Tim Tebow, Burgeoning and Established Credentials. and The Little Baby Rhino

The greatest thing that Tim Tebow ever did for me was opting to go to Florida instead of dawning Crimson and joining my beloved Tide. That guy was unstoppable in college.

In 2006 he played as a package quarterback behind the absurdly good-looking starter, Chris Leak, and was discreetly but reliably a part of their national championship run.

Spencer Hall of the widely-read Florida site that did an honest job of covering the entirety of college ball, everydayshouldbesaturday.com, (he may have still been going by the nom de plume Orson Swindle at the time,) dubbed Tebow the Little Baby Rhino. Tebow blasted through defenses when he ran and no matter how many times I heard an announcer talk about his second effort I always felt like his first effort carried him through beyond expectations. He wasn’t resetting, he was carrying on. God help the linebackers and dbs if he ever mustered a second effort.

In 2008 he set a new Florida record for rushing touchdown, surpassing Emmet Smith. In 2009 he broke the SEC record for rushing touchdowns previously held by Hershel Walker. He was a quarterback. They were running backs. Mythical National Championship quarterback.

As a quarterback he became the first sophomore to win the Heisman trophy, and in his career he became the first player to win the Maxwell Award twice, which to this college fan is one of the greatest achievements in the history of the NCAA.

He almost won the Heisman twice, by the way. He got the most first-place votes in 2009, but they combine first, second, and I believe all the way to fifth place votes and muster a mean or an average or a median and make me angry all but four times and Colt McCoy took the trophy.

Timothy Richard Tebow out of Makati, Philippines may well be the best college football player I’ve ever seen.

From Wikipedia:

“At the end of his college career, Tebow held 5 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 14 Southeastern Conference (SEC), and 28 University of Florida statistical records.^[71] He was the SEC’s all-time leader in career passing efficiency (170.8), completion percentage (67.1%), passing touchdown to interception ratio (5.5 to 1), rushing yards by a quarterback (2,947), rushing touchdowns (any position) (57), and total touchdowns responsible for (145).^[4][72] Among many mentions in the NCAA Division-I record book, Tebow is ranked second in career passing efficiency, third in career yards per attempt (9.33), 8th in career rushing touchdowns, and also owns the record for most consecutive games in which he both threw at least one touchdown pass and scored at least one rushing touchdown (14).”

I am so glad he chose Florida over Alabama.

From my narrow spot on the hindsight arc he probably would have won a few games for us. He’d have buoyed Shula and we would never get Saban, and we wouldn’t be able to say that every three-year player recruited since 2007 has a national championship.

I may not be first in line but I would definitely be in the queue to write the Tebow hagiography. I love the guy. I love what happened under Saban too.

He ripped us up in the SEC Championship game in 2008. We had him for most of the game and then he broke out. He accepted that we were cutting his receivers from yards after carry and started a pinpoint attack. He had his guys diving and sliding and it was all to catch well placed passes just where Alabama’s defense couldn’t block, couldn’t touch, and couldn’t make a play as long as his receivers went down with the ball. It was infuriating. It was wizardry.

His translation to the NFL was not smooth. His first season with Denver was impressive but time and game film caught up with him. His passing release was a long wind up that began mid to low torso and that took too much time in a league where the successful get the ball out of their hands above the shoulder to the ear.

In college he could avoid the quick to react defenders but in the pros, they were all fast. That wind up gave the defenders too much time to close.

I’ve been watching, and this is over the years, college students rebelling against perceived injustices. Obviously some of these are justified objections, but more and more often I am struck by the volume. We are not seeing objections so much as indulged outrage. Oberlin lost a lawsuit against a shop that was swarmed with student protesters urged on by faculty because of accused racism. Apparently, the people that pled guilty of theft didn’t say anything about racism, but the mob was loud.

There are some hundred or so Yale Law students that got loud when they didn’t want to hear something that was said at a place they were not required to attend.

My favorite was in 2014 when a Yale student screamed at a professor whose wife wrote an email about Halloween costumes after he states that he doesn’t know her because he has five hundred students under his purview, per The Federalist:

“I was in your class freshman year,” she continues. “You were my sophomore year advisor. . . I live here, I eat in the dining hall for all three meals. And you should know my name. My name is Mikayla.”

I don’t think it’s the best idea to highlight how you have failed to distinguish yourself, but I didn’t get into Yale. What do I know. Still seems like a brazen admission to my uneducated self.

Tebow was brilliant at what he did on the college and high school level. It didn’t work out athletically going beyond, but he’s affable and he’s great as a commenter (note that I did not say commentator because that is a whole separate thousand words.) He’ll be fine.

I wonder about the leaders of the future – that’s how the Ivy and other expensive schools are described.

Memorizing the periodic table is a skill and it may get you into college, but it doesn’t mean you can make a cogent argument. Such things are learned and practiced and require a facility. Yelling is not the facility. High school is not college nor college the work place or war of ideas. I think that the enfants terrible’s metaphorical passing motion… maybe it doesn’t translate to being a grown up.