They could be legends.

Billy Napier is staring down a second straight losing season if his Gators lose to FSU today, and he’s got to face the Noles without Graham Mertz.  Clearly, the times are desperate.  And you know what they say about desperate times.

Here’s Billy’s desperate measure:

Florida will turn to one of its greatest players for help before facing rival and fifth-ranked Florida State on Saturday.

The Gators, the National Football Foundation and the College Hall of Fame will jointly honor 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow in the Swamp at the end of the first quarter. Coach Billy Napier, meanwhile, has asked Tebow to speak to his struggling team in the locker room beforehand.

“I’m always open to always talking to the team,” Tebow said during a Zoom call Friday. “I just would always want them to know first that it’s never about me. Saturday isn’t about me. It’s about them.

“It’s an amazing opportunity, and it’s something that if they can harness three hours of excellence, they will have a chance to be one of the more remembered Gator teams because they get a chance to knock off an undefeated FSU team. That doesn’t happen all the time.”

As catchphrases go, “… a chance to be one of the more remembered Gator teams” lacks a little something, no?  It’s no GPOOE™, that’s for sure.

BREAKING: the GPOOE™ is a homer.

You heard it here first, folks.

SEC Network analysts, including @TimTebow unanimously pick Florida #Gators to win the SEC East. pic.twitter.com/OlD7iLTvck

— OnlyGators.com: Florida Gators news (@onlygators) September 19, 2020

The GPOOE™ tries again.

Hey, I gave Tebow grief over the last Georgia analysis he spouted, so it’s only fair to give him credit for a more astute observation.

“It’s that balance offensively,” Tebow said on the SEC Nation set on Georgia’s Myers Quad on Friday. “I think it’s being able to, when you have to throw it, being able to throw it and being able to have that balance. When you look at a lot of the top teams right now, they have very explosive offenses. I think where Georgia is a little bit different is they’re balanced offense, defense, special teams. I think they’ve been more consistent in all three of those, but I still think there’s going to be a time, and there is for every team that wins a championship, when it’s just not going your way and you have to say, ‘okay, we’re going to have to put it on this dude to win it.’ I think that has to be Jake. I think he can do it. I just want them to give him the chance to be able to do that more.”  [Emphasis added.]

I’m not saying that’s a deep dive, but it’s accurate.

You will be crushed to learn…

… that Tim Tebow was “very unimpressed” with Georgia’s win over Notre Dame.

The passion of the GPOOE™

Judging from the emails I received, a number of you have seen this clip of Tebow going off on the state of California for trying to ruin college football.

.@TimTebow passionately expresses his thoughts on the California Senate passing a bill allowing student-athletes to have endorsements. pic.twitter.com/W5uBW7ePNm

— First Take (@FirstTake) September 13, 2019

“I know we live in a selfish culture where it’s all about us, but we’re just adding and piling it on to that where it changes what’s special about college football and we turn it into the NFL where who has the most money that’s where you go,” said Tebow. “That’s why people are more passionate about college sports than they are about the NFL. That’s why the stadiums are bigger in college than the NFL because it’s about your team, about your university, about where my family wanted to go, about where my grandfather had a dream of seeing Florida win an SEC championship and you’re taking that away so young kids can earn a dollar. And that’s not where I feel like college football needs to go.”

First off, I don’t question Tebow’s sincerity on the matter.  I don’t even doubt that, had been given the choice at the time, he would have turned down the opportunity to take money.

But that’s just it.  No college athlete is given that choice, by NCAA diktat.

Beyond that, I also doubt Tebow realizes how incredibly tone deaf his comments are.  His grandfather had a dream about Florida; most of Tebow’s teammates’ grandfathers wouldn’t have been allowed to attend Florida.  As he talks about young kids earning a dollar, all I can consider it where that got Green and Gurley, both of whom grew up in considerably less comfortable circumstances than did Tebow, and wound up on the wrong side of the NCAA for relative pennies.

Had the COA stipend come a few years earlier, I wonder if Tebow would have had the willingness to stand up in a team meeting and fervently urge his teammates to reject it.  What I don’t wonder is whether his teammates would have gone along with it.  My bet is that most of them would have found this thinking more compelling.

"If you are still watching college athletes play on Saturday and you're opposed to them being paid, you're complicit with modern-day indentured servitude."

—@thEMANacho pic.twitter.com/L3MIQCWC5O

— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) September 12, 2019

Heaven sent

Tim Tebow just said on ESPN that God made Bo Nix specifically for Gus Malzahn’s offense.

— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) August 30, 2019

Between that and Gus’ lucky rabbit’s foot, Auburn is truly blessed.

The end of an era

It’s sad when an acronym dies.

Meyer, who has coached many fine quarterbacks through the years, believes Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence is the best college signal-caller to date.

I wonder if Tebow will send Corch a Christmas card this year.

Wednesday morning buffet

Plenty of fodder from yesterday’s edition of SEC Media Days…

• I’ll say this for Kellen Mond — he doesn’t lack a sense of bravado.
• This is the lowest ranking I’ve seen Georgia receive from a preseason computer model.  Evidently, it was the level of play against Texas that did it.
• Jeremy Pruitt brushed off complaints about his trying to poach Missouri players after the NCAA hammered the Tigers by claiming “It was just a miscommunication.”
• Pruitt also filibustered like hell yesterday.  Must be tough for him to take media questions.
• If you haven’t heard the Herschel Walker coin flip story in its entirety, now’s your time to catch up.
• The Big 12’s attempt to regulate the “Horns Down” gesture is bound for glory.
• This is what Dan Mullen was rocking yesterday.  Yecch.
• Kirby Smart compares Jake Fromm to the GPOOE™.  (Although at least he had the presence of mind to acknowledge that “… people are going to cringe when I say this”.)

“I would rather be respected than liked.”

Tim Tebow on the Maryland fiasco is… oh, boy.

.@TimTebow went off on Maryland for firing DJ Durkin shortly after reinstating him. pic.twitter.com/vxhKuEyyni

— First Take (@FirstTake) November 2, 2018

First off, what’s with all the emotion?  Second, does he really believe that the regents’ decision was respected by anyone outside of Durkin and Evans?

I wonder if this has anything to do with Durkin being one of the GPOOE™’s coaches at Florida.  Weird, anyway.

The GPOOE™ shows his ass.

So much for Tim Tebow, class act.

Tim Tebow on ESPN on Bama attendance: "As a student, you've done nothing to win all these titles OK? You spend a little bit of your daddy's money to show up at a game and to go to school there. You say you're the best fans in CFB. Well you need to show up" https://t.co/RBbBAXEhI1 pic.twitter.com/qtUki7NHlz

— Barrett Sallee 🇺🇸 (@BarrettSallee) October 5, 2018

It’s not that they aren’t showing up, genius.  It’s that they’ve got better things to do on a hot day than stay to watch the entirety of a second half of a game when the cupcake has already been seal-clubbed to death.

If we’re talking need here, maybe ‘Bama needs to schedule a better opponent.