College football is often interwoven with mythology and sometimes it’s tough to separate fact from fantasy and tell the difference between super heroes and regular old Saturday stars.
Those who bought into the myth of the Florida Gators’ invincibility should pick up their reality checks on their way out of fantasyland. Now we know these Gators are going to have to make their bones the old-fashioned way: They are going to have to earn them.
That became pretty clear Saturday at The Swamp when Tennessee exposed some weaknesses in the nation’s No. 1 team and proved, once again, that football royalty is not conferred like legacies.
There was no Tennessee beatdown as many anticipated. There was no public hanging. Or even any other kind of corporal punishment for blabbermouth Lane Kiffin. Nor did the Vols tuck their tail and turn for home after trailing 23-6 in the fourth period on what looked to be a certain 30-6 deficit as Tim Tebow came crashing
And as long as we are bursting bubbles — sorry to break it for you, but Tim Tebow really isn’t Superman, great though he may be. That became evident when Tebow coughed the ball twice for the second straight game.
“Tim didn’t play his best game,” Urban Meyer admitted.
Okay, there you go right there.
Tennessee’s wise old head, defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, took away most of Tebow’s weapons with a deep zone, mixed up with some occasional man coverage, and sometimes it fell to No. 15 to do the dirty work.
Tebow was life imitating art, as he attempted to carry the entire team on his shoulders like Hercules in bronze. He lugged the ball 24 times and is back to being the pack mule again. He dove for first downs like a desperate man trying to escape a burning building. He hammered heads with Eric Berry mano-a-mano. So Tebow answered the 911 call and was, at times, brilliant.
This came on a day when the Gator defense whiffed tackles, hamstrung somewhat by an Achilles injury to middle linebacker Brandon Spikes. A day when starting wide receiver Deonte Thompson was in street clothes, forcing the threesome of Riley Cooper, David Nelson and Brandon James to take almost every snap.
Let’s just say that the offense wasn’t as sharp as expected.
All that’s okay, however, because clearly the Gators are still a work in progress. And as Urban Meyer said after Saturday’s 23-13 victory, “There’s a lot of work to be done.” But he also pointed out that the perceived deficiency is “dictated by the caliber of athlete you’re going against” and offered high praise for Tennessee.
Even Tebow admitted it was an “ugly” win — this on a day when his streak of touchdown passes ended at 30 — but he also noted that it was an honor to have beaten Tennessee four straight years and he was “humbled” by the success.
Speaking of mythology, however, the Vols did not beat the Gators and did not sing Rocky Top all Saturday night long. They sang it once, in normal, routine post-game ritual, packed their backs and went back to Knoxville with a fifth straight “L” against Meyer.
If the No. 1 ranking were based on style points, that might cause Florida to slip from its perch. However, this is the normal ebb and flow of college football; the wild swings of momentum could be detected out in Seattle where No. 3 Southern Cal was knocked off by unranked Washington.
The truth is that Meyer seemed almost relieved the game was over and did not particularly enjoy all the revenge chit-chat leading up to it. There didn’t seem to be a lot of joy emanating from the locker room and Meyer admitted he tried to “lighten the mood in there” as he sent the players and coaches home to be with their family and friends.
Of the pressure, Meyer said, “I felt it this week. ‘Are you going to score a hundred points?’ Think about it. Against the third-ranked defense in the country. A good bunch of those guys are going to play in the National Football League against guys like that on our team, too. That’s just silly. It gets carried away. And I’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen around here.”
Absurd expectations will do that to a coach and his team. Some of them came from the boys in Las Vegas, who made the Gators a prohibitive 29-1/2 point favorite in a rivalry game. Maybe they bought into the invincibility theory as well.
Asked why he felt compelled to lift the spirits of his team after a victory, Meyer said, “There is so much pressure on this team to perform perfectly and I felt it in there.”
Urban says he can handle it because “we’re all grown men, and we’re going to get better.”
This is a burden that Meyer is willing to carry as the hunted. He says he would rather have it this way, but you can tell that this almost insatiable demand for supremacy eats away at him.
But for the ball being stripped away from Tebow at the 5-yard line by Montori Hughes and bounding into the arms of Dennis Rogan, we’re not having this conversation. The Gators were about to be leading 30-6 with a more than 10 minutes left, instead of allowing Tennessee to bounce back with the aid of questionable celebration penalty on Florida’s Jaye Howard and then score the only touchdown of the season on Charlie Strong’s defense.
Urban admitted that his team got conservative offensively and was “a little tight” some of the calls, but when got down to the fourth quarter it was survive in advance time. Give it to the pack mule and go hit somebody in the mouth. And if they hadn’t turned the ball over, he said, the Gators would have won “handily.”
But, no, he doesn’t take beating Tennessee for granted and realizes there are depth issues that must be overcome before the Gators can start thinking about Atlanta, let alone Pasadena.
Winning three BCS titles in four years might seem like reality to Gator fans, but the truth is that right now, it’s just pure fantasy until Meyer’s team proves it can do it.