On a Mission for the Gators

Posted Sep 26, 2009 by Tom McEwen

Updated Sep 26, 2009 at 04:45 PM

Florida Gator expert Buddy Martin, now active in that role as an identified historian of that near religious experience, wondered in a phone call the other day if in the long Gator historical pursuits had I declared Tim Tebow the best yet to snap the Orange and Blue helmet on?

I said I had not because I felt so.

Martin had just returned from missionary work in the Philippines where as a kid lieutenant I had spent so many World War II and post WWII years as a 20-year-old prison officer of AWESPAC POW Camp No. 1 outside of Manila.

He and his parents missionaried there, and I bet, will again.

Enchanting place, the Philippines, of which Tebow and his family grew up in the atmosphere of the Christian missions, doing good, doing right, became the family the Tebows came to be.
 
Declare now and will affirm later that if Tim Tebow is not yet the best of the best, he will be. He can move to that tonight in Lexington where his wonderful Florida Gator team Urban Meyer has assembled can advance closer to another national championship for the Gators and also to more personal accolades for Tebow.

I declare that, and should, though the ambushes still lie awaiting at Georgia, and at Florida State. FSU has a far better team than most want to admit, unless official ongoing inquiry suggests misdeeds along the way.

May, may not.
 
Florida history is, and truth so is that of FSU, but less recently, punctuated with superb performers that highlight even more of the top achievers. The Gators reach to their all-male days of the Coach James A. Van Fleet, to J. Rex Farrior, to Coach Charles Bachman and the great national scoring champions of 1928 who led the nation and were headed for the Rose Bowl when a mysteriously wet field on a dry day in Knoxville entrapped the speedy, slipping and sliding Gators to defeat by the Tennesseans.

In the years ahead, Gator greats would emerge such as Cannonball Clyde Crabtree, a 5-8, 150 pound player who could pass with either arm, and kick with either foot and dazzle the Gators of those days as Gators of later years like Nat Moore, Emmett Smith and Larry Smith would.
 
Gator football advanced, with setbacks of course, through the Fergie Ferguson times through those of Nat Moore, to the return of the prodigal son, Steve Spurrier, and now our emerged Tim Tebow. Gator fears now are for survival of this fittest. Does any Gator in Blue look safer, more fit, more reassured, when Tebow announces as he changes directions, as he takes a snap, from the crouch, steps back one or two steps, to his right or left, downhill towards those waiting, stares and declares, with a snarl, here I come?

And it is then that he flings himself full blown into the body blockade.  He may get bounced once or twice, but is seldom stopped full on the first, or second thrust, or, until Tebow has the pile going his way, goalward

This man of the Philippines almost always gets his way.

Then he snarls as they do in the Province of Pampanga.
 
There is not a Gator, now or yesterday, who at that moment won’t rise, give ‘The Chomp’ and declare that it is good to be a Florida Gator, at least in these times of Tim Tebow.

When he cuts and heads toward six, those defensive backs mutters under their breath, like the insurance schlepping gecko in the commercial whispers “oh, dear,’’ as the big man in the suit has turned back and began his fall backward.