January 15, 2020 • 38 mins
Before he turned into the baseball-playing-reality-show-hosting-former-NFL-quarterback, Tim Tebow officially became an icon by leading the 2008 Florida Gators to the national championship. How did it happen? It had to do with a big loss, a bigger speech, a bloody jersey, and revenge over losing out on the Heisman Trophy. And after it was all over, you could make a case for Tebow being the greatest college football player of all time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Special Teams, a production of my Heart Radio.
Greetings and Welcome inside Special Teams with Jason Smith and
(00:22):
Mike Harmon, our weekly podcast that looks back at big
years in sports for individual teams that are memorable for
one reason or another. Our show He and I, Mike
and I, the two of us, He and Me, Me
and Him Monday through Friday, Fox Sports Radio seven pm
to eleven pm Pacific time, ten pm to two am
on the East Coast, and we are happy to continue
(00:45):
to bring you this podcast taking a look now at
a very special team from two thousand and eight. Were
already look back at one team from two thousand and eight,
that was the Detroit Lions who didn't win a game.
So now we're going to take this the other direction
and look back at the national champion two thousand and
eight Florida Gators football team, which really was the apex
(01:05):
of the career of Tim Tebow. You're a guy, former Jet.
Tim Tebow never gave him a chance. Never he couldn't
beat out Mark Sanche. I watched that battle live and
in living color during training camp, almost got run over
and lost a leg. It was on a fight that
spilled into the media section. I just remember what a
(01:26):
circus it was. They're like, yeah, come on up, and
then I get there and there's hundreds of media. ESPNS
got their giant, uh daily check in live from Jets
camp and I've got a full I mean, they built
a whole set like they do for for game games
to watch Sanchez and Tebow get after it, and people
(01:46):
are screaming, why are we bothering? That's the thing about
this this podcast here is that Tim Tebow has become
an icon type status and he has he has a
reputation of in some realms of boy, Tim Tebow's almost perfect.
Look at what he does, all the great things he does.
(02:07):
You know, he would go to third world countries and
help give circumcisions to two kids that that would otherwise
get disease. And some of the perfect things he does.
He tries to rehabilitate people in prison. Now he's become
a very popular color commentator for football, doing other things,
playing baseball for the New York Mets. But then there's
part of it where, oh my goodness, Tim Tebow, I
(02:28):
just laughed at the guy. The guy thought he was
a great quarterback. He wasn't in the NFL. He was
a one trick pony. He was good in college. So
you have the two schools of thought on Tim Tebow,
where you have one part of the sports or sports
fans who say, wow, he can see what he did,
appreciate it, and then understand he's a different guy now
he's an icon. And then you have the other part
of fans who are like, oh, the guy never made
(02:49):
it in the NFL. This is back when we looked
at Tim Tebow at the height of his football popularity.
This was as good as it got for Tim Tebow
on the football field. Yes, you can say his his
run with the Broncos when he won the playoff game
against the Steelers was a big deal. But this was
Tim Tebow, a culmination of years of promise we'd heard
(03:12):
about him. He came in and helped win a national
championship for the Gators as a freshman throwing the jump pass,
but Chris Leak was the quarterback. Then they didn't win
the next year, But now here was Tebow coming off
the Heisman Trophy. He went from bit player Heisman Trophy
and now Kenny lead Florida to a national championship where
he was on top of the football world. Because still
when he was at the Broncos, there were many people said,
(03:34):
he's not any good. He's just on a hot streak
for the Broncos right now that are moving things around
and and and tailoring the offense around him. There were
still the detractors, but at this point, this was Tebo
at the height of his popularity. Well, the difference between
college and the level of player with you, right when
we look at this Gators team and the the level
(03:55):
of just special players in your receiving corps and how
you can run an offense, and that hadn't translated to
the NFL. Tim Tebow comes up, Maybe maybe we've got
a different discussion. Right if if he's a format coming
into the league. Now we're more to having him be
(04:15):
our quarterback because we can build things around he skill,
build it to his skill set, which nobody wanted to do.
And when he was with the Broncos, the Jets, quickly
with the Patriots as a backup, all of those things,
it was all right, how does he fit in? Like
watching with the Jets, it was painful in those practices
that I attended because they put the cones up trying
to say all right, stay in the pocket, and it
(04:37):
was awful right. It was like tag, you're in. Like
he never got rid of the ball. But as soon
as they took the cones away and saying all right,
now we're doing eleven on eleven, let's go and he
can scramble and he can buy time and he can
gain his receivers separation. Now there was something different. And
that's what they did in Denver. You could probably talk
to most of the guys that played with him, and
especially the offensive lineman losing their minds because it wasn't
(05:00):
a straight blocking scheme from I was like, all right,
trying to hold your block as long as you can,
just don't hold, and then downfield receivers stay active. Eventually,
if he's still on his feet and hasn't tucked the
ball to run, maybe you'll have that opportunity. But he
was passer, right. He was never accurate enough to be
(05:21):
that when when you look back at Tim Tebow, we're
gonna get to the Florida part of it. But just
just to think of him as he was the guy
I felt that took all the arrows that made this
era of quarterback possible, because before Tebow, it was really,
we had Randall Cunningham for a couple of years, but
boy he was special. He had Michael Vick and his
physical talents, and boy he was special. And now you
(05:42):
had Tim Tebow. Wait, and we can't just make it
work with anybody, but he took all the arrows and
showed that, you know, I can be a little bit
successful when you build the offense around me. So slowly
we've gotten to the point where, okay, we're more comfortable
with that. Then Russell Wilson starts showing up and winning
Super Bowls, and then Lamar Jackson, and now it's everybody
wants Russell Wilson, Lamar Jacks and Tebow is gonna be
seen as he's the conduit to say, all right, he
(06:04):
made it was really difficult for people to get behind
a quarterback that could be a big dual threat. But
now it's much more easier. After they got past the negativity,
they can move on to other players and embrace them more.
But think about the guys that never got a shot, right,
the guys from Nebraska, oh Shared Crouch or Tommy Frasier,
all those guys. Scott Frost gotta change positions become a
safety yeah, you go play safety for crowd. Who is hey,
(06:26):
you want to play some wide receiver, go have it,
you know, all the way down like guys that were
at great college quarterbacks, It's like, all right, your system
doesn't play here, and we we don't do that anymore.
I mean credit to John Harbaugh. Credit. As we talk
about on our nightly show on Fox Sports Radio, if
you have the opportunity to draft and develop a special talent,
(06:47):
a man like Liam Neeson with a special set of skills,
you go and you figure out how to build around
and maximize for whatever that length of time is those skills.
For Tim Tebow, that never happened. So is he flamed
out in the NFL fairly quickly, But it doesn't detract
from the legend that he was in college football coming
off the Heisman Trophy. In two thousand seven, Florida lost
(07:09):
the Capitol One Bowl of Michigan, but they had high hopes.
They were ranked fifth in the preseason coming in and
this is a two thousand eight team that was loaded
with future NFL talent. Urban Meyer when urban Meyer was
just a genius and he wasn't boys a great head coach,
but he's got issues personally. Cam Newton was on this
team before he got thrown off for stealing a computer,
(07:31):
allegedly throwing it out the window. Cam Newton was the
backup on this team. Mike and Morkey's Pouncey, who turned
into great line in the NFL, were on this team.
Percy Harvin was on this team and he really made
this team go as fast as he was. Joe Hayden
was on this team. The very infamous Aaron Hernandez was
on this team when he was just a great tight
(07:51):
end and not the infamous character he turned into later on.
Nobody knew or outside of whatever circles at that point right. Also,
Jeff Demp's member as fast as he was, It was
Jeff Demps is gonna be so great, always so fast.
He's so fast. Caleb Sturgis was the kicker on this team.
Riley Cooper, who had some big catches during this season,
(08:14):
was on this team. He did shouldn't go to country
music concerts. Carlos Dunlap was on this team. Genorris Jenkins
was on this team. This was a fully two thousand
eight Florida football team. Now, before we get into this season,
let's take a look back at the year of two
thousand and eight. If you're listening to the podcast, you go,
(08:40):
wait a minute, you look back at big Things from
two thousand and eight in the Lions podcast. So this
is where we take things a little bit different direction.
The two thousand and eight college football season looked like this.
Some of these highlights coming out of two thousand and eight.
Rich Rodriguez got the job at Michigan. Right now, Michigan
fans are going you Rodriguez, who never had a honeymoon
(09:05):
at Michigan, came in upsetting the apple cart right away.
We're gonna do things my way, and it was, oh
my goodness, what are you doing, Rich Rodriguez? There loving
Jim Harbor, now, aren't they? He was such a bad fit,
such a Also in two thousand eight was when Bobby
Petrino left the Falcons near the end of the season
for the Arkansas head coaching job. When he scrawled out
(09:27):
that note, Dear Falcons, I quit sincerely Bobby. That's one
of the most assinine things I think we've experienced in
recent sports history. Fortunes changed for the Clemson Tigers as
it was middle of the season where Tommy Bowden resigned
with Clemson sitting at three and three. What did Clemson
(09:47):
do well? They decided to promote a unknown assistant named
Dabo Sweeney who came in and took over and now
and you know, a few years later turned Clemson into
a huge national power legend. And h Kyle Whittingham, head
coach of Utah, Why is he such a big deal?
At the end of the year, the agreement was that
(10:08):
if you win the national championship game, you are the
number one team in the country, and everybody needed to
vote that way. That was the agreement with the new
way college football was doing things, except Kyle Whittingham was
very upset that his team was undefeated. He broke the
agreement and voted Utah number one. So despite the fact
that Florida won the National championship beating Oklahoma, No, no,
(10:30):
I'm still voting my team number one and protest because
we're undefeated and nobody else is. I kind of dig
that about him, just saying, here's I mean, did he
sign the agreement? Maybe someone up the ladder did, But
if he had the opportunity to cast that ballot himself,
and it's like, you know, voting for Alan Iverson as
your m VP. Oh you see seeing Fred Hickman did
(10:50):
this haman under the Whittingham alias. I just wonder if
college football just said, Okay, do you feel like he
got the protest in Kyle? You feel okay, Great, You're
not the nat Championship. We're moving on. Well, I mean
we've had that with other teams claiming national championships in
recent memory, right, I mean secondary uh Florida school deciding
(11:12):
hey we got part of it, put up that banner.
So that was what two thousand and eight looked like,
coming up next week and into the season for the
Florida Gators and an absolute legendary moment that people are
gonna talk about. It's gonna be sticking around the Florida
campus for the next thousand years. This is Special Teams
with Jason Smith and Mike Harbor. The two thousand and
(11:48):
eight seasons started off for the Florida Gators ranked fifth
in the country. Pretty nice spot to sit, and they
started out great. They were three and oh out of
the gate and they were twenty two point favorites again
Ole Miss. They had not turned the ball over their
first three games. But this is where the Florida National
Championship run hit a big roadblock. They committed their first
(12:10):
turn over the season in the second quarter against Ole Miss.
Third quarter, Percy Harvin fumbles on a run. Tim Tebow fumbles.
It's the first turnovers of the season for the Gators,
and a lead turned into a deficit and Old Miss
behind the late Jevan Snead was suddenly off to the
races and Florida was in a lot of trouble in
this one. While you're seeing the combination of Sneed's play,
(12:33):
some work on the ground, and some big plays coming
into coming into effect here that Florida punched in the mouth, right.
The first couple of games easy, and as we see
in college football, you get those warm ups, right, you
get a couple of it it was like, all right, we
don't even know where this school is, and you beat
up on him by and look, your favorite school might
(12:54):
still do that, that schedule might still be available to you.
But here was one we would look at the point
spread it in. You're like, all right, it's gonna be
a cakewalk. And then every once in a while, it's
you know, always easy. What is it the Mike Tyson quote,
All's easy until you get punched in the mouth the
first time, and that's exactly what Florida got here. All
the star power in the world didn't stop from Old
(13:14):
Miss coming up with a big effort. They fought their
way back to tie the game, but the extra point
is blocked, so it's thirty one thirty all Miss with
the lead. But Florida did get the football back with
two minutes left to go, they need a field goal
to win the game. Fourth and one at the thirty
two yard line with forty seconds left, Tim Tebow is
(13:39):
stopped on a run. Ole Miss runs out the clock.
They win the game. Forty nine yard field goal is
a forty nine yard field goal, but they went four
and on fourth and one, they didn't get it, and
Florida loses this game to Ole Miss. A shocker upon shockers.
But go back to a lot of a lot of
teams in the past, right insert college football coaching legend
(14:02):
here didn't always have the kicker that you trusted from
a higher rage. Since Sebastian Janetkowski, I think everybody thinks
they can find super toe and just slam the guy's
head and tak a fifty yard field goal. Back then,
it was still was still in really kind of difficult
proposition for a lot of you. I you know, I
agree in theory because I remember in the nineties, unless
(14:25):
it unless it was under forty yards, you didn't really
want to kick. You would throw rolling dice. But this
is two thousand eight, this is still you have decent kickers.
You gotta think we can make a forty nine yard
You and I are dice because then look, he misses,
defense takes over right whatever I mean, you're putting it
on your defense, especially if you're, as they did, top
(14:46):
five team. You're thinking you're a national title contender. So
we can get one yard on fourth and one yard
and we can get a stop if it fails. I
think that's that's the logic that flows through. Especially it's
Tim Tim Tebow. Hey gonna part the sea? What are
you talking about? So Tebow goes Heisman Trophy winner. He
stopped on fourth and one, But it was after this
(15:07):
game that he gave a moment that will live forever
in college football lore because it was following the loss,
Tebow addressed the media and said the words that have
since been turned into a plaque and engrave plaque outside
the entrance to the Gators football facilities quote. I'm sorry.
I'm extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season.
(15:29):
That was my goal, something Florida has never done here.
But I promise you one thing. A lot of good
will come out of this. You have never seen any
player in the entire country play as hard as I
will play the rest of this season. And you'll never
see someone push the rest of the team as hard
as I will push everybody the rest of the season.
And you'll never see a team play harder than we
(15:50):
will the rest of the season. God bless a. Tebow
gave that speech. Remember what he did. People roll their
eyes going, yes, that's Tim Tebow. Yes it's great. But
after he did leading the Gators to the national championship,
this became a legendary moment and Urban Meyer it was
his idea to say, we're making this something so everybody
can see it every day when they walked into the
football facilities. Because Tim Tebow was about hard work and
(16:13):
perseverance and always doing your best. Well, nowadays, it would
be condensed into a tweet. Here's my statement after losing
the old miss it. It's gotta be short to the
point as you roll through. I mean, look, I got
people have short attention spans, but exactly, but that's that's
the Tim Tebow. That that's the beginning of it. Right,
(16:34):
Eventually it became more about speeches than performance on the field,
and that's when folks started tuning out, and we we
go through his NFL career and that's the case. But
here you see how it galvanized this team, because the
expectations were to go undefeated. Right, you're you're talking to here,
a three touchdown favorite, and you go and you you
(16:57):
lose outright that it suddenly, all right, it's not the
perfect season. And if we're not careful, we're not playing
for anything meaningful at all, Like we're playing in one
of the thirty four Bowl games, but just you know
as an also ran because we won't get that opportunity
to win it on the field. So if this was
(17:17):
the low point for Tebow, this is where they started
to really dig out from where they are. That lass
dropped them to number twelve, and Tebow's words inspired Florida
because here's what they did the next few weeks. They
beat Arkansas thirty eight seven, All right, well Arkansas and
they beat that. Then they play l s U who
was ranked fourth in the country. They beat them fiftee.
(17:40):
Tebow was now leading an absolute unstoppable offense. They played
Kentucky and beat them sixty three to five. They played Georgia,
who was ranked eighth in the country at this point,
and this was the Gator Stomp revenge game. If you
remember the year before, it was Mark Rick, head coach
of Georgia, in a very famous moment, who really wanted
to win this game, told his team, when we score
(18:02):
first touchdown, everybody goes out to the end zone to celebrate, right,
So they scored the touchdown and the entire team ran
on the field and they're throwing flags everywhere. Urban Meyer
is going, what the hell is this all about? But
this was Mark Rick wanting to say, we're gonna show
you we're gonna win this game. Georgia does it. They
win the game, and this was known as the Gator
Stomp revenge game because Georgia got blown out by Florida.
(18:25):
Tebow has a big game. Forty nine to ten is
the final and this was the revenge in which at
the end of the game, up by thirty nine, urban
Meyer starts using his time outs in the final minute
just to make the end of this game more painful
for Georgie. You have to suck it up a little
bit more and say, all right, wear it, and now
I'm just gonna stare you down right, because that's the
beauty of calling the time out. In a situation like that.
(18:48):
You just fold your arms and kind of half grin
across the way and no matter how bad a guy's
eyesight is, and they're gonna claim it, I couldn't really see. No, no, no,
you see the whites of the eyes and see the
slight smile and that burns. Oh how that burns? So
big defeat there on the Jacksonville surface. It was such
a big game for Tebow. He had rushed for three
(19:10):
tds in the game. That was forty for his career.
He sat in the fourth quarter, watched John Brantley take
over and play the rest of the fourth quarter against Georgia. Uh.
This was not a blip for the Florida Gators at
this point. After this win over Georgia, they move up
to number five in the country. They beat Vanderbilt ten.
They play South Carolina, who's ranked four. H final score
(19:35):
Florida fifty six, South Carolina six. They played the Citadel.
They know that one of those SEC November games. You
know how I feel about it. Hey wait, you know
we need a break al right from our schedules. We're
playing a really tough conference, so we're gonna play the
Citadel in November. Uh. Then it was the big rivalry
game Florida Florida State. It wasn't a real rivalry in
(19:58):
the game because Florida wins the forty fifteen. But this
is the Tebow bloody jersey game in which you see
this all over YouTube. Remember he goes in for a touchdown.
It was very muddy this game, and the red in
the end zone gets all over his jersey, so it
looks like it's a bloody Tebow was punched in the
fan like he's Mel Gibson in Bravehearts, and suddenly I
would take my lines, but I won't take our freedom.
(20:21):
And it was the like I said, it was the
bloody jersey. And this is where Tebow's legend grew even
further than it was, because if it was at a
low point after the loss to Mississippi, this was a
springboard where now it's, oh my goodness, here they are
headed to the SEC Championship. Game against Alabama, and Tebow
is at the height of his powers. Well, and you're
(20:41):
pummeling all these teams, right, and you're talking about ranked
opponents from l s U was fourth with last miles
to Georgia was eighth. South Carolina top twenty five, Florida
State top twenty five, and you're meeting him by thirty right,
You're you're not eking out wins here. You were absolutely
just a literating all comers. And for Tim Tebow, just
(21:03):
when we talk about college football legends, like, certainly in
our lifetime, have you seen anybody better? So as he
went through the back end of this year, this is
where the the goat talk that we get so enamored
within all the our other sports, for Tim Tebow, you
start raising an eyebrow, going, I don't know that we've
seen anything like this. Now. The one thing that happened
(21:25):
for the Gators here is Percy Harvin gets hurt in
the Florida State game. And you know, for all the
attention Tim Tebow got over the course of his career,
Percy Harvin was such an unbelievable jaw dropping player because
of his speed, and many people would watch his team
and go as good as Tebow is the threat that
Percy Harvin is. That's the guy you gotta watch out
(21:45):
for because you have to account for him on every
plusceiver return. Man, we're running reverses, whatever they're gonna do.
The ball in his hands and he was electrifying. So
this is where Florida sits now headed to the SEC
Championship game against Alabama. Would there be a second Heisman
Trophy and Tim Tebow's future And what about the National
Championship later on against the guy who actually did win
(22:09):
the Heisman Trophy over Tebow that year? All that more
coming up next year Specialties podcast with Jason Smith and
Mike car So what was now left for the Florida
(22:35):
Gators and Tim Tebow in their run to immortal? First
was the SEC Championship game against Alabama. It was a
number one versus number two game, not one of the
classic SEC Championship games of all time, but there was
a lot of firepower. A young freshman wide receiver named
Julio Jones had a pretty big game for Alabama as
well as mark Ingram running back. And this is the
(22:57):
beginning of the Oh boy, Ala Mabbe has just got
squads every single year. Now, well you're talking about Ervian
Meyer against Nick Saban and the the glory of Nick Saban. Right,
we'd had his different levels of success and then Michigan
State in l s U. But now now the beast
begins and so we when when you see those skill
(23:18):
position players that you have never had to be about
the quarterback. I just needed to build them big, fast
and have a running back to make things go. It
was a tight game. In the first half. Offenses struggled
despite Alabama like did move the ball a bit. But
in the third quarter things opened up. Alabama outscored Florida
tends zip, but it was Florida who outscored Alabama fourteen zero.
(23:42):
In the fourth quarter, Jeff Demps with a touchdown run
and then Tim Tebow a touchdown pass to Riley Cooper,
giving the Florida Gators an eleven point lead. Alabama their
last ditch effort, quarterback John Parker Wilson was sacked and
couldn't move the ball, had an interception on the final drive,
and Florida's defense comes through in the fourth quarter to
win the game and set up Florida into the National
(24:04):
Championship game. But before that, we had to hand out
some hardware. Tim Tebow, who was bidding to become back
to back Heisman Trophy winner, was up in a final
group with Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. Sam Bradford wins
the Heisman Trophy through forty eight touchdowns last year. For
that year for Oklahoma, Tim Tebow was thirty touchdowns. He
(24:26):
also ran for twelve touchdowns. He had a great year
and oddity, he had the most first place votes of
anybody but finished third behind Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy.
And this is a very odd anomaly. Now, way we
had the most first place votes, but everybody went crazy
because this was the year that the Big Twelve opening
up of the offenses really took center stage. Because it
(24:49):
was look up until you get to two thousand and eight,
two thousand nine. The teams that lined up and threw
the ball with four wide receivers wide out of the shotgun.
They were all teams that played in the Whack and
and and the Mountain West. There's all right, we get
to see them, but that's not real football. But the
fact that these spread offenses were now brought to the
Big twelve. And here's Sam Bradford went on to be
the number one overall pick in the draft. This was
(25:10):
all the rage. The big twelve Saturday afternoons of games
were brand new at this time, and that was what
got everybody's attention all through the year. We had seen
Tebow last year and have a great year, but this
was boy, here's Sam Bradford, Here's Colt McCoy, Here's Sam Bradford,
here's Colt McCoy, And everybody got into that every Saturday. No. It'
funny because we've seen it for about a decade, but
as you said, it was always uh. That type of
(25:33):
offense was associated with the whack a little bit of
the four hour games in the Pac ten. And then
you had Joe Tiller at Purdue. What was the commonality.
Nobody could defend anybody, So you had some speedsters, but
you you had terrible defenses, so you had these shootouts,
so they weren't great teams. So now all of a
sudden you had contenders that said, well, what have we
(25:55):
flipped the script and have at it? And Sam Bradford
was a known commodity too, but he hadn't one. So
for Tim Tebow, it just became part of what really
was his entire NFL career was all right, I've I've
heard enough about Tim Tebow. And then after a while
it wasn't even about football with Tim Tebow. It became
about messaging and who he was off the field and
(26:18):
and everything else. People started to get into wrinkles of that.
But for the Heisman Trophy, it's like, yeah, you already won, alright,
Archie Griffin got it twice. Nobody else is getting that.
We're not gonna do that. We're not doing that again.
We're not gonna do like when like remember it was
a big deal in the Oscars went okay, you got
two Best Actor and no one's gonna get three. Then
Daniel dy Lewis gets it and then wow, no. But
it was it was almost like an unwritten rule that Okay,
(26:40):
he did it, but no one else can really do it.
Had there not been Colt McCoy, had just been Sam
Brad for him Tim Tebow, maybe Tebow does it. Because media,
they always really want to do something that is against
the grain. They wanted to give the Heisman Trophy to
Charles Woodson over Peyton Manning. I think they would have
wanted to give it to him but just the air
show every Saturday. It's the Big twelve, and it's something
(27:03):
that that now is creeping into Power five conferences. You
couldn't get enough that it was one game earlier in
the day, then Texas would play later or vice first,
and it was take a look at these crazy video
game numbers from quarterbacks at schools where if Oklahoma through
five passes in the game. You know, ten years before
that that was a big deal. Right, what's dominating the
highlight reels? Right? And obviously even ten years ago a
(27:26):
different world in terms of how things are consumed. Right now,
we're we're talking about as soon as the the touchdowns
celebrations over, it's up on Twitter, Facebook, wherever else wherever
you're consuming your media that you can watch the highlights,
so it lives over the course of the day. Back
even in two thousand eight, it was all right, here's
(27:46):
your half hour highlight or at the five minutes at
the end of your local news, where all of a
sudden you started getting the barrage and whatever game was latest,
whatever your prime time was. And let's face an sec
that was at least for us here on the West Coast,
you know, that's nine AM is a lot of those
games where you were seeing Tim Tebow or maybe in
(28:08):
the one PM or they're about slots. Prime time wasn't
as it is now, where you've got more games, more selection,
and more competition for those viewer viewer eyeballs and clicks.
You know, the big game was always the three thirty
ABC game. It wasn't the prime time was what what's
on three thirty PM on ABC? That's always the big game?
(28:28):
Whatever is there, that's what we're gonna watch. And that
was where these games were all those years man three
thirty ABC games. So then Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford
met again, this time in the National Championship Game. It
was Tebow versus Bradford, the last two Heisman Trophy winners.
The thing is, neither offense played well in this game.
You know, Oklahoma comes in an n c A record
(28:50):
over seven points this year and Tebows that do everything
quarterback Tebow through two picks all year. He threw two
against Oklahoma. Sam Bradford through two picks. This is not
one of those boys. We're gonna get some kind of grapes.
Oh no, We're gonna a game that is kind of ugly.
Here and and ugly games like that are always gonna
favor the team with the better defense. Yeah, and you
had some some coaching changes, right, Florida had guys because
(29:14):
of their success and sustained success suddenly going off to
looking at other jobs. So you've got those distractions that
start entering your practice rounds and and the weeks leading
up to the game as you you ran through, right,
Dan Mullen heading over to Mississippi State. But certainly, but
he stayed to coach. Coach, But he's but he's out right,
(29:35):
and so listen, I'm I got a conference call on
with misides, so I'm only listening with one ear, So
I'm like, he in how much Seed dialed in? But
all those questions that we ask all the time in
the final weeks of seasons. Yeah, I'll stick through the
bowl games. Now, this is a national title game, right,
and it's not like, hey, the bowl game played on
December twenty, This is kind of a big deal here,
(29:57):
But yeah, it's it was one that seemed like a
lot more feeling out than one that hadn't the normal
flow that either team played with during the regular season.
And now the big deal in this game wasn't actually
Tebow or Sam Bradford. It was the return of Percy Harvin, who,
as time goes on, should get a lot more credit
for this Florida run because he was unstoppable, his speed,
(30:19):
what he could do on those jet sweeps when they
threw him the football returning kicks, he was such a
huge weapon that you know, Tim Tebow obviously and and
and his icon personality and persona overwhelmed things. But Percy
Harvin was the guy that made this team go. They
needed big plays in the National Championship game, and he
got it all right. He ran for a two yard
(30:40):
touchdown to give Florida fourteen seven lead. Oklahoma ties the
game right after he breaks off a fifty two yard
run to set up a field goal they could take
a seventeen fourteen lead. It was these plays by Harvin
that really changed the game because suddenly Florida's offense was
moving the football more because Harvd, wh would would miss time,
was back for the first time in this game, this
the Alabama game. And so now he's back, and now
(31:02):
Oklahoma had trouble accounting for all of those weapons that
Florida had an offense now and things got a little
bit easier for them in the second half. I always
trying to figure out where that that explosive play was
going to come from. And when he missed time, you know,
it bogs down. He ends up leading leading rusher. And
that's not what you think of Percy Harvin. No, like
I first think return man and then occasionally a receiver
(31:26):
with the occasional gadget player. It wasn't a great night
for the offense. It was a great night. Nine nine
carries a hundred twenty two yards to score. Tebow ran
for over a hundred yards too. So you're talking about
busted plays, design runs and gadgetry really pulling out all stops,
things that you get criticized forward to some degree, but
(31:47):
in this case it helped to the celebration of the
creativity of Urban Meyer. Sam Bradford has picked off by
Ahmad Black, who had a big year for Florida that year.
Interception wise, Tebo throws a touchdown to David Nelson. I
remember David Nelson, he was great. Like every four weeks
with the Bills, it was should I pick up David
Nelson in fantasy? And David Nelson popped down the radar
(32:10):
quite a bit. Then Oklahoma turns it over on downs.
That is it. Florida are your national champions They win
it all, and it is the crowning moment of Tim
Tebow's collegiate career. Because now Tebow, who has played three
seasons as a quarterback for Florida, won a national championship.
(32:30):
His first year as a part time stortum. He would
come in for Chris Leak and they would run the
jump pass, and he was the big weapon. Love the
jump pass. Then he wins the Heisman trophy. Now he
wins a national championship. Right now, the following year after
they win it all, I mean, it's it's team Tebows everywhere.
He says he's coming back for a senior year two
thousand nine. Then went twelve and oh, and they lost
(32:51):
to Alabama in the SEC championship game. There's a reason
why we're going past this season here for a second.
So they go twelve and oh, los to Alabama in
the SEC title game. All right, urban Meyer steps down
for health reasons. He stayed with Tebow as long as
he could go, and now he's stepping down. But four
years of Tebow, two national titles, a Heisman, and an
(33:11):
undefeated regular season. For me, he goes down as the
best college football player of the modern era. You know,
I can't look back at what seasons guys like Jay
Burwanger had or you know, you go back early, you
know Mr Inside, Mr Outside, Ernie and Glenn Davis. But
but you want to look better or Doc Blanchet and
Glenn Davis, Ernie Davis with Syracuse. But the modern college
(33:33):
football nobody has had a career like that. No, not
one person. You say, all right, who's accomplished the most
two national championships, the Heisman Trophy, undefeated regular season, You're
not gonna find anybody. No, you could have some fun
with stats and depending on what style of the game
you like. Right, the career that Ricky Williams had, but
you don't have the titles. The career Ron Dane had
at Wisconsin just amazing his durability and for a big
(33:57):
man once he got removing, you're bringing him down more.
I talked to x NFL players that we have the
pleasure of working with or talking to Fox Sports Radio.
The more you find out cornerbacks and safeties, it wasn't
just Dion Sanders. Nobody wants to hit a running back
down field, like you always think, all right, there's just
certain players you don't want any part of. No, they
(34:19):
don't want any part of any of it. And then
you show a picture Ron Days. Oh no, And for
a while you could have joked that his name was
the ball carrier because on the p a was Ron
Day the ball carrier. Again, you would want you would
watch him like put his hand on a lineman's back
and follow it for like seven yards downfield before you
hit anybody. Yeah, then he was drunk around and then
he'd have another ten and he was no guy to hide, right,
(34:40):
This wasn't Tarik Cohen hiding behind office. Why this is
a big man who was barely smaller on than the lineman.
But yeah, I mean there's a few guys. I mean
you look at the career of of Peyton Manning, like
fantastic number and after he was gone, right Martin, Yeah,
I mean just go through and you think of all
(35:01):
these great careers, like it's not even close like to
the accolades, to to what the team did and what
he did personally. I mean, you really just an amazing
for your run. He goes down as the best college
football player of the modern era. His legacy is secure.
He's got the bloody jersey game, he has the plaque,
he's got everything. But what about some of the other players?
(35:25):
Where are they now? Where are they now? All Right?
I got a four pack for you here that you'll enjoy.
And and the fifth we've talked about Percy Harvin before,
checked the archives of special Teams UH and where Percy
Harvin is talking about needing to quell his migraines, and
(35:47):
well the weed uh and boogles being part of what
helps sustain him. We got Dustin Doe for a linebacker
in Jasper, Florida. He's a team counselor for the Boys
and Girls Club of America. That's his gig. I'm picturing
him like from what hot American summer day. Well, you
have that too. Will Hill linebacker slash safety. He's going
(36:08):
to be on the roster and helping to lead things
for the St. Louis battle Hawks of your xflat Hawks
is a nickname. So I mean, we still have a
lot of players that are either just finishing their NFL
careers or trying to continue NFL or football in general
wherever they can. You've got William Steinman, former offensive lineman.
(36:29):
He's a products liability defense attorney in Pennsylvania. What that
to slip and fall because of where these sneakers gets? Well,
come see me, all right, this is more of the
product blew up in your face. But that kind of thing. Uh,
you know we watched and Williamson sneaker blew up. Well
you want to talk about something that was worth tens
of millions to him? How about that exactly? Uh No,
(36:52):
just sign a bigger deal with them when it comes
to the sneaker wars. Uh. And then Jamal Davo, the linebacker.
He is a VP of distribution for a grocery and
food service supply company. I need let us and I
need it now. Well, we'll get it to you. But
that supply chain management, there's an underrated skill. How many
garden domes do I need this spring? Hey? And there's
also jobs that people are gonna always need. People are
(37:14):
gonna aways need food? Right, how do I get food?
How do I get the trucks? How do I get
the planes? Whatever? Uh, supply methods we have, let's get
them on the roads. So there's our look back at
the two thousand eight National champion Florida Gators and Tim Tebow.
You can get us up on social media Twitter at
how About a Fresca? Mike is at Swollen Dome. Any ideas,
(37:35):
feedback and teams that you might want to hear featured
on the next edition of Special Teams podcast with Jason
Smith and Mike Carmen. Check out our show again on
Fox Sports Radio every night Monday through Friday, seven pm
to eleven pm on the West Coast, ten pm to
two am on the East Coast. We'll see you next
week for another episode of Special Teams. Before you go,
(38:03):
rate and review the show. Whether you're listening on I
Heart Radio, I Heart Radio apps, Apple, whatever it is,
give us a rate, tell us you like it. We
will love you forever and ever and ever. Special Teams
(38:27):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Special Teams, a production of my Heart Radio.
Greetings and Welcome inside Special Teams with Jason Smith and
(00:22):
Mike Harmon, our weekly podcast that looks back at big
years in sports for individual teams that are memorable for
one reason or another. Our show He and I, Mike
and I, the two of us, He and Me, Me
and Him Monday through Friday, Fox Sports Radio seven pm
to eleven pm Pacific time, ten pm to two am
on the East Coast, and we are happy to continue
(00:45):
to bring you this podcast taking a look now at
a very special team from two thousand and eight. Were
already look back at one team from two thousand and eight,
that was the Detroit Lions who didn't win a game.
So now we're going to take this the other direction
and look back at the national champion two thousand and
eight Florida Gators football team, which really was the apex
(01:05):
of the career of Tim Tebow. You're a guy, former Jet.
Tim Tebow never gave him a chance. Never he couldn't
beat out Mark Sanche. I watched that battle live and
in living color during training camp, almost got run over
and lost a leg. It was on a fight that
spilled into the media section. I just remember what a
(01:26):
circus it was. They're like, yeah, come on up, and
then I get there and there's hundreds of media. ESPNS
got their giant, uh daily check in live from Jets
camp and I've got a full I mean, they built
a whole set like they do for for game games
to watch Sanchez and Tebow get after it, and people
(01:46):
are screaming, why are we bothering? That's the thing about
this this podcast here is that Tim Tebow has become
an icon type status and he has he has a
reputation of in some realms of boy, Tim Tebow's almost perfect.
Look at what he does, all the great things he does.
(02:07):
You know, he would go to third world countries and
help give circumcisions to two kids that that would otherwise
get disease. And some of the perfect things he does.
He tries to rehabilitate people in prison. Now he's become
a very popular color commentator for football, doing other things,
playing baseball for the New York Mets. But then there's
part of it where, oh my goodness, Tim Tebow, I
(02:28):
just laughed at the guy. The guy thought he was
a great quarterback. He wasn't in the NFL. He was
a one trick pony. He was good in college. So
you have the two schools of thought on Tim Tebow,
where you have one part of the sports or sports
fans who say, wow, he can see what he did,
appreciate it, and then understand he's a different guy now
he's an icon. And then you have the other part
of fans who are like, oh, the guy never made
(02:49):
it in the NFL. This is back when we looked
at Tim Tebow at the height of his football popularity.
This was as good as it got for Tim Tebow
on the football field. Yes, you can say his his
run with the Broncos when he won the playoff game
against the Steelers was a big deal. But this was
Tim Tebow, a culmination of years of promise we'd heard
(03:12):
about him. He came in and helped win a national
championship for the Gators as a freshman throwing the jump pass,
but Chris Leak was the quarterback. Then they didn't win
the next year, But now here was Tebow coming off
the Heisman Trophy. He went from bit player Heisman Trophy
and now Kenny lead Florida to a national championship where
he was on top of the football world. Because still
when he was at the Broncos, there were many people said,
(03:34):
he's not any good. He's just on a hot streak
for the Broncos right now that are moving things around
and and and tailoring the offense around him. There were
still the detractors, but at this point, this was Tebo
at the height of his popularity. Well, the difference between
college and the level of player with you, right when
we look at this Gators team and the the level
(03:55):
of just special players in your receiving corps and how
you can run an offense, and that hadn't translated to
the NFL. Tim Tebow comes up, Maybe maybe we've got
a different discussion. Right if if he's a format coming
into the league. Now we're more to having him be
(04:15):
our quarterback because we can build things around he skill,
build it to his skill set, which nobody wanted to do.
And when he was with the Broncos, the Jets, quickly
with the Patriots as a backup, all of those things,
it was all right, how does he fit in? Like
watching with the Jets, it was painful in those practices
that I attended because they put the cones up trying
to say all right, stay in the pocket, and it
(04:37):
was awful right. It was like tag, you're in. Like
he never got rid of the ball. But as soon
as they took the cones away and saying all right,
now we're doing eleven on eleven, let's go and he
can scramble and he can buy time and he can
gain his receivers separation. Now there was something different. And
that's what they did in Denver. You could probably talk
to most of the guys that played with him, and
especially the offensive lineman losing their minds because it wasn't
(05:00):
a straight blocking scheme from I was like, all right,
trying to hold your block as long as you can,
just don't hold, and then downfield receivers stay active. Eventually,
if he's still on his feet and hasn't tucked the
ball to run, maybe you'll have that opportunity. But he
was passer, right. He was never accurate enough to be
(05:21):
that when when you look back at Tim Tebow, we're
gonna get to the Florida part of it. But just
just to think of him as he was the guy
I felt that took all the arrows that made this
era of quarterback possible, because before Tebow, it was really,
we had Randall Cunningham for a couple of years, but
boy he was special. He had Michael Vick and his
physical talents, and boy he was special. And now you
(05:42):
had Tim Tebow. Wait, and we can't just make it
work with anybody, but he took all the arrows and
showed that, you know, I can be a little bit
successful when you build the offense around me. So slowly
we've gotten to the point where, okay, we're more comfortable
with that. Then Russell Wilson starts showing up and winning
Super Bowls, and then Lamar Jackson, and now it's everybody
wants Russell Wilson, Lamar Jacks and Tebow is gonna be
seen as he's the conduit to say, all right, he
(06:04):
made it was really difficult for people to get behind
a quarterback that could be a big dual threat. But
now it's much more easier. After they got past the negativity,
they can move on to other players and embrace them more.
But think about the guys that never got a shot, right,
the guys from Nebraska, oh Shared Crouch or Tommy Frasier,
all those guys. Scott Frost gotta change positions become a
safety yeah, you go play safety for crowd. Who is hey,
(06:26):
you want to play some wide receiver, go have it,
you know, all the way down like guys that were
at great college quarterbacks, It's like, all right, your system
doesn't play here, and we we don't do that anymore.
I mean credit to John Harbaugh. Credit. As we talk
about on our nightly show on Fox Sports Radio, if
you have the opportunity to draft and develop a special talent,
(06:47):
a man like Liam Neeson with a special set of skills,
you go and you figure out how to build around
and maximize for whatever that length of time is those skills.
For Tim Tebow, that never happened. So is he flamed
out in the NFL fairly quickly, But it doesn't detract
from the legend that he was in college football coming
off the Heisman Trophy. In two thousand seven, Florida lost
(07:09):
the Capitol One Bowl of Michigan, but they had high hopes.
They were ranked fifth in the preseason coming in and
this is a two thousand eight team that was loaded
with future NFL talent. Urban Meyer when urban Meyer was
just a genius and he wasn't boys a great head coach,
but he's got issues personally. Cam Newton was on this
team before he got thrown off for stealing a computer,
(07:31):
allegedly throwing it out the window. Cam Newton was the
backup on this team. Mike and Morkey's Pouncey, who turned
into great line in the NFL, were on this team.
Percy Harvin was on this team and he really made
this team go as fast as he was. Joe Hayden
was on this team. The very infamous Aaron Hernandez was
on this team when he was just a great tight
(07:51):
end and not the infamous character he turned into later on.
Nobody knew or outside of whatever circles at that point right. Also,
Jeff Demp's member as fast as he was, It was
Jeff Demps is gonna be so great, always so fast.
He's so fast. Caleb Sturgis was the kicker on this team.
Riley Cooper, who had some big catches during this season,
(08:14):
was on this team. He did shouldn't go to country
music concerts. Carlos Dunlap was on this team. Genorris Jenkins
was on this team. This was a fully two thousand
eight Florida football team. Now, before we get into this season,
let's take a look back at the year of two
thousand and eight. If you're listening to the podcast, you go,
(08:40):
wait a minute, you look back at big Things from
two thousand and eight in the Lions podcast. So this
is where we take things a little bit different direction.
The two thousand and eight college football season looked like this.
Some of these highlights coming out of two thousand and eight.
Rich Rodriguez got the job at Michigan. Right now, Michigan
fans are going you Rodriguez, who never had a honeymoon
(09:05):
at Michigan, came in upsetting the apple cart right away.
We're gonna do things my way, and it was, oh
my goodness, what are you doing, Rich Rodriguez? There loving
Jim Harbor, now, aren't they? He was such a bad fit,
such a Also in two thousand eight was when Bobby
Petrino left the Falcons near the end of the season
for the Arkansas head coaching job. When he scrawled out
(09:27):
that note, Dear Falcons, I quit sincerely Bobby. That's one
of the most assinine things I think we've experienced in
recent sports history. Fortunes changed for the Clemson Tigers as
it was middle of the season where Tommy Bowden resigned
with Clemson sitting at three and three. What did Clemson
(09:47):
do well? They decided to promote a unknown assistant named
Dabo Sweeney who came in and took over and now
and you know, a few years later turned Clemson into
a huge national power legend. And h Kyle Whittingham, head
coach of Utah, Why is he such a big deal?
At the end of the year, the agreement was that
(10:08):
if you win the national championship game, you are the
number one team in the country, and everybody needed to
vote that way. That was the agreement with the new
way college football was doing things, except Kyle Whittingham was
very upset that his team was undefeated. He broke the
agreement and voted Utah number one. So despite the fact
that Florida won the National championship beating Oklahoma, No, no,
(10:30):
I'm still voting my team number one and protest because
we're undefeated and nobody else is. I kind of dig
that about him, just saying, here's I mean, did he
sign the agreement? Maybe someone up the ladder did, But
if he had the opportunity to cast that ballot himself,
and it's like, you know, voting for Alan Iverson as
your m VP. Oh you see seeing Fred Hickman did
(10:50):
this haman under the Whittingham alias. I just wonder if
college football just said, Okay, do you feel like he
got the protest in Kyle? You feel okay, Great, You're
not the nat Championship. We're moving on. Well, I mean
we've had that with other teams claiming national championships in
recent memory, right, I mean secondary uh Florida school deciding
(11:12):
hey we got part of it, put up that banner.
So that was what two thousand and eight looked like,
coming up next week and into the season for the
Florida Gators and an absolute legendary moment that people are
gonna talk about. It's gonna be sticking around the Florida
campus for the next thousand years. This is Special Teams
with Jason Smith and Mike Harbor. The two thousand and
(11:48):
eight seasons started off for the Florida Gators ranked fifth
in the country. Pretty nice spot to sit, and they
started out great. They were three and oh out of
the gate and they were twenty two point favorites again
Ole Miss. They had not turned the ball over their
first three games. But this is where the Florida National
Championship run hit a big roadblock. They committed their first
(12:10):
turn over the season in the second quarter against Ole Miss.
Third quarter, Percy Harvin fumbles on a run. Tim Tebow fumbles.
It's the first turnovers of the season for the Gators,
and a lead turned into a deficit and Old Miss
behind the late Jevan Snead was suddenly off to the
races and Florida was in a lot of trouble in
this one. While you're seeing the combination of Sneed's play,
(12:33):
some work on the ground, and some big plays coming
into coming into effect here that Florida punched in the mouth, right.
The first couple of games easy, and as we see
in college football, you get those warm ups, right, you
get a couple of it it was like, all right, we
don't even know where this school is, and you beat
up on him by and look, your favorite school might
(12:54):
still do that, that schedule might still be available to you.
But here was one we would look at the point
spread it in. You're like, all right, it's gonna be
a cakewalk. And then every once in a while, it's
you know, always easy. What is it the Mike Tyson quote,
All's easy until you get punched in the mouth the
first time, and that's exactly what Florida got here. All
the star power in the world didn't stop from Old
(13:14):
Miss coming up with a big effort. They fought their
way back to tie the game, but the extra point
is blocked, so it's thirty one thirty all Miss with
the lead. But Florida did get the football back with
two minutes left to go, they need a field goal
to win the game. Fourth and one at the thirty
two yard line with forty seconds left, Tim Tebow is
(13:39):
stopped on a run. Ole Miss runs out the clock.
They win the game. Forty nine yard field goal is
a forty nine yard field goal, but they went four
and on fourth and one, they didn't get it, and
Florida loses this game to Ole Miss. A shocker upon shockers.
But go back to a lot of a lot of
teams in the past, right insert college football coaching legend
(14:02):
here didn't always have the kicker that you trusted from
a higher rage. Since Sebastian Janetkowski, I think everybody thinks
they can find super toe and just slam the guy's
head and tak a fifty yard field goal. Back then,
it was still was still in really kind of difficult
proposition for a lot of you. I you know, I
agree in theory because I remember in the nineties, unless
(14:25):
it unless it was under forty yards, you didn't really
want to kick. You would throw rolling dice. But this
is two thousand eight, this is still you have decent kickers.
You gotta think we can make a forty nine yard
You and I are dice because then look, he misses,
defense takes over right whatever I mean, you're putting it
on your defense, especially if you're, as they did, top
(14:46):
five team. You're thinking you're a national title contender. So
we can get one yard on fourth and one yard
and we can get a stop if it fails. I
think that's that's the logic that flows through. Especially it's
Tim Tim Tebow. Hey gonna part the sea? What are
you talking about? So Tebow goes Heisman Trophy winner. He
stopped on fourth and one, But it was after this
(15:07):
game that he gave a moment that will live forever
in college football lore because it was following the loss,
Tebow addressed the media and said the words that have
since been turned into a plaque and engrave plaque outside
the entrance to the Gators football facilities quote. I'm sorry.
I'm extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season.
(15:29):
That was my goal, something Florida has never done here.
But I promise you one thing. A lot of good
will come out of this. You have never seen any
player in the entire country play as hard as I
will play the rest of this season. And you'll never
see someone push the rest of the team as hard
as I will push everybody the rest of the season.
And you'll never see a team play harder than we
(15:50):
will the rest of the season. God bless a. Tebow
gave that speech. Remember what he did. People roll their
eyes going, yes, that's Tim Tebow. Yes it's great. But
after he did leading the Gators to the national championship,
this became a legendary moment and Urban Meyer it was
his idea to say, we're making this something so everybody
can see it every day when they walked into the
football facilities. Because Tim Tebow was about hard work and
(16:13):
perseverance and always doing your best. Well, nowadays, it would
be condensed into a tweet. Here's my statement after losing
the old miss it. It's gotta be short to the
point as you roll through. I mean, look, I got
people have short attention spans, but exactly, but that's that's
the Tim Tebow. That that's the beginning of it. Right,
(16:34):
Eventually it became more about speeches than performance on the field,
and that's when folks started tuning out, and we we
go through his NFL career and that's the case. But
here you see how it galvanized this team, because the
expectations were to go undefeated. Right, you're you're talking to here,
a three touchdown favorite, and you go and you you
(16:57):
lose outright that it suddenly, all right, it's not the
perfect season. And if we're not careful, we're not playing
for anything meaningful at all, Like we're playing in one
of the thirty four Bowl games, but just you know
as an also ran because we won't get that opportunity
to win it on the field. So if this was
(17:17):
the low point for Tebow, this is where they started
to really dig out from where they are. That lass
dropped them to number twelve, and Tebow's words inspired Florida
because here's what they did the next few weeks. They
beat Arkansas thirty eight seven, All right, well Arkansas and
they beat that. Then they play l s U who
was ranked fourth in the country. They beat them fiftee.
(17:40):
Tebow was now leading an absolute unstoppable offense. They played
Kentucky and beat them sixty three to five. They played Georgia,
who was ranked eighth in the country at this point,
and this was the Gator Stomp revenge game. If you
remember the year before, it was Mark Rick, head coach
of Georgia, in a very famous moment, who really wanted
to win this game, told his team, when we score
(18:02):
first touchdown, everybody goes out to the end zone to celebrate, right,
So they scored the touchdown and the entire team ran
on the field and they're throwing flags everywhere. Urban Meyer
is going, what the hell is this all about? But
this was Mark Rick wanting to say, we're gonna show
you we're gonna win this game. Georgia does it. They
win the game, and this was known as the Gator
Stomp revenge game because Georgia got blown out by Florida.
(18:25):
Tebow has a big game. Forty nine to ten is
the final and this was the revenge in which at
the end of the game, up by thirty nine, urban
Meyer starts using his time outs in the final minute
just to make the end of this game more painful
for Georgie. You have to suck it up a little
bit more and say, all right, wear it, and now
I'm just gonna stare you down right, because that's the
beauty of calling the time out. In a situation like that.
(18:48):
You just fold your arms and kind of half grin
across the way and no matter how bad a guy's
eyesight is, and they're gonna claim it, I couldn't really see. No, no, no,
you see the whites of the eyes and see the
slight smile and that burns. Oh how that burns? So
big defeat there on the Jacksonville surface. It was such
a big game for Tebow. He had rushed for three
(19:10):
tds in the game. That was forty for his career.
He sat in the fourth quarter, watched John Brantley take
over and play the rest of the fourth quarter against Georgia. Uh.
This was not a blip for the Florida Gators at
this point. After this win over Georgia, they move up
to number five in the country. They beat Vanderbilt ten.
They play South Carolina, who's ranked four. H final score
(19:35):
Florida fifty six, South Carolina six. They played the Citadel.
They know that one of those SEC November games. You
know how I feel about it. Hey wait, you know
we need a break al right from our schedules. We're
playing a really tough conference, so we're gonna play the
Citadel in November. Uh. Then it was the big rivalry
game Florida Florida State. It wasn't a real rivalry in
(19:58):
the game because Florida wins the forty fifteen. But this
is the Tebow bloody jersey game in which you see
this all over YouTube. Remember he goes in for a touchdown.
It was very muddy this game, and the red in
the end zone gets all over his jersey, so it
looks like it's a bloody Tebow was punched in the
fan like he's Mel Gibson in Bravehearts, and suddenly I
would take my lines, but I won't take our freedom.
(20:21):
And it was the like I said, it was the
bloody jersey. And this is where Tebow's legend grew even
further than it was, because if it was at a
low point after the loss to Mississippi, this was a
springboard where now it's, oh my goodness, here they are
headed to the SEC Championship. Game against Alabama, and Tebow
is at the height of his powers. Well, and you're
(20:41):
pummeling all these teams, right, and you're talking about ranked
opponents from l s U was fourth with last miles
to Georgia was eighth. South Carolina top twenty five, Florida
State top twenty five, and you're meeting him by thirty right,
You're you're not eking out wins here. You were absolutely
just a literating all comers. And for Tim Tebow, just
(21:03):
when we talk about college football legends, like, certainly in
our lifetime, have you seen anybody better? So as he
went through the back end of this year, this is
where the the goat talk that we get so enamored
within all the our other sports, for Tim Tebow, you
start raising an eyebrow, going, I don't know that we've
seen anything like this. Now. The one thing that happened
(21:25):
for the Gators here is Percy Harvin gets hurt in
the Florida State game. And you know, for all the
attention Tim Tebow got over the course of his career,
Percy Harvin was such an unbelievable jaw dropping player because
of his speed, and many people would watch his team
and go as good as Tebow is the threat that
Percy Harvin is. That's the guy you gotta watch out
(21:45):
for because you have to account for him on every
plusceiver return. Man, we're running reverses, whatever they're gonna do.
The ball in his hands and he was electrifying. So
this is where Florida sits now headed to the SEC
Championship game against Alabama. Would there be a second Heisman
Trophy and Tim Tebow's future And what about the National
Championship later on against the guy who actually did win
(22:09):
the Heisman Trophy over Tebow that year? All that more
coming up next year Specialties podcast with Jason Smith and
Mike car So what was now left for the Florida
(22:35):
Gators and Tim Tebow in their run to immortal? First
was the SEC Championship game against Alabama. It was a
number one versus number two game, not one of the
classic SEC Championship games of all time, but there was
a lot of firepower. A young freshman wide receiver named
Julio Jones had a pretty big game for Alabama as
well as mark Ingram running back. And this is the
(22:57):
beginning of the Oh boy, Ala Mabbe has just got
squads every single year. Now, well you're talking about Ervian
Meyer against Nick Saban and the the glory of Nick Saban. Right,
we'd had his different levels of success and then Michigan
State in l s U. But now now the beast
begins and so we when when you see those skill
(23:18):
position players that you have never had to be about
the quarterback. I just needed to build them big, fast
and have a running back to make things go. It
was a tight game. In the first half. Offenses struggled
despite Alabama like did move the ball a bit. But
in the third quarter things opened up. Alabama outscored Florida
tends zip, but it was Florida who outscored Alabama fourteen zero.
(23:42):
In the fourth quarter, Jeff Demps with a touchdown run
and then Tim Tebow a touchdown pass to Riley Cooper,
giving the Florida Gators an eleven point lead. Alabama their
last ditch effort, quarterback John Parker Wilson was sacked and
couldn't move the ball, had an interception on the final drive,
and Florida's defense comes through in the fourth quarter to
win the game and set up Florida into the National
(24:04):
Championship game. But before that, we had to hand out
some hardware. Tim Tebow, who was bidding to become back
to back Heisman Trophy winner, was up in a final
group with Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. Sam Bradford wins
the Heisman Trophy through forty eight touchdowns last year. For
that year for Oklahoma, Tim Tebow was thirty touchdowns. He
(24:26):
also ran for twelve touchdowns. He had a great year
and oddity, he had the most first place votes of
anybody but finished third behind Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy.
And this is a very odd anomaly. Now, way we
had the most first place votes, but everybody went crazy
because this was the year that the Big Twelve opening
up of the offenses really took center stage. Because it
(24:49):
was look up until you get to two thousand and eight,
two thousand nine. The teams that lined up and threw
the ball with four wide receivers wide out of the shotgun.
They were all teams that played in the Whack and
and and the Mountain West. There's all right, we get
to see them, but that's not real football. But the
fact that these spread offenses were now brought to the
Big twelve. And here's Sam Bradford went on to be
the number one overall pick in the draft. This was
(25:10):
all the rage. The big twelve Saturday afternoons of games
were brand new at this time, and that was what
got everybody's attention all through the year. We had seen
Tebow last year and have a great year, but this
was boy, here's Sam Bradford, Here's Colt McCoy, Here's Sam Bradford,
here's Colt McCoy, And everybody got into that every Saturday. No. It'
funny because we've seen it for about a decade, but
as you said, it was always uh. That type of
(25:33):
offense was associated with the whack a little bit of
the four hour games in the Pac ten. And then
you had Joe Tiller at Purdue. What was the commonality.
Nobody could defend anybody, So you had some speedsters, but
you you had terrible defenses, so you had these shootouts,
so they weren't great teams. So now all of a
sudden you had contenders that said, well, what have we
(25:55):
flipped the script and have at it? And Sam Bradford
was a known commodity too, but he hadn't one. So
for Tim Tebow, it just became part of what really
was his entire NFL career was all right, I've I've
heard enough about Tim Tebow. And then after a while
it wasn't even about football with Tim Tebow. It became
about messaging and who he was off the field and
(26:18):
and everything else. People started to get into wrinkles of that.
But for the Heisman Trophy, it's like, yeah, you already won, alright,
Archie Griffin got it twice. Nobody else is getting that.
We're not gonna do that. We're not doing that again.
We're not gonna do like when like remember it was
a big deal in the Oscars went okay, you got
two Best Actor and no one's gonna get three. Then
Daniel dy Lewis gets it and then wow, no. But
it was it was almost like an unwritten rule that Okay,
(26:40):
he did it, but no one else can really do it.
Had there not been Colt McCoy, had just been Sam
Brad for him Tim Tebow, maybe Tebow does it. Because media,
they always really want to do something that is against
the grain. They wanted to give the Heisman Trophy to
Charles Woodson over Peyton Manning. I think they would have
wanted to give it to him but just the air
show every Saturday. It's the Big twelve, and it's something
(27:03):
that that now is creeping into Power five conferences. You
couldn't get enough that it was one game earlier in
the day, then Texas would play later or vice first,
and it was take a look at these crazy video
game numbers from quarterbacks at schools where if Oklahoma through
five passes in the game. You know, ten years before
that that was a big deal. Right, what's dominating the
highlight reels? Right? And obviously even ten years ago a
(27:26):
different world in terms of how things are consumed. Right now,
we're we're talking about as soon as the the touchdowns
celebrations over, it's up on Twitter, Facebook, wherever else wherever
you're consuming your media that you can watch the highlights,
so it lives over the course of the day. Back
even in two thousand eight, it was all right, here's
(27:46):
your half hour highlight or at the five minutes at
the end of your local news, where all of a
sudden you started getting the barrage and whatever game was latest,
whatever your prime time was. And let's face an sec
that was at least for us here on the West Coast,
you know, that's nine AM is a lot of those
games where you were seeing Tim Tebow or maybe in
(28:08):
the one PM or they're about slots. Prime time wasn't
as it is now, where you've got more games, more selection,
and more competition for those viewer viewer eyeballs and clicks.
You know, the big game was always the three thirty
ABC game. It wasn't the prime time was what what's
on three thirty PM on ABC? That's always the big game?
(28:28):
Whatever is there, that's what we're gonna watch. And that
was where these games were all those years man three
thirty ABC games. So then Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford
met again, this time in the National Championship Game. It
was Tebow versus Bradford, the last two Heisman Trophy winners.
The thing is, neither offense played well in this game.
You know, Oklahoma comes in an n c A record
(28:50):
over seven points this year and Tebows that do everything
quarterback Tebow through two picks all year. He threw two
against Oklahoma. Sam Bradford through two picks. This is not
one of those boys. We're gonna get some kind of grapes.
Oh no, We're gonna a game that is kind of ugly.
Here and and ugly games like that are always gonna
favor the team with the better defense. Yeah, and you
had some some coaching changes, right, Florida had guys because
(29:14):
of their success and sustained success suddenly going off to
looking at other jobs. So you've got those distractions that
start entering your practice rounds and and the weeks leading
up to the game as you you ran through, right,
Dan Mullen heading over to Mississippi State. But certainly, but
he stayed to coach. Coach, But he's but he's out right,
(29:35):
and so listen, I'm I got a conference call on
with misides, so I'm only listening with one ear, So
I'm like, he in how much Seed dialed in? But
all those questions that we ask all the time in
the final weeks of seasons. Yeah, I'll stick through the
bowl games. Now, this is a national title game, right,
and it's not like, hey, the bowl game played on
December twenty, This is kind of a big deal here,
(29:57):
But yeah, it's it was one that seemed like a
lot more feeling out than one that hadn't the normal
flow that either team played with during the regular season.
And now the big deal in this game wasn't actually
Tebow or Sam Bradford. It was the return of Percy Harvin, who,
as time goes on, should get a lot more credit
for this Florida run because he was unstoppable, his speed,
(30:19):
what he could do on those jet sweeps when they
threw him the football returning kicks, he was such a
huge weapon that you know, Tim Tebow obviously and and
and his icon personality and persona overwhelmed things. But Percy
Harvin was the guy that made this team go. They
needed big plays in the National Championship game, and he
got it all right. He ran for a two yard
(30:40):
touchdown to give Florida fourteen seven lead. Oklahoma ties the
game right after he breaks off a fifty two yard
run to set up a field goal they could take
a seventeen fourteen lead. It was these plays by Harvin
that really changed the game because suddenly Florida's offense was
moving the football more because Harvd, wh would would miss time,
was back for the first time in this game, this
the Alabama game. And so now he's back, and now
(31:02):
Oklahoma had trouble accounting for all of those weapons that
Florida had an offense now and things got a little
bit easier for them in the second half. I always
trying to figure out where that that explosive play was
going to come from. And when he missed time, you know,
it bogs down. He ends up leading leading rusher. And
that's not what you think of Percy Harvin. No, like
I first think return man and then occasionally a receiver
(31:26):
with the occasional gadget player. It wasn't a great night
for the offense. It was a great night. Nine nine
carries a hundred twenty two yards to score. Tebow ran
for over a hundred yards too. So you're talking about
busted plays, design runs and gadgetry really pulling out all stops,
things that you get criticized forward to some degree, but
(31:47):
in this case it helped to the celebration of the
creativity of Urban Meyer. Sam Bradford has picked off by
Ahmad Black, who had a big year for Florida that year.
Interception wise, Tebo throws a touchdown to David Nelson. I
remember David Nelson, he was great. Like every four weeks
with the Bills, it was should I pick up David
Nelson in fantasy? And David Nelson popped down the radar
(32:10):
quite a bit. Then Oklahoma turns it over on downs.
That is it. Florida are your national champions They win
it all, and it is the crowning moment of Tim
Tebow's collegiate career. Because now Tebow, who has played three
seasons as a quarterback for Florida, won a national championship.
(32:30):
His first year as a part time stortum. He would
come in for Chris Leak and they would run the
jump pass, and he was the big weapon. Love the
jump pass. Then he wins the Heisman trophy. Now he
wins a national championship. Right now, the following year after
they win it all, I mean, it's it's team Tebows everywhere.
He says he's coming back for a senior year two
thousand nine. Then went twelve and oh, and they lost
(32:51):
to Alabama in the SEC championship game. There's a reason
why we're going past this season here for a second.
So they go twelve and oh, los to Alabama in
the SEC title game. All right, urban Meyer steps down
for health reasons. He stayed with Tebow as long as
he could go, and now he's stepping down. But four
years of Tebow, two national titles, a Heisman, and an
(33:11):
undefeated regular season. For me, he goes down as the
best college football player of the modern era. You know,
I can't look back at what seasons guys like Jay
Burwanger had or you know, you go back early, you
know Mr Inside, Mr Outside, Ernie and Glenn Davis. But
but you want to look better or Doc Blanchet and
Glenn Davis, Ernie Davis with Syracuse. But the modern college
(33:33):
football nobody has had a career like that. No, not
one person. You say, all right, who's accomplished the most
two national championships, the Heisman Trophy, undefeated regular season, You're
not gonna find anybody. No, you could have some fun
with stats and depending on what style of the game
you like. Right, the career that Ricky Williams had, but
you don't have the titles. The career Ron Dane had
at Wisconsin just amazing his durability and for a big
(33:57):
man once he got removing, you're bringing him down more.
I talked to x NFL players that we have the
pleasure of working with or talking to Fox Sports Radio.
The more you find out cornerbacks and safeties, it wasn't
just Dion Sanders. Nobody wants to hit a running back
down field, like you always think, all right, there's just
certain players you don't want any part of. No, they
(34:19):
don't want any part of any of it. And then
you show a picture Ron Days. Oh no, And for
a while you could have joked that his name was
the ball carrier because on the p a was Ron
Day the ball carrier. Again, you would want you would
watch him like put his hand on a lineman's back
and follow it for like seven yards downfield before you
hit anybody. Yeah, then he was drunk around and then
he'd have another ten and he was no guy to hide, right,
(34:40):
This wasn't Tarik Cohen hiding behind office. Why this is
a big man who was barely smaller on than the lineman.
But yeah, I mean there's a few guys. I mean
you look at the career of of Peyton Manning, like
fantastic number and after he was gone, right Martin, Yeah,
I mean just go through and you think of all
(35:01):
these great careers, like it's not even close like to
the accolades, to to what the team did and what
he did personally. I mean, you really just an amazing
for your run. He goes down as the best college
football player of the modern era. His legacy is secure.
He's got the bloody jersey game, he has the plaque,
he's got everything. But what about some of the other players?
(35:25):
Where are they now? Where are they now? All Right?
I got a four pack for you here that you'll enjoy.
And and the fifth we've talked about Percy Harvin before,
checked the archives of special Teams UH and where Percy
Harvin is talking about needing to quell his migraines, and
(35:47):
well the weed uh and boogles being part of what
helps sustain him. We got Dustin Doe for a linebacker
in Jasper, Florida. He's a team counselor for the Boys
and Girls Club of America. That's his gig. I'm picturing
him like from what hot American summer day. Well, you
have that too. Will Hill linebacker slash safety. He's going
(36:08):
to be on the roster and helping to lead things
for the St. Louis battle Hawks of your xflat Hawks
is a nickname. So I mean, we still have a
lot of players that are either just finishing their NFL
careers or trying to continue NFL or football in general
wherever they can. You've got William Steinman, former offensive lineman.
(36:29):
He's a products liability defense attorney in Pennsylvania. What that
to slip and fall because of where these sneakers gets? Well,
come see me, all right, this is more of the
product blew up in your face. But that kind of thing. Uh,
you know we watched and Williamson sneaker blew up. Well
you want to talk about something that was worth tens
of millions to him? How about that exactly? Uh No,
(36:52):
just sign a bigger deal with them when it comes
to the sneaker wars. Uh. And then Jamal Davo, the linebacker.
He is a VP of distribution for a grocery and
food service supply company. I need let us and I
need it now. Well, we'll get it to you. But
that supply chain management, there's an underrated skill. How many
garden domes do I need this spring? Hey? And there's
also jobs that people are gonna always need. People are
(37:14):
gonna aways need food? Right, how do I get food?
How do I get the trucks? How do I get
the planes? Whatever? Uh, supply methods we have, let's get
them on the roads. So there's our look back at
the two thousand eight National champion Florida Gators and Tim Tebow.
You can get us up on social media Twitter at
how About a Fresca? Mike is at Swollen Dome. Any ideas,
(37:35):
feedback and teams that you might want to hear featured
on the next edition of Special Teams podcast with Jason
Smith and Mike Carmen. Check out our show again on
Fox Sports Radio every night Monday through Friday, seven pm
to eleven pm on the West Coast, ten pm to
two am on the East Coast. We'll see you next
week for another episode of Special Teams. Before you go,
(38:03):
rate and review the show. Whether you're listening on I
Heart Radio, I Heart Radio apps, Apple, whatever it is,
give us a rate, tell us you like it. We
will love you forever and ever and ever. Special Teams
(38:27):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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