NEW YORK, NY — Tonight, on a stage that isn’t all that far from where the curtain was raised in 1955 on the original Broadway Production of “Damn Yankees” the 2008 Heisman Trophy winner will be announced. If the trophy goes to the player with the best stats, Tim Tebow doesn’t have a prayer. If it’s all about the stats, then they might as well go ahead and engrave the name Sam Bradford right now. Numbers can’t measure heart, however, and if Tebow is to win, it’s going to be because the voters believed he had more than any other college football player this year.
“Damn Yankees” is best remembered for the song “You Gotta Have Heart” and that’s how Tebow will have to be remembered to win what promises to be the closest Heisman vote ever. If the voters take leadership and heart into account, Tebow is the winner hands down. It shouldn’t even be close if heart is part of the equation.
Tebow has stats — really great stats although those compiled by Bradford and fellow Heisman finalist Colt McCoy of Texas are better — and last year he won the Heisman based on his stats, so there is precedent for awarding college football’s most prestigious award to the player that puts up the best numbers. Last year it was fine for the award to go to the player with the best numbers and it’s not because Tebow’s numbers were the best. Look at last year’s Heisman finalists — Tebow, Darren McFadden of Arkansas, Chase Daniel of Missouri and Colt Brennan of Hawaii. They were all in New York on Heisman weekend because they put up Star Wars numbers not because they inspired their teams to greatness. Because there wasn’t that one inspirational player that made everyone around him better and had his team competing for the national championship the vote almost had to be based on stats in 2007.
Case in point, Glen Dorsey of LSU. He is the player that everyone remembers from LSU’s national championship team last year but he missed at least a third of his team’s games with a high ankle sprain and they didn’t miss a beat. Who was that difference maker that not only made everyone on Ohio State — last year’s national runner-up — better but truly stood out as the best player in the country?
This year a solid case can be made for the player that not only has great stats but the one that truly embodies all the things that separate college football from any other sport in our country. No other sport brings out the emotion and passion of its players and its fans like college football. Do you see college football players taking two years off because they just got a zillion dollar contract? Do you see thousands of pro football fans forming RV caravans and driving 600 miles to show up three days early for a big game?
College football is unique in its ability to turn small towns into the second largest city in the state on a fall afternoon and transform otherwise reserved, thoughtful CPAs, lawyers, housewives and the like into hell-raising, fire-breathers who could plead temporary insanity for their actions in and around the stadium.
This is a game that is defined by passion and emotion. It is all about heart and nobody plays the game with more passion, more emotion and more heart than Tim Tebow.
You want proof? Go back to September 27 when Florida lost to Ole Miss. Do you remember Tim Tebow tearfully promising that nobody would work harder to make sure his team didn’t lose another game?
And what happened after then? The Gators have won nine games in a row including the SEC Championship Game over number one ranked Alabama and the Bama game was the only one that was close. Tebow not only elevated his own game but he took the Florida Gators on his back.
Did you see him sprint 20 yards and bounce around like a bowling pin in the special teams huddle after the Gators took the lead last week in Atlanta? Did you see him passionately raising the emotional level of the defense to go out and make one last stop?
Did you hear Sam Bradford making any promises when Texas beat Oklahoma by 10 points in the Red River Shootout? What did Colt McCoy do after Texas Tech beat Texas? Don’t remember? Neither do I.
But I do remember what Tim Tebow did. I do remember that speech and I have seen the results. The Florida Gators climbed on Tim Tebow’s strong, wide shoulders and just like he carried Florida State’s entire defensive line into the end zone in the second quarter in that quagmire that was Doak Campbell Stadium, he has carried the Gators to the SEC championship and a shot at the national championship.
Tim Tebow has the Gators on the verge of true greatness because he makes everyone around him better — and we’re not even taking about what he does off the field, which is another story altogether. Tebow deserves to win the Heisman Trophy. He deserves to join Archie Griffin as the only two-time winners in the history of the award.
Tebow deserves it because he has that unique blend of God-given physical ability to go with leadership skills that would make General Patton proud and a heart so big it can’t be measured.
If the voters vote heart, then the 2008 Heisman goes to Tim Tebow, University of Florida.
You have to be a Broadway fan to remember the stage production of “Damn Yankees” but you’ve probably heard the song “You Gotta Have Heart” at least a few hundred times if you were born before 1960.
The part everybody remembers goes:
“You gotta have heart! All you gotta have is heart!
When the odds are sayin’ you’ll never win, that’s when the grin should start!”
Tim Tebow should be grinning tonight. He has heart and plenty of it and that should separate him from Bradford and McCoy when they announce the winner of the 2008 Heisman Trophy tonight.