Only Positives in Tebow's Time in Swamp

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- If you can't stand Tim Tebow, Saturday wasn't a total loss. After putting on a command performance in his final home game, Tebow went for a victory lap to thank his millions of fans.

Near the end, he stepped on an adoring cheerleader's ankle.

"She went down hard," Tebow said. "I felt terrible."

That's not much for Tebow haters to cling to, but at this point they'll take any body part they can get. His last appearance at Florida Field showed why Tebow should go down as the greatest player in college football history.

Nobody has impacted more people than Florida's quarterback. After Saturday's 37-10 demolition of FSU, you can even add Bobby Bowden to the list.

"I need to go home and do some soul searching," he said.

If Tebow has driven Bowden into retirement, a lot of FSU followers might join the Tebow Fan Club. Even when he does something negative, it has a positive impact.

The thing is, Tebow has done nothing truly negative since arriving in Gainesville. That's driven Tebow haters crazy. They would have been sickened by the sweetness at Senior Day.

There weren't really millions of fans in attendance. But the 90,907 who were waved palm branches as Tebow rode in on a donkey.

In case you're not up on your New Testament, that's yet another Timmy of Nazareth comparison. I tried to come up with another reference point years ago, but Mother Teresa never scored more than 100 touchdowns.

After passing for three and running for two against FSU, Tebow's career tally is 140. But it's not the records or the national championships or the Heismans that make him the greatest.

Tebow's not the best passer or runner college football has ever seen. But great doesn't mean the fastest or strongest. It's a combination of talent and so much more. The man who hugged Tebow when he ran onto the field tried to sum it up.

"I don't know where you start," Urban Meyer said.

You could start with style. Tebow's rambling, reckless approach redefined what a running quarterback can be. Some say he's really just a fullback taking snaps. Show me a fullback who's completed 66 percent of his passes in his career.

His only disappointment Saturday was that his final touchdown wasn't a jump pass. It was one of his trademarks; a playground move that made it look like the guy was just having fun out there.

Tebow did a jumping motion toward the bench on his final scoring drive, hoping the play would be called. It was, but the receiver was tripped at the line of scrimmage.

"It would have been a touchdown," Tebow said.

He had style, he had stats. He also had those off-season performances in the Philippines and Croatia and various prisons around Florida. He preached to inmates, built missions and circumcised underprivileged natives.

He professed to being a virgin and wasn't embarrassed to say so. It was all so corny, yet all so genuine. We live in a world that should be cynical of sports heroes, but TMZ could have put a surveillance team on Tebow for four years and never found him doing anything Billy Graham wouldn't have done.

"He made unselfishness part of college football," Meyer said.

Teammates loved the fact he'd show up at 6 a.m. to lift weights with the offensive linemen. Nobody cared more about winning. The proof is on the wall at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

There's the plaque with his post-game speech after last year's loss to Ole Miss. The one where he tearfully vowed nobody will work harder or push his team as hard as he would.

That was 22 straight wins ago. Fans will pose in front of that plaque for generations. People will tell their grandchildren they saw Tebow play in person. He went from super recruit to Heisman winner to mythical figure, which is why the stadium was bursting with flashes in the fourth quarter.

"Everybody wanted to get a picture of his last snap," receiver David Nelson said.

Everybody noticed it except Tebow, who was too busy trying to put one more touchdown on a hated rival. Nobody was more competitive, and the way he waved his arms to fire up the crowd got on some people's nerves.

So did the way he wore his religiosity on his face, with the Bible-verse eye patches. So did all that publicity he's gotten, as if he could have done much to stop it.

Imagine how much more Tebow would have gotten if he'd failed a drug test or been in a bar fight or been chased out of his dorm by a girl swinging a golf club.

All he did for the past four years is behave himself, get good grades, work harder, win more, care more and inspire more people than any player we'll ever see.

If you don't think that's great, it says more about you than Tim Tebow.