General

The Star Pupil Passes His Last Exam

Dec 7, 2008, 2:03 AM UTC

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â†µTo review the classic critiques: Tim Tebow is an overrated fullback who just happens to play quarterback. He’s never won a game where he has had to come from behind. He cries. He’s overrated. He’s the best 9-4 quarterback to ever win the Heisman.
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â†µLouis Murphy streaks down the right sideline. Tebow has just executed a one man play-action. He is one of the few players in college football who can feasibly be his own play-fake. He pulls back as Alabama defenders roll past him in the blur of a pass rush.
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â†µNick Saban sits on the stage. His team has just lost 31-20 to the Gators. A shining Alabama football helmet sits on the table in front of him. He displays obvious signs of stress with his hands: rubbing his face with them, running them through his hair. A reporter asks him about his defense defending Tim Tebow.
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“They scored two touchdowns, man, we had them covered about as well as you can cover them and that ball is in a small space...”
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â†µSaban holds his hands in a circle no bigger than a foot wide.
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â†µ“...that they made good catches on.”
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â†µThe look of frustration in his face is unquantifiable.
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â†µLouis Murphy sees the ball roll out of Tim Tebow’s hands. The spot in the coverage will be open for a fraction of a second, and he is on schedule to hit it with precision. The ball is not caught; it lands softly in his hands. Florida, down 20-17 at the end of the third, is now driving for the finish and poised to score.
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â†µTebow is told by a reporter “Tim you were 0-5 going into this game when losing in the fourth quarter. What were you thinking in the fourth quarter.”
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â†µTebow: “I really didn’t know that.” This isn’t exaggeration. He looks like he had no idea he hadn’t led a comeback in the fourth quarter. It’s a guileless look that in anyone else’s case would look like total B.S., and that in the hands of his saturnine coach would be biting sarcasm.
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â†µOn Tebow, it looks like Tebow stating he had no idea he’d never done that before.
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â†µRiley Cooper slants off the line into a soft spot in the Crimson Tide’s enzone defense. An Alabama defender is no more than a foot and a half away and bearing down on him. Tim Tebow drops back in an empty set and lets loose a five yard rocket of a pass. The ball has an available window roughly a foot off the ground and about a foot wide. As with almost all of Alabama’s coverages all night, there is zero room for error.
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â†µIt sails through the window. Cooper catches it cleanly, and falls to the turf with the clinching TD. Celebrations occur.
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â†µPost-game. Urban Meyer, his son sitting in Tebow’s lap, faces the dregs of the media’s mostly softball questions.
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â†µ“Urban, have you ever had a player like Tim Tebow?”
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â†µUrban begins: “I’ve had a lot of players, a lot of great players who can change games and win and...”
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â†µTebow sits there and waits like the star pupil awaiting his prize ribbon.
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â†µ“...no. I’ve never had one like this one.”
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â†µThe star pupil, battered and still wearing full pads, is doing his best not to float off the stage.â†µ