The rest of the nation should have a succinct message for Mississippi's Kentrell Lockett: Thanks for screwing it up for the rest of us.
See, if Lockett hadn't blocked UF's final extra-point attempt in the Gators' sole loss of the season on Sept. 27, then the game might have gone into overtime. Maybe UF would've won in the extra period and gotten too cocky the rest of the year.
Instead, there was Tim Tebow trudging in to the postgame press conference, eyes red and schoolboy grin gone. He gazed at the ground most of the time.
Tebow knew he had to choose his words carefully. This couldn't be a typical, emotion-laden statement.
So he leaned slightly forward, bit his lip, looked straight ahead and rested his hands on the podium.
He needed to brace himself for these declarations.
They weren't for the lighthearted.
"I just want to say one thing. To the fans and everybody of Gator Nation. … I'm sorry. Extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season. That was my goal, something Florida has never done here. But I promise you one thing: A lot of good will come out of this."
"You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. You will never see someone push his team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season. You will never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season. God bless."
Translation: Good luck, everybody.
They needed it, and even 25 boxes of Lucky Charms, 10 four-leaf clovers and a couple of rabbits' feet couldn't have helped opponents stop Tebow from fulfilling his promise heard 'round SportsCenter.
That night, junior receiver David Nelson and teammates sat at their homes feeling sorry for themselves. Their hopes of an undefeated season were gone. That's when one of them visited a Web site showing Tebow's soliloquy from that afternoon. Tears filled their eyes, but they were hopeful tears. That's what Tebow's speech had brought them: belief that their season was still worth playing for.
"Let's go beat this thing," Nelson said.
Oh my, did it ever get beaten.
The mission has been accomplished. It's hard to imagine a player pushing himself or his teammates harder than Tebow did, and the Gators showed their toughness on the field.
There was no promise of a national championship, and not even a guarantee of another win for the rest of the season.
Some have called that speech the "Tear-bow," but look who's crying now.
"I don't know where this team would have been if he hadn't said it," Nelson said. "After the Ole Miss loss, everyone was just devastated. We were just searching for answers. We were just looking for something to hold on to. We had nowhere to go."
His teammates have called him Superman. Others say that it's just "Tebow being Tebow."
That speech, however, went above anything Tebow had done before.
"I've never had (a player) like this," UF coach Urban Meyer said. "Tim's got something special inside him. I'm not talking about throwing. I'm not talking about running. I'm talking about making everyone around him better."
"At this point in time, in my opinion, he's one of the greatest players to ever play the game."
His speech is being talked about in historic terms. It's being talked about in the same discussion as Knute Rockne's "Win One for the Gipper." Who knows whether it belongs in that category? But we do know that Tebow's words inspired almost 100 other young men to work harder at the game of football than they ever had at anything in their lives.
"I really took to heart what he said," Nelson said.
Nelson wasn't the only one. There was a difference in the entire team, from the defense to the punting unit.
"You see how it made a difference on the season with him getting up and making that speech," sophomore defensive end Carlos Dunlap said.
And to think there's still one more year of this. Once again, good luck to everybody else.
