You can add a person to the long list of folks who believe Urban Meyer will coach again — Tim Tebow.  The former Florida Heisman-winner was asked on today’s Dan Patrick radio show if he thought his old coach would step on the field again someday.  According to DanPatrick.com, Tebow said that he does.

“But he’s proud that he stepped down, and said it took a lot of ‘courage’ and ‘backbone’ to make that decision,” the site reports.

The return of Meyer should be expected at this point.  The coach himself has said don’t call his walk away from the game a retirement.  That said, everyone expected ex-NFL coach Jon Gruden to jump back into coaching after a year away from the pro game, too.  But he’s still sitting happily in the broadcast booth.

Meyer might just find that life is easier when he’s home more often and when the pressure of college coaching rests on some other guy’s head.  And who knows what his family might push him to do behind the scenes?

For now, we agree with Tebow that Meyer will be back.  But we don’t think that’s a dead-solid lock.  Let’s see how his year in the media goes.

Will Muschamp doesn’t want folks paying too much attention to quarterback John Brantley’s disappointing (4 of 14 for 45 yards) spring game.  Last year’s starter took a beating as he and Urban Meyer’s offense never jelled in 2010.  With Charlie Weis on the scene, it was expected that Brantley would turn things around, but that wasn’t the case in UF’s final scrimmage.

However…

“I don’t think in the spring game, John had much of a chance,” Muschamp said this week.  “We played well up front defensively and had a lot of moving parts up front offensively.  So John didn’t have a whole lot of chance.  Heck, I was standing behind him and saw it coming pretty fast.”

As we wrote earlier this week, Brantley has been through a season in the SEC.  That experience gives him an advantage over the newcomers on the Gators’ QB depth chart. 

We also believe Florida still needs to develop some top flight weaponry to put around their signal-caller.  Last year’s lack of playmakers at running back and receiver was not a first-time thing.  Tim Tebow basically acted as a one-man offense during his senior season in Gainesville the year before.

Until UF develops some consistent contributors at the skill positions, Brantley will — at most — be part of the Gators’ offensive problems rather than the biggest issue.

1.  T-Bob Hebert would rather be a starter at center than a backup all across LSU’s line.

2.  Projected starting tailback Spencer Ware is splitting time between football and baseball in Baton Rouge.

3.  Mississippi State is unveiling plans for a new football complex today.

4.  MSU’s defense had a better day of practice yesterday.

5.  Dan Mullen wants “some high-level performance” as spring practice winds down in Starkville.

6.  A pair of redshirt freshmen are vying for starting slots on Ole Miss’ defensive line.

7.  The Rebels worked on their two-minute offense yesterday.

8.  Which freshman will contribute at Florida this fall?

9.  Statues of Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow will be unveiled at halftime of Saturday’s spring game.

10.  Here are the rules for UF’s glorified scrimmage.

11.  Georgia’s Trey Thompkins says he’s definitely gone, but Travis Leslie might decide to return.

12.  UGA will have more “interchangeable parts” on defense this season.

13.  Senior center Ben Jones isn’t above an occasional tirade if it helps the Dawgs get “back on the right foot.”

1.  Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer played touch football this weekend at Disney World.  Gator Nation swooned.

2.  Mark Fox tweeted his team’s NCAA tournament resume yesterday.  (But does the selection committee follow Twitter?)

3.  Georgia will face an improving Auburn team in the first round of the SEC tourney.

4.  We don’t usually cover college baseball around here, but our best wishes go out to Georgia outfielder Johnathan Taylor who will have spinal surgery today after an in-game collision yesterday.

5.  Brandon Knight’s final bucket of the first half helped turn yesterday’s game at Tennessee into a 64-58 Kentucky win.

6.  As UK recorded a breakthrough road victory, John Calipari’s team showed that it could put up a fight.

7.  DeAndre Liggins was a tone-setter for the Cats.

SEC Basketball

1. Vandy coach Kevin Stallings doesn’t like these Thursday/Saturday turnarounds.

2. That scheduling combination hits Vandy twice this season while Kentucky avoids it altogether.  The Cats are looking for just their second road win in conference play.

3. Stallings: “Liggins may be the best defender in this league.”

4. A capsule look at the other games today in the SEC.

5. The short turnaround has Alabama worried as the Tide face Ole Miss today.  SEC teams are 2-5 on Saturday when playing Thursday night.

6. Alabama coach Anthony Grant has an “extended conversation” with the coordinator of officials.

7. Jon Solomon: “Steam-blowing time is over.”

8. The Ole Miss Rebels are playing well on the road.

9. LSU has gone from Ole Miss on Wednesday night to Arkansas today without ever making it home.

10. South Carolina has lost five straight games against Eastern Division opponents.

11. The Gamecocks face Georgia today.  Bulldogs guard Gerald Robinson has been struggling.

12. Tennessee is 8-9 in its last 17 games.  The Vols play at Florida  on the brink of league title elimination.

13. What kind of impact can Bruce Pearl have?

14. Florida’s Chandler Parsons is living in the moment.

15. Other than Gators fans, everyone else in the SEC East will be rooting for Tennessee today.

16. The Mississipi State Bulldogs have discovered toughness and togetherness.

17. Evan Woodbury on Rick Stansbury: “Will the 13-year coaching veteran’s first trip to Auburn Arena be his last?”

18. Chris Denson has given Auburn a spark off the bench.

SEC Football

19. Will Jadeveon Clowney qualify?

20. Will Muschamp: “We’re working through the nights.”

20. Mike Bianchi: “Muschamp is going to come down from the papal tower inhabited by Pope Urban, get out among the masses and actually attend booster club functions this spring.”

21. You’ll have to wait to May to get your hands on the Tim Tebow autobiography.

22. How Arkansas’s recruiting class stacks up against the rest of the SEC.

23. Alabama releases its spring schedule and a new director of football operations.

24. Former Kentucky punter Tim Masthay is enjoying his Super Bowl ring.

Extra

25. Twitter-gate controversy in Texas. Longhorns guard blames his cousin.

1.  Here’s a statistical comparison of Mississippi State to Michigan ’cause, you know, they play in the Gator Bowl.

2.  Might supply and demand drive Dan Mullen’s salary up? 

3.  Ole Miss’ Dundrecous Nelson sounds likes he’s got a little Allen Iverson in him.  “Practice?”

4.  Andy Kennedy’s team has been having a tough time on the glass.

5.  ESPN’s Lee Corso says Cam Newton just “had the greatest year in the history of college football.”  But how do Newton’s numbers stack up against Tim Tebow’s record-setting 2007 season?  (Pretty darn well.)

6.  This writer says “Cam Newton doesn’t deserve to play for the national title because of quality of character.”  That’s a dangerous road to walk down.  Better not have any skeletons in your own closet, Mike Bianchi.

7.  Mark Fox’s Georgia team knocked off Georgia Tech 73-72 with the help of seven three-pointers from Dustin Ware.

8.  It was the Dawgs’ first win at Tech in 10 years.

9.  Several coaches with ties to Joker Phillips have been mentioned in connection with Kentucky’s new secondary coach and co-defensive coordinator.

10.  John Calipari wants his players to trust their teammates more when they face Notre Dame in Louisville tonight.

11.  UK, Duke, Michigan State and Kansas will play in a new basketball event next November.

12.  Tennessee needs to improve its free-throw shooting.

13.  The Vols are about to welcome Marquette transfer Jeronne Maymon.

14.  Vandy will face a rough road test at Missouri tonight.

15.  VandySports.com says the Commodores might pick a new football coach by this weekend.  (Rivals site, FYI.)

Cam Newton is the best.  That’s something a lot of columnists and talking heads have been saying for weeks now.

And you’ll get no arguments from those of us here at MrSEC.com.

But at what point do we start to talk about Newton’s T-E-A-M?  The Tigers are 13-0.  Their offense is record-setting.  Their defensive front four is beastly.  This is more than just Newton at this point, it’s a team.

And please save your ugly emails. 

Yes, if you take Newton off this team the Tigers probably would’ve struggled to win eight games.  But what if you’d taken Tim Tebow off of Florida’s 2006 and 2008 teams?

And yes, Auburn had to eek out some barn-burners in 2010.  But what if Alabama hadn’t blocked a last-second field goal against Tennessee last year?  What if Tennessee hadn’t benefited from Clint Stoerner’s fumble in 1998?

All teams have their strengths and weaknesses.  Some mask them better than others.  Auburn’s biggest weakness (its secondary) has been masked by its greatest strength (Newton putting points on the board).

So it’s fair to talk about Auburn’s place in recent SEC history.  Let’s start with the BCS era and look at the SEC’s national champs.


1998 Tennessee 13-0

2003 LSU 13-1

2004 Auburn 13-0 (we’ll include Auburn because they did go undefeated)

2006 Florida 13-1

2007 LSU 12-2

2008 Florida 13-1

2009 Alabama 14-0


On a given day, any of those teams could knock off this Auburn squad. 

And vice versa. 

So the question is this: Which of those teams would have beaten Auburn at least 6 times out of 10, had they met that many times?

That’s a toughie.  I know that Bama fans will say Bama and LSU fans will say LSU, etc.  But in reality, the question’s a good one.  This Auburn squad — with Newton playing at a never-before-seen level — could hold its own with any of the teams on the above list.

We at MrSEC aren’t saying Auburn is the best SEC team of the BCS age.  They still have another game to play, after all.  But we do believe this squad should be in the conversation.  So far all the conversation has focused Newton.  At some point, folks need to start taking a bigger picture view.

This Auburn squad might be as good as any of the SEC’s recent BCS champs.  Even with a secondary that can sometimes be picked upon.

Content provided by Swamp Things – Gators Blog.

Auburn QB Cam Newton's long road from Florida ended with an MVP trophy and SEC title on Saturday. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images)

Auburn quarterback Cam Newton dominated the SEC Championship Game on Saturday, winning MVP honors on the way to the title. In the process, he broke or helped Auburn break several title game records.

Of course, the ones he broke belonged to Florida, the school he left in late 2008 after charges of possessing a stolen laptop as well as alleged academic cheating.

What does that have to do with Florida now? Apparently, now that Newton has had himself a Heisman season, Florida should openly admit regret for losing him, at least according to one columnist.

Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News writes:

“Maybe it was a good thing the Gators lost to (Steve) Spurrier and South Carolina in November in the game that decided the SEC East title. Otherwise, they would’ve had to watch Newton go wild in person Saturday and face the truth.

“They were a shadow of their championship selves without him this season. Anything that anyone connected to that program has said or will say about not missing him is a big, heaping pile of sour grapes.”

Florida coach Urban Meyer has said several times this season that he does not regret how the situation was handled and he wishes Newton well. Yes, he saw flashes of Newton’s potential when he was at Florida.

But what else should Florida say? Yeah, we should have benched Tim Tebow for his senior season so Newton could play? Oh, we could have looked past all of Newton’s issues if we knew he would be this good?

Come on.

Would Florida have been better on the field than its 7-5 season this year with Newton? Yeah. Could they have known he would be as dominant as he has been and accepted him despite his numerous problems? Probably not.

If the Gators had seen this coming in their crystal ball, would they have done things differently? Who knows, but don’t expect them to gripe about it now.

Over the weekend, hall of fame running back Tony Dorsett told The New York Daily News that the Cam Newton saga is a “modern-day lynching.”

I could write for quite a while about this shite, but I won’t.  A white man’s opinion on lynchings — or sports stars who throw the word aroudn like candy at a Christmas parade — won’t carry the weight of an African-American’s opinion.  So I’ll just link you to ESPN.com where Howard Bryant sums things up nicely:


“With superstar athletes, there is a third element at work — accountability — and the powerful use language to evade it.  Inflammatory language is the default position when the heat is on.  Dorsett used it for Newton.  When the walls have closed in on a (Reggie) Bush or a generation of steroids users in baseball, the ballplayer or his backers often have used the term ‘witch hunt’ — Dorsett did, too, last weekend — a clever but generally unsuccessful attempt to deflect the hard questions

“Real lynching took the place of justice, the mob mentality stampeding any semblance of due process.  Newton and his supporters might be feeling some discomfort, but the investigations and questions are not without merit.  Nor has Newton been deprived of his ability to play while the papers are being pushed.

“If Dorsett needs a refresher course on the actual meaning of a lynching, especially within the context of this country, a visit to the National Archives might be helpful.  There are countless photos and stories of them, and none ends with a celebration in the end zone.”


I’ll add only this: Does anyone really think this kind of feeding frenzy wouldn’t have been set off had Tim Tebow’s father talked to Florida boosters about a pay-for-play plan? 

Are you kidding me?  Folks worked so hard to find fault with Tebow that he was once asked if he was still a virgin.

The Newton story has nothing to do with race.  It has everything to do with a parent — apparently — asking for six-figures in exchange for his kid’s signature.  Even in the dirty world of college athletics, that’s an eye-popping number.  And if that number had been connected to any other player — of any other color — it would have raised just as many eyebrows.

Earlier this season, we asked a simple question here at MrSEC: “Who is going to replace Tim Tebow as the main running threat in Florida’s offense?”

A number of folks from the Sunshine State emailed to say that Jeff Demps would be that guy.  Demps himself suggested that he could play a smashmouth style.

Demps is an electrifying runner with flash o’ lightning speed.  He’s a real talent.  And he’s also 5-8, 190.

If you’re a feature back in the SEC At 5-8, 190, you’re probably not going to stay healthy for long.  Demps hasn’t.

“He has not been 100 percent since the Tennessee game,” Urban Meyer said yesterday.  “He was our #1 playmaker coming into the season.  It’s been devastating on all fronts.”

Demps will be available on a limited basis for the Gators’ remaining games against Appalachian State and Florida State.

“He’s got a stress reaction in his foot, so he doesn’t practice.  It’s very frustrating.  Jeff is a competitor and one of the most talented guys in the country, and a guy we need.  It’s been hard.”

Demps is a great player.  But he’s too small to be counted on as a star running back in the SEC.  Florida’s coach needs to recognize that and recruit with that in mind.  For every compact like Demps he signs, Meyer needs to bring in a full-size back, too.  A true workhorse.

Tebow is gone and the Gators never had anyone who could take over in the run game in his absence.  Will they have that someone next year?