Wanna get Tim Tebow riled up? Say something negative about Urban Meyer.
Miami coach Randy Shannon wasn't too happy with Meyer's decision to throw a pass into the end zone and kick a field goal in the final minute or so of the Gators 26-3 win agains the Hurricanes on Saturday, and he made a backhanded comment at Meyer.
"I'll just say this one statement," Shannon said. "Sometimes when you do things and people see what type of person you really are, you turn a lot of people off. Now, whatever you want to get out of that, I won't say it again. But it helped us. It helped us more than you'll ever know."
Shannon said he received calls from recruits after the game who were angry at the late field goal, and while he didn't mention Meyer's name, it was clear that's who he was referencing.
When asked about that after practice on Monday, Tebow grew visibly irritated, and I've posted his full comments below:
"I did see that this morning. That's okay. The only part that offended me is when he questioned coach Meyer, and I'll have coach Meyer's back on anything. To say something like that about coach Meyer isn't true at all. He's one of the best coaches in the game, and that's why I came to the University of Florida, to play for coach Meyer and the type of person he is. If you want to talk about coach Meyer, you should definitely talk about a lot of other coaches before coach Meyer."
"You can talk about running the score up, I don't care, but they were paid to stop us and [offensive coordinator Dan Mullen] is paid to score. If they don't do that, oh well, but you don't have to talk about coach Meyer as a person and getting recruits and all that. That's not necessary. You don't have to go after him as a person. That's not necessary at all."
And this is where Tebow starts to sound like Mike Gundy.
"It does (upset him). What did coach Meyer do besides recruit good guys, try to keep guys out of jail, doing the right thing, try to work guys into being better people on and off the field? He never says anything bad about anybody, always tries to do the right thing and turn young boys into men. We play with character, strength and honor on and off the field, and I don't think you usually see many cheap shots or anything wrong that we do. Yea, we'll try to score throughout the whole game. That's our job, and we like playing football. When we're on the football field and we have the ball, we're not going to not try to score. We'll be nice, shake their hands and be men, but we're not going to try not to score. I don't think that has anything to do with the type of person you are, and it's not like we were up by that much. We're playing the University of Hawaii, I mean Miami, and we're up by two touchdowns."
Come after me! I'm a man! I have a Heisman!
That last bit about Hawaii/Miami was an honest slip of the tongue, but Tebow was angry enough that talking some smack about the Canes wouldn't have been all that far-fetched.
It's also worth noting that "character, strength and honor" were the four tenants of Tebow's high school coach, Craig Howard, at Nease High School.
Thanks for keepin' it real Tim.
One last thing about the field goal, which came with 25 seconds left in the game. It was Jonathan Phillips' first-ever field goal, and he said it was necessary to get him some experience before the Tennessee showdown in two weeks.
"I heard [Shannon] didn't appreciate it too much, but if you think about it, I've never kicked a field goal in a game," Phillips said. "We're going to Tennessee, and it's definitely something important that needed to get done before we got there, so I'm really glad we got that rep."
INJURIES
Meyer said Monday that linebacker Dustin Doe will be out four or five days during the bye week with a groin injury. Receiver Carl Moore, who made that unbelievable catch-that-may-not-have-been-a-catch against Miami, is sidelined for three to four days with a hip pointer he sustained on the play.
He added that lineman Jim Tartt is probable for the matchup with the Volunteers.
And Meyer referred to Tebow by a new name I've never heard, simply, Teeb.
