Tim Tebow can be stopped after all. Florida’s junior quarterback fell shy of college football immortality Saturday night in a bid to win his second Heisman Trophy.
The 2008 Heisman Trophy went to Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford in the closest Heisman race since the one between Eric Crouch and Rex Grossman in 2001.
Tebow received more first places votes than any of the three, 309, but finished in third place behind Texas junior quarterback Colt McCoy, the runner-up, and 151 points behind Bradford, a redshirt sophomore.
With Bradford emerging at the winner, the BCS title game in Miami will feature two Heisman winners against each other for the second time in college football history.
The touch of irony in Tebow’s attempt to become just the second college football player in history to win the honor twice was that the man who did it prior to that was Archie Griffin, the favorite player of Urban Meyer when he was growing up in Ashtabula, Ohio.
“I wore No. 45 in high school because of Archie,” Meyer once said.
Griffin and Tebow had talked several times by phone and the former Buckeye confessed that he was an admirer of the Gator quarterback.
“It would be an honor to have a person like Tim Tebow as a two-time Heisman winner,” Griffin told the media.
Tebow has arguably become the most popular player in Florida football history. He built on the legacy of his hero, Danny Wuerffel, and has established one of his own that may never be equaled.
The Superman metaphor has become almost trite, but oddly enough when you examine the career of Tebow at Florida it’s eerily accurate. After all, every time somebody has needed to step up over the past three seasons, No. 15 has been present and accounted for.
As a freshman, on key downs, Tebow was there. He crunched out a critical yard against Tennessee in 2006. A few weeks later he threw his fabled “double jump pass” for his first touchdown pass to a falling-down tight end, Tate Casey. In the SEC Championship win that year, he was part of the Tebow-to-Andre Caldwell-to-Tate Casey play of five yards in the 38-28 victory over Arkansas.
And in the 41-14 national championship win over Ohio State, Tebow’s role was significant as he hit Caldwell for a touchdown pass to put the Gators on top, 34-14.
Once Chris Leak had graduated and the team was his, Tebow began to blossom, but the team around him wasn’t as good or as committed. It often bothered him, but he played on, without grousing. A number of his teammates experienced trouble off the field or in the classroom and the team lacked cohesion.
Tebow played on. And when the Gators got near the end of the season, trying to pull out of a nosedive that came with three losses in five games, Tebow got on the bus to play South Carolina in Williams-Brice Stadium only to find out that Percy Harvin wasn’t playing.
All he did that night was run and pass for seven touchdowns on his way to a 55-touchdown season as Florida pummeled the Gamecocks, 51-31. That’s probably the night he clinched the Heisman as the first sophomore ever to win it.
The problem was that Tebow’s legacy was used against him, because there was no way he could measure up to those numbers the next season. The question was whether the voters would consider that he was a better quarterback on a better team, playing for a national championship.
Tebow is also probably one of the few college players ever to win a Heisman and then be told by his position coach that he had to improve his play the next season. Offensive coordinator Dan Mullen, who was named the head coach of Mississippi State earlier this week, rebuilt Tebow’s throwing motion and tried to teach him more about taking charge.
At first it didn’t seem like 2008 was going to be a Heisman year for No. 15. He struggled with the quarterback makeover early as he tried to learn more about how to manage a game and was aiming his throws. He became frustrated. And, finally, after the one-point loss to Ole Miss that seemed to rock the Gator Nation, it was Tebow who shouldered the responsibility.
In what will go down in UF football history as the Gators’ version of a “Win One for the Gipper” speech, Tebow stayed longer than usual in the locker room, then lingered among the media after his post-game interview.
Florida had lost to the Rebels because of two mistakes that were uncharacteristic of an Urban Meyer team: A blocked extra point and Tebow’s failure to make a yard on fourth down.
In the media room, the press could sense something unusual as Tebow lingered after his final answer, as he paused to swallow and then choked back tears.
“I just want to say one thing” … deep breath … “to the fans and everybody in Gator Nation … You know what (pause, sniffle) …
“I’m sorry. Extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season. That was my goal. It’s something Florida’s never done here. But I promise you one thing: A lot of good will come out of this. You’ve never seen any player in the entire country who will play as hard as I will play the rest of the 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 will the rest of the season. God bless.”
You know the rest of the story. The team responded, although the following week it didn’t really kick in against Arkansas. Right up to the end of the third quarter, Tebow seemed to struggle.
And then he got mad.
Completing short passes to Louis Murphy and Deonte Thompson, Tebow then dropped back and rifled a strike to Percy Harvin on a 21-yard touchdown – easily his most authoritative and accurate pass of the season. That put Florida head 24-7 and the Gators went on to beat the Hogs 38-7, starting a nine-game streak the likes of which Florida football fans have never seen.
Tebow’s numbers didn’t equal those of the season before, but in that remarkable nine-game run he was magnificent in the big games. Against Georgia he gained a measure of revenge for the 2007 debacle in his hometown of Jacksonville, running and passing for five touchdowns.
In Tallahassee, he was Braveheart, sparking his teammates on the sloppy field, moving the scrum of teammates into the end zone. He came up splashed with garnet paint from the end zone in what looked for a second like blood.
Who could forget Tebow’s warrior face captured by ABC that night as he came up screaming and rallying the fans to get behind the Gators. It worked, as Florida went on to crush FSU, 45-15.
And then there was Atlanta – again without an injured Percy Harvin. Alabama coach Nick Saban had the game where he wanted it as the Tide kicked a field goal to take the lead 20-17, poising to deliver the knockout punch.
Except No. 15 had a different idea and Tebow rallied Florida to a 24-20 lead as he hit three third-down touchdown passes against the Crimson Tide. In what may have been as good a drive as any Florida team ever executed, Tebow engineered a 65-yard scoring march which moved him up in the hunt for the Heisman.
Tebow connected on a perfect 33-yard strike to Murphy and a 15-yard toss to tight end Aaron Hernandez before running it down to the one-inch line, where he had to overcome a 5-yard penalty against his own coach on a bizarre “sideline interference” call that placed the ball at the 6.
From there on third down, Tebow made another play that only champions make when he slung a low liner of Riley Cooper for the clinching touchdown.
Over that stretch, Tebow produced 32 touchdowns, rushed for an average of 48.8 yards per game and hit on 70 percent of his passes.
Although his powerful stats helped him win the 2007 Heisman, it is never about the numbers for Tebow – it’s about the heart, his faith and his mission in life.
Some Heisman voters admitted they changed their ballots after seeing the manner in which Tebow willed that victory for his team.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough to gain him another stiff-arm trophy and garner his place in history.
Oh well, Tim Tebow will just have to settle for an SEC Championship ring and maybe all the jewelry that comes with winning a second national title.