB Saturday night.

Now that it’s come down to Tebow and McFadden, I love Tim’s chances against the Hog running back. Tim compares favorably — more than favorably, in fact — in every conceivable category.

HE15MAN. Bring home the hardware, Timmy!