The setting is right for a campaign

You couldn’t ask for a better stage than this one. We have the home town hero, already the Heisman Trophy front-runner even though he’s just a sophomore, coming home to Jacksonville, which just so happens to be his home town, playing in a nationally televised game in a stadium that’s just a couple of miles down the road from where his family goes to church, and it’s a blood-feud game against Florida’s most bitter traditional rival. Really, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Saturday’s Florida-Georgia game (3:30 p.m., Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, CBS) is the perfect place to launch a campaign. As if the Florida-Georgia game needs additional hype, particularly since the Gators are the national champs and three SEC wins away from a return to Atlanta for the conference championship game, we have the star power of Tim Tebow to raise the roof. You couldn’t have scripted this one any better — a Jacksonville boy who plays for the Florida Gators comes home to play in the game he has been going to all his life in the stadium that’s just a mile or so from the place he grew up going to church. There might never be a better setting to launch a Heisman Trophy campaign than this one.

Of course, Tebow is already in the Heisman race but isn’t this the way it goes with campaigns? You run for awhile and hope your popularity snowballs so that the formal announcement that you’re officially in the race seems almost anti-climactic. In terms of snowballing popularity, Tebow is probably the most popular player in the country right now, even as a sophomore. If you don’t believe that then you should have seen the hundreds of Ole Miss and Kentucky fans that lingered after their team got beat, hoping for a chance to shake the hand of the guy that repeatedly stabbed their hearts with a nine-inch stiletto.  Tim Tebow isn’t just a Florida phenomenon. He is a national phenomenon.

So yes, we can say that Tim Tebow has been riding a popularity wave that has him at the forefront of all Heisman Trophy thinking. It’s been that way for more than a month now, starting with that tattoo he put on the Tennessee Vols back in September in The Swamp. That got everybody talking and all he’s done since then is line up a few tanker trucks filled 93 octane that are ready to turn a burning Tebow for Heisman fire into a raging inferno.

Traditionally presidential candidates hold their running for office parties in their home towns although the trendy thing these days is to go on Letterman or Leno to announce what everybody already knows. Considering Tebow is a traditional kind of guy — a Gator through and through and well versed in the history of the Florida-Georgia rivalry — it is only fitting that this game stands to be his Tebow for Heisman party. It’s Jacksonville; it’s Florida-Georgia; it’s national television and it’s a critical game in the Southeastern Conference’s wacky East Division race.

The SEC race is what’s most important here. Tebow could care less about the individual glory. He’s about the winning and a Florida (5-2, 3-2 SEC East) win eliminates Georgia (5-2, 3-2 SEC East) and keeps the Gators’ hopes alive of repeating as the SEC champions. A two-loss Florida SEC championship team will be in a BCS bowl and there is the possibility — given the zaniness of this college football season — that the Gators or some two-loss team could end up playing for the national championship. It’s been that kind of season and anything is possible.

A Georgia win only keeps the Bulldogs alive. That’s because the Bulldogs have lost East Division games to South Carolina and Tennessee. Florida, on the other hand, is in complete control of its destiny. Win three SEC games and the Gators are in Atlanta where they could have a rematch with LSU. For Georgia to make it to Atlanta for anything other than the Peach Bowl, there has to be a lot of help.

It is the importance of the game that magnifies Tebow’s Heisman opportunity. That old saying that big time players have to step up in big time games applies here and given the trend for Heisman voters to weigh what happens in big games with championship implications, an exceptional Tebow performance will send his already soaring stock into orbit.

Last week’s shooting star was Andre Woodson, the mega talent quarterback from Kentucky who was coming off a superb performance in an upset win over then number one ranked LSU. Woodson followed that up with 415 yards and five touchdowns against the Gators but he lost the game. Tebow hung 256 passing yards, 78 rushing yards, four touchdown passes and one rushing touchdown on the Wildcats and more importantly, got the win. Woodson’s chances to win the Heisman were diminished while Tebow’s chances took a quantum leap forward.

Tebow has the national stage again this week thanks to CBS and the 3:30 p.m. slot for the second straight week. If he can produce solid numbers and Florida beats Georgia, his position at the head of the Heisman race should be solidified. If he delivers off the chart numbers and the Gators win big, the gap between Tebow and everybody else could look like the Grand Canyon. Woodson goes against Mississippi State so anything other than Star Wars numbers won’t help his cause. The third candidate in this race, Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan, had the national stage all to himself Thursday night and he darn near laid an egg. Ryan salvaged a dismal first 55 minutes against Virginia Tech by rallying Boston College in the final five minutes to a win that kept the Eagles unbeaten, but his Heisman chances should take a hit if Tebow plays lights out against Georgia.

Right now, Tebow is producing more than 300 yards per game in total offense and he has accounted for 27 touchdowns. He has 1,771 yards and 17 touchdowns passing, 578 yards and 10 touchdowns running. If he can continue at this pace, the numbers will be in the 3,200-yard, 31-touchdown range throwing the ball and 1,100-yard, 19-touchdown range rushing.

But, impressive statistics alone probably won’t get Tebow’s name called in New York when they announce the Heisman winner. Because he’s a sophomore, he will probably need some sort of championship to accompany the brilliant numbers. Any kind of slip-up and not only will the Gators lose the SEC East Division, but Tebow’s chances of becoming the first sophomore to win the Heisman will go down the drain. There are skeptical voters that would appreciate any excuse to vote for someone other than a sophomore. Rex Grossman can testify to that. If he beat Tennessee in the last game of the 2001 regular season, the Gators would have won the SEC East and Rex would have probably won the Heisman as a sophomore. Instead, he finished second to Eric Crouch of Nebraska.

Winning the SEC East will help Tebow’s chances enormously. If he gets to the SEC Championship Game and comes away with a win, Tebow for Heisman might be a bigger lock than Georgia Tech over Cumberland College in 1916.

Georgia Tech won that game, 222-0. The coach of that Georgia Tech team? John Heisman, the fella they named the trophy after.

So let the campaign begin! Let it begin in Jacksonville, Tim Tebow’s home town, and let it begin with a stellar performance against the Georgia Bulldogs, Florida’s biggest SEC rival.

Tim Tebow for Heisman Trophy! Let the campaign officially begin today.

FEARLESS FORECAST: The Gators will get off to an early lead and then pound Georgia into submission, using a superior offensive line and a power running game to win a game that won’t be as close as the score. The Tebow for Heisman campaign will get a jump start but more important, the Florida Gators for SEC East champs campaign will get one game closer to the prize.

I like Tebow for three touchdowns and I like the Gators to win, something like 33-14.

Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.