Don't Blame Meyer For His Kentucky Fried Quarterback

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- If your team is ahead, 31-7 with less than five minutes left in the third quarter, is the game in hand?

Most likely.

But is it such a blowout that all your top players should be on the sideline safe and warm so the backups can get some mop-up duty?

Hardly.

YOUR THOUGHTS: Should Tebow Have Still Been In The Game?

Urban Meyer should not be blamed for Tim Tebow's concussion. Injuries come from hard hits, and hard hits are a staple of the game of football.

But in our culture, even without talk radio and the blogosphere -- but far moreso with those faceless forums -- we always need to find fault with a choice that somebody made. We love to assess blame and pile on and criticize long after decisions are made. I've long been a big fan of the sport, and I think I'm pretty knowledgeable, but one thing I've never understood is the venom that infects the opinions and the methods with which college football fans express those opinions.

In the sport of college football, coaches leave their top players in for a number of reasons.

+ They want to step on the jugular of the other team. If they don't, they get criticized for not closing out an opponent.

+ They might want to stretch the margin of victory by just one more touchdown, hoping the larger blowout might be worth another AP vote or, come mid-season, three tenths of a BCS percentage point.

+ They might want to help a Heisman Trophy candidate add a couple more completions or yards to the stat line.

Again, the game was in hand, but a 24-point deficit with 20 minutes to left is hardly insurmountable. Florida itself scored those first 31 points in just the first quarter.

So quit with the blame game. It's unfortunate that a great player and a great kid suffered such a hard hit, but he'll recover and Florida will be a great team again, Meyer will be a great coach again and all will return to normal in the world of college football.

Monday Notebook

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

HOUSTON -- Sitting at Houston's Intercontinental Airport on a Monday afternoon, waiting for my flight to San Jose, I couldn't help but continue to be obsessed about college football. Here are some observations four weeks in:

+ It's turning into one great season indeed. I feel like we're on the way to a very 2007-like campaign full of upsets, unpredictability and an ever-changing Top 25.

+ Not that the Top 25 is the most important aspect of the sport, but if one thing has been proven so far about an early season poll ranking, it's that it's the one thing about the business of college football -- unlike the BCS bowl format -- that is truly for the fans. Perhaps the most significant thing that preseason rankings -- Cal? Ole Miss? -- do is warm things up for the bloggers and radio talk show hosts, and of course their audiences. College football fans might be the most passionate of all sports observers, and rankings in August and September give them plenty to cry about.

+ ESPN and others need to stop using the term "must-win" or "virtual must-win" in September. Notre Dame, anyone? 2007 proved you can lose -- and lose late in the season like Ohio State did -- and still play for the national championship. Already this season, we have four one-loss teams ranked among the top nine. And as I look at the calendar, it tells me it's not yet October.

+ I just got my credential confirmed for the Oct. 10 Florida game at LSU. Thanks go out to the fine people in the LSU Sports Information Department!

+ I covered Tony Pike one time some years back. Not on the field, but when I was freelancing some sports stories for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He was certainly a good quarterback at Reading High School, but at 7 feet tall and no more than 90 pounds, hardly seemed the type of guy who'd be a Heisman  Trophy candidate years later. But do you know what does seem quite Heisman-like at this point? Pike's stat line through four games, all Cincinnati Bearcat victories:

71 percent completion rate | 11 touchdowns | 2 interceptions | 306 ypg passing | 173 quarterback rating.

Kid is nice. Cincinnati is my alma mater, so I definitely root for the Bearcats, but those who claim the Bearcats are the best college team in the state of Ohio should still check themselves.

UK Coach: Florida's Offense Can Cause "Big Problems" Too

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- So much is made about Florida's defense, having returned its two-deep roster from last year's nasty unit, but don't forget the Gators have a Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback, a solid offensive line and typically dangerous and speedy athletes at the skill positions. Of course they do; they're Florida.

Kentucky coach Rich Brooks said this week that preparing for Florida's offense can be just as troublesome as game-planning for its defense.

Christian Johnson Says UK Ready For Florida Challenge

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kentucky's Christian Johnson is one of four senior starters on the offensive line. And the line of scrimmage is likely where Saturday's bout with No. 1 Florida will be won.

So much is made about Florida's nasty defense, which didn't just return every starter from last year's nasty unit, but its two deep -- all 22 of them -- are back in 2009.

But Johnson said he thinks a good week of practice and the belief that his Wildcats can upset a visiting top-ranked team for the second time in three years will go a long way toward re-arranging the college football rankings this weekend. He said he and his mates don't think much about Florida's 22-game winning streak against Kentucky.

UK Running Back Wants To Hit Florida In The Mouth

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Alfonso Smith knows how dangerous Florida's defense is. So why is he talking about hitting the Gators in the mouth?

Calm down, Florida fanatics; the Kentucky tailback isn't talking trash. He's using the bad sportswriter cliche to describe what UK's offense needs to do to attack a nasty Gators defense.

Speaking of which, many talk about how all 11 starters from last year's stingy unit returned this year for Florida, but did you know the Gators actually returned their two deep at every defensive position? That's pretty strong. And that's why Smith said he believes it's critical for Kentucky to play confidently and attack Florida. If the Wildcats let Brandon Spikes and company take the game to UK, it will be a long and quiet evening inside Lexington's Commonwealth Stadium.

UK Lineman Thinks 'Cats Will Hang Tough

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Zipp Duncan is one of four senior starters on Kentucky's offensive line. The fifth-year tackle saw both the 2007 game against Florida, in which UK hung tough and almost upset the Gators just a week after Kentucky knocked off then No. 1 LSU, and also remembers quite well last year's 63-5 debacle in Gainesville.

Since there was such a difference between two games played just one year apart, Duncan said the same, what-a-difference-a-year-makes logic can again be applied to the argument that this year's game will be a close one.

He's 6-feet-5 and nearly 300 pounds, so I didn't argue:

UK Aims For Better Showing Against Gators

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Sophomore wideout Randall Cobb said Monday that he didn't enjoy the 63-5 beatdown at the Swamp last year.

He didn't exactly say he was looking for payback or revenge, a theme media types always like to suggest. But with the right amount of respect for No. 1 Florida in his manner, Cobb said he and his mates will prepare this week just as they would for any other game.

Cobb describes in the video below how demoralizing that 2008 thrashing was.

Kentucky Coach Compares Tebow To A Baker

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- What's funny about Tim Tebow is that so many people want to drop the "best-ever" hyperbole on him, but almost all do it in such a way that describes the Florida senior as one of the best-ever players in college football history, never one of the best-ever quarterbacks, the position he's played for the Gators for going on four years now.

The coach of Florida's next opponent, Kentucky's Rich Brooks, added his name to the list of those who need to categorize everyone and everything at UK's weekly media luncheon at the ole Wildcat Den Monday. In heaping praise on the Gators' Heisman Tropy-winning QB, Brooks made sure to emphasize the word "player," implying that maybe Tebow's quarterbacking skills alone might not be deserving of such recognition.

Brooks compared Tebow to Terry Baker. Ah, yes, Terry Baker. Who doesn't think of Terry Baker while watching Tebow bull his way through the line on 3rd-and-goal?

Actually, this is high praise indeed. Baker won the Heisman Trophy when he and Brooks were teammates at Oregon State in 1962. And to glorify Tebow or any player for his complete body of work -- saying he's greater than the sum of his parts, essentially -- is a stronger compliment than just saying he's a great position player. If I recall, God created the football player on the sixth day -- those are the words of Ampipe senior cornerback Stefen Djordjevic, not mine -- and he must have looked like Florida's No. 15.

Anyway, here's Brooks' take on Tebow, whose Gators pay a visit to Lexington's Commonwealth Stadium Saturday for a 6 p.m. kickoff:

What's Wrong With Lane Kiffin Being Confident?

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- I don't understand why there's such a fuss about Lane Kiffin's most memorable quote from his introductory press conference when he became Tennessee's head football coach.

YOUR THOUGHTS: Were Kiffin's comments disrespectful?

Said Kiffin: "I'm really looking forward to embracing some of the great traditions at the University of Tennessee, for instance the Vol Walk, running through the T, singing Rocky Top all night long after we beat Florida next year. It's going to be a blast, OK? So get ready."

I don't think it was much different from when Jim Tressel took over as Ohio State coach, ending more than a decade of Michigan dominance in the best rivalry in all of sports. Tressel was introduced to Buckeye Nation during a break in the Ohio State-Michigan basketball game in Columbus in January 2001.

Tressel took the mike and proclaimed: "I can assure you that you will be proud of your young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan."

I think Tressel's comment was fairly ballsy, again because the Wolverines owned OSU for a decade, and because it is, again, the biggest rivalry in all of sports. And yet the statement didn't get hardly the amount of criticism that Kiffin and his proclamation have been getting this year.

Comments or gestures like that are intended to pump up your fan base and really nothing more. If the other side wants to turn it into bulletin-board material, then sobeit. Tressel has succeeded in walking the walk. We'll find out Saturday of Kiffin and his Volunteers can back it up at the Swamp when Tennessee takes on No. 1 Florida.

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