"My Life As A Kid" Meets Tebow? Almost.

This is really cute (particularly if you have kids who own their own Tebow jerseys). I especially like the part where the cameraman actually catches Tebow on tape, then... well, you'll see:

Update: SEC Coach Mystery Dis of Tebow

Saturday (07/18) Update: The New York Times' excellent "Quad" blog weighs in. (If you don't have the Quad bookmarked or in your RSS Reader, you're missing out.)

Updating: Clay Travis has a terrific analysis of the insanity that is the notion that an SEC coach would not -- DID not -- put Tim Tebow as his 1st-team preseason all-SEC QB. (via AOL FanHouse)

Mystery: Which Coach Dissed Tebow?

The SEC coaches' preseason all-conference teams came out today. Unsurprisingly, Tim Tebow was the 1st-team QB. Very surprisingly, he was not a unanimous selection.

Any guesses as to which coach (or, I guess, coaches) left Tebow off their ballot?

I would have guessed Houston Nutt, but coaches can't pick their own players, so it's not like he could have picked Jevan Snead.

I am going to go out on a limb and say it was Lane Kiffin. His reasoning? Just because. Extra points for the first media type at Media Day to ask him directly which QB he voted for.

Here's the thing: These things will come out. They always do. A good beat reporter will ask his SEC coach if he did/didn't vote for Tebow. Coach better hope he's not on Florida's schedule.

All of this could be avoided if the SEC actually made their coaches' ballots public, right from the start. Why the secrecy? What's the point?

(FWIW: Unanimous 1st-teamers: Ciron Black, Eric Berry, Julio Jones.)

Tebow to TMZ: "I Don't Have a Girlfriend"

Tebow was in LA yesterday for the ESPYs and, while being hit up by fans for his autograph, he was hit up by TMZ for details about his lovelife. (Maybe we should call it "TTMZ?")

Tebow's modest answer: "I don't have a girlfriend."

And yet the Google trend "Tim Tebow Girlfriend" continues. (TT really seemed to take the TMZ paparazzi ambush in stride, don't you think? When you've been hit by Greg Hardy, TMZ is easy.)

AOL Fanhouse on the Tebow Backlash

AOL Fanhouse's Michael David Smith (disclaimer: someone who I consider a friend and whose work I admire) does not like the Brennamanization of Tebow coverage, so dubbed for the absurdly fawning coverage by Thom Brennaman during the most recent BCS title game.

Agreed. If anything is going to trigger a Tebow backlash (aka "Tebacklash" -- ooh, that's mine), it will be that kind of gag-inducing fawning. The ESPY red-carpet interview that MDS specifically points to is particularly egregious -- although interviewing on red carpets, sports or otherwise, has never been like the late John Callaway on "Chicago Tonight."

I will stick with my original theory on the Tebacklash, which I repeated again yesterday when asked about the chance of a Tebow backlash by Steve Russell, Sports Director of WRUF in Gainesville:

It's not going to happen. The on-field performances and the walk-the-talk life he lives off the field (even when we only see it filtered through the media) will continue to make even the toughest critics fume with "begrudging respect," rather than haterade.

It's a good thing that Tebow seems to take this fawning in stride and defuse it with humility. It makes it a lot easier to dismiss the media, rather than dismiss the player.

Tebow Wins Back-to-Back ESPY Award

Tim Tebow won his second straight ESPY Award for "Best Male College Athlete," repeating from his 2008 award.

There's this open question about "Tebow fatigue" that I've touched on before. But no matter what you think about the ESPYs as some sort of contrived schtick, I like them for one very significant reason: They let the fans vote on the awards.

It's not some Academy. It's not some weird BCS-style hybrid of coaches, experts and media types. It's the fans.

And the fans -- nationwide, mind you -- like and respect Tebow an awful lot. Do they love him? Maybe, maybe not.

But fans respect him -- maybe it's begrudging respect, but respect all the same. And they like that he is a likeable personality who plays great on the field and appears to walk the talk off the field.

And, in his acceptance speech, Tebow threw that "like and respect" right back at them:

“It truly is an honor to even be invited to an event like the ESPYs and be able to be in the same room with many athletes that I have the utmost respect for. And then to be named the Best Male College Athlete, which was decided by the fans makes this night even more memorable. I want to thank my teammates and coaches, but a special thank you goes out to the entire Gator Nation, the best fans in the country.”

Make no mistake: The ESPYs are a popularity contest -- by that metric, Tebow is and remains very popular.

Tim Tebow's Top SEC Player: Eric Berry

Who does Tim Tebow think is the best player in the SEC? Tennessee safety Eric Berry.

It's not a bad pick. At a minimum, Berry is the best defensive player in the SEC. (With all of the injuries to Tennessee's WRs, who doesn't want to see Berry get a bunch of reps on offense, too?)

And, no question, he is the SEC's No. 1 NFL Draft prospect.

Here was Berry's response:

“If he is Superman - make that Batman, then I am Robin. That’s a big compliment coming from him. He’s a Heisman trophy winner, has won (two) national championships. What more can you say?”

Yes, but will Tebow put Berry on his Heisman ballot somewhere?

On a radio interview today, the host asked me if there was going to be some sort of Tebow backlash this season. I think it's stuff like this that makes him very very hard to hate.

The way I phrased it was this: At worst, there is begrudging respect from opposing players and fans alike. It would be really hard to actually HATE him.

UPDATE: The Berry quote originally came from a Q&A Tebow did with Athlon's. Here's the source material. There's a lot in there. I'll have some pull-quotes later.

Announcing TimTeblog.com:Why Launch a Blog About Tim Tebow?

Why launch a blog about Tim Tebow?

Start here: This is not a fawning fanboy blog – although I am nominally recognized as a huge Tebow fan – but clear-eyed, credible, reliable and comprehensive coverage of a “beat” that happens to be a single athlete: Florida quarterback Tim Tebow.

Can’t deny the news value: Tebow is THE biggest name in college football – if not all of sports this fall. Not only does he lead the defending national champs but Florida is the plurality pick to win this year’s title, too. Add the Heisman intrigue to the championship potential and it makes for the fall’s best debate: Greatest college player of all time?

Plus, consider this blog an experiment in online programming: Everyone has heard of the growth of “hyper-local” blogs dedicated to covering very specific geographic areas. This is an experiment in “hyper-topical” blogging – one very specific (if well-known) topic – covered comprehensively. If successful, it could be a template for more “hyper-topical” blogs.

How to measure success of that experiment? First: If this blog’s community and readers are satisfied. But more quantitatively, based on: (1) Audience reach, (2) distribution – including links from other blogs, “passed links” through Twitter and Facebook and accessibility through search – and (3) signals of traction as a self-sustaining business.

What can you expect here? Consider it THE curated, credible, comprehensive resource for all things Tebow, always covered with a fan’s enthusiasm but also with a professional’s filter. While I am transparently (and proudly) biased, I am always interested in as many points of view as possible, along with strong storylines.

There will be original content (daily), links to the best Tebow content on the Web, video clips and photos, game and stats analysis, interviews with and folks who can contribute to the discussion, guest-posts from colleagues, Heisman race-tracking, the best Tebow-related commentary from Twitter and – of course – your comments and contributions.

And, while we’re at it, let’s set an end date: April 23, the day after the 1st round of the 2010 NFL Draft. It will be the end of what will be a two-act drama for Tebow over the next nine months: Act I runs from now until the national championship game – with or without Tebow and the Gators. Act II continues from the end of the college football season until the NFL Draft, where Tebow’s status will be the biggest X-factor of the year.

Take a look through the site archive on the right – you will find more than 50 posts already in place, covering everything from Tebow’s career-defining “Promise” to his invitation to perform my son’s circumcision, from the lead-up into the new college football season to his Heisman chances, from Tebow's place in college football history to his NFL draft stock, from his Google-juicing girlfriends to season-preview magazine porn, from his on-field talents to his off-field beliefs.

As with any great blog, the experience is only as good as its community: Your comments, your contributions and your tips will all make this blog a successful and worthwhile one for everyone.

I make no promises – that’s Tebow’s job – but at the very least, this should be fun.

-- Dan

SportsPickle on Tebow's Eye-Black

The brilliant DJ Gallo just re-launched SportsPickle, his phenomenally good sports-humor site. Just in time for the launch of this blog, here is SP's take on Tebow's "intimidating" eye-black.

Season Preview Mag Porn: All Of 'Em

Courtesy of the Gainesville Sun, all the preview mag covers in one shot:



Kevin Brockway has the complete round-up, but the story is pretty simple: Consensus No. 1. (As they should be. I mean, come on. Can't wait for the first media outlet to pick someone OTHER than Florida -- my bet is on the contrarians of SI.)

EA NCAA Football 10 Release Day

It's EA NCAA Football 10 Release Day! Even if you aren't a Florida fan, you know you sort of want to play as the Gators so you can "be" Tim Tebow for a little while. Does it include Google-juicing mystery girlfriends, ministering to prisoners and drawing unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties against Oklahoma?


By the way, there isn't a question that Tebow will be on the cover of at least one edition of NCAA Football 11, is there?

Is This Tim Tebow's REAL Twitter Account?

@TimrTebow

Hmm: I'm open-minded, but skeptical.

(Biggest piece of circumstantial evidence against: That "Tim" would register himself for wefollow.com under #celebrity.)

Poor Man's Tim Tebow Rankings, 2009

"Poor man's Tim Tebow." An analogue that will stifle creative college football QB comparisons for a generation.

The preeminent basketball blog Free Darko has long-used a construction called "Myth of the Next" as a way to describe the expectations saddled on "similar" players -- similar for any number of qualities, including style of play, physical traits and -- yes -- looks. Here is a great primer on that.

I have more commonly heard and used the phrase "Poor Man's...": As in "So-and-so-player is a poor man's fill-in-superstar-here." Like "Jake Locker is a Poor Man's Tim Tebow."

What that automatically suggests is that the former can never match the latter. Even the phrasing "poor man's" suggests a demeaning, cheap comparison. (Perhaps in today's economic climate, "poor man's" should be valued -- or reframed as "bargain.")

As soon as Tim Tebow exploded on the scene -- first as a short-yardage-specialist/"energy" spark off the bench, then as a "20/20"-reaching, Heisman-winning starter -- analysts have been trying to find other large-framed QBs who are considered "dual-threat" to label "poor man's Tim Tebow."

It is unfair on many levels, but I'm not going to reject the notion of Tebow as some sort of gold standard at the position -- or as an archetype within the position. (After all, there should be "poor man's Sam Bradford" et al across the "QB type" skills spectrum.)

TimTeblog.com will track the contenders for Poor Man's Tim Tebow -- or "PMTT" -- throughout the season, ranking them on the right side based on observation and your feedback. Here is my preseason Top 10:

Dan LeFevour
Matt Grothe
Joe Webb
Colin Kaepernick
Jeremiah Masoli
Terrelle Pryor
Austen Arnaud
Mike Kafka
Austin Davis
Jake Locker

Who should be higher on the list? Who is missing but belongs there? Who doesn't? Please weigh in. That covers starters.

Meanwhile, what I would also love your help with is any freshmen who are playing the "Tebow 2006" role -- the part-time QB who will come in to rumble through in short-yardage and goal-line situations. Fans may not know their names yet, but they will.

Tebow 2/1 Favorite To Win Heisman

Great post by the PB Post's Ben Volin, breaking down the Florida dominance not just among preseason college football magazine editors (consensus No. 1 across Steele, Sporting News, Athlon and Lindy's... have to imagine SI will go contrarian, just for its own sake) but with Las Vegas oddsmakers, too. Great detail here: Tebow is the 2/1 favorite to win the Heisman, with a slight edge over Bradford and McCoy (2.75/1).

Would Urban Leave Florida After 2009?

UPDATE (7/13): "I'm not going to Notre Dame. Ever." -- Urban Meyer (h/t: Pat Dooley)

Original Post (7/7):

Would Urban Meyer leave Florida after the 2009 season? That's what Paul Finebaum is spouting -- and rival coaches are using it on the recruiting trail (don't buy it, Matt Elam!)

Circumstantially, it is not entirely a wack-job theory:

*Urban should be coming off his 2nd straight national title, his 3rd in 4 years. Anything left to prove? Hardly.

(Alternative: With the ridiculous recruiting classes the past few years, the team should only get better -- he came to Florida to win championships. His work hasn't even begun to return substantial dividends yet: The whole "2 titles in 3 years" thing is a bonus.)

*His favorite player of all time -- Tim Tebow -- will be leaving the program for the NFL.

(Alternative: And so he would want to go to, say, Notre Dame and coach... a QB he didn't recruit? John Brantley is no Tim Tebow -- frankly, he's a better pure passer and will bring an interesting intellectual challenge for Meyer, Adazzio and Co. to creating an offense around him.)

*The Notre Dame job -- Meyer's so-called "dream job" -- will likely be open next year, after Charlie Weis underachieves...yet again.

(Alternative: Meyer will be coaching well into January. Notre Dame's job may be open as early as mid-November. Meyer wouldn't leave early, and Notre Dame may not be interested in waiting 6 weeks for a new coach -- even Meyer. And no coach would want to enter a situation that late, either.)

So let's get real: Meyer isn't leaving Florida after the 2009 season. He isn't going to Notre Dame after the 2009 season -- perhaps not for a decade after that, either.

If I was a rival coach trying to push a theory, I would go with this:

It is well-established that Urban Meyer loves Bill Belichick. They are, within the coaching fraternity, best friends. Meyer visits the Pats; Belichick visits Gainesville. Meyer models Florida after the way Belichick runs the Patriots.

Patriots owner Bob Kraft loves Urban Meyer, too. Bill Belichick has long been on the record as admiring Tim Tebow, both as a competitor and as a player around whom innovative schemes can be built. Just the kind of challenge Belichick likes.

You see where I'm going here.

The Patriots will draft Tim Tebow, putting him in the enviable position of learning from Tom Brady, while taking a handful of "Wildcat"-style snaps in goal-line and short-yardage situations. At some point, Belichick will retire. At that point, Kraft and Belichick will call Urban Meyer and give him the chance to coach for the best NFL organization, arguably the best NFL owner and reunited with his favorite player.

I'm not saying Meyer will leave Florida to take it. But if he was ever going to take an NFL job, he would take it with the team he admires more than any in the game. It represents a much more compelling opportunity than simply winning more college titles at another university.

So will Meyer leave Florida in 2009 with his star protege? No.

Will he leave eventually? Yes. I give him as many years as it is until Bill Belichick retires from the Patriots.

Then Meyer heads to the NFL, secure in his college football legacy after a half-dozen national titles.

(If it doesn't work out in the NFL -- and maybe it won't -- Meyer would be able to pick his college opportunity: Yes, including Notre Dame. But between his next 5-6 years at Florida and his 3-4 years in the NFL before he decides he doesn't like it, that puts him in South Bend in 2020.)

Tony Barnhart on Tebow, SEC East

Mr. College Football, the AJC's Tony Barnhart, weighs in on the SEC East. Money quote:

Complacency is the only thing standing in the way of Florida and another run at the national championship. Tim Tebow is not going to let anybody get complacent. The one thing Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, has not achieved in his remarkable career is leading a team to an undefeated season. He has made it clear to teammates and coaches that he will accept nothing less in 2009.

Read the whole thing here.

Again, Lucy Pinder NOT Tebow's Girlfriend

But "Tim Tebow Girlfriend" is, as of this posting, the No. 8 search phrase on Google Trends.

Not quite the same as when Tebow wore the "John 3:16" eyeblack in the national-title game and it spent the next 24 hours as one of the most-searched terms on Google.*

(* - And, according to statements from Urban Meyer relayed from Tebow's mom and dad, that Google search activity was a material reason cited for his return to Florida for one more year.)

Tim Tebow vs. Tommie Frazier

Related to the promotion of the new "Gator Gridiron 2009" book and my cover story about Tim Tebow's place among all-time great college QBs, one name stood out:

Tommie Frazier.

I looked closely at virtually every top QB from the past 30 years, and I would argue that no QB -- perhaps no player -- is as underrated as Frazier.

Sure, he makes every Top 5 QB list -- as he should. But for some reason, he is never given the respect of other top QBs.

Maybe that's because he is considered "one-dimensional" (although you need to go back and look at his excellent passing stats -- when he needed to, he threw great).

Maybe that's because he was surrounded by arguably the greatest team in college football history (of course, one of the reasons they are considered the greatest is because of their QB).

And it is almost certainly because he never won a Heisman, which is a crime. (The Heisman selections in 1994 -- Salaam over McNair, who finished 3rd -- and 1995 -- George over Frazier should be an embarrassment for anyone who voted.)

Sammy Vegas from the Nebraska blog Double Extra Point has a fair analysis comparing Frazier to Tebow.

Unsurprisingly, Vegas comes out in favor of Frazier. For now, I would agree, although the fact that Tebow is already in the "Top 5 all-time" conversation with his senior year to go is a testament to Tebow's ridiculous career.

To his credit, Vegas allows for Tebow passing Frazier -- I agree with the general premise: For Tebow to top the list, he will need to win a national title, ideally doing something dramatic or defining to get there. A Heisman wouldn't hurt, but he almost assuredly will end up in the Top 3...again.

Heading into the season, Tebow's place in history will be a huge storyline -- and I fully expect fans of Frazier and of Vince Young (and plenty of other worthy QBs) will have something to say.

Gator Gridiron 2009 Preview

UPDATE: EDSBS comes strong with the self-promotion that does this book justice.

Coming very very soon. The book is edited by Spencer Hall (of EDSBS) and I guess you could say that I wrote the "cover story" -- as Tim Tebow is on the cover of the book and I wrote the essay breaking down Tebow's place among all-time great college QBs. I won't ruin the ending.

Season Preview Mag Porn: Athlon

Season Preview Mag Porn: Phil Steele

Season Preview Mag Porn: Lindy's

Season Preview Mag Porn: Sporting News

Vote Tebow for a 2009 ESPY

Tim Tebow already has one ESPY, Best Male College Athlete from a year ago. Given that the Gators are heading for back-to-back championships this year, why not make it the same with another ESPY? Vote here.

Nobody Takes Down Finebaum Like EDSBS

You could simply ignore Paul Finebaum's hackneyed rantings -- or you can obliterate them. (h/t: EDSBS)