Tebow's record-setting night powers Gators in Cincy rout

NEW ORLEANS, La.

By Guerry Smith, Special to FOXSports.com

The scariest part of the epic mismatch between Florida and Cincinnati on Friday night was not Tim Tebow’s record-setting numbers in the final game of his brilliant career. It was the overmatched, overwhelmed Bearcats having come within one second of playing in the BCS Championship game rather than the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

That’s right. The team that Tebow strafed for 482 passing yards with 31 completions on 35 attempts was thisclose to turning the title matchup into a sham.

Cincinnati finished third in the final regular-season BCS standings behind Alabama and Texas. If the Longhorns had lost to Nebraska in the Big 12 championship game, the Bearcats probably would have moved up to No. 2 and would be preparing to play the Crimson Tide in a winner-takes-all game in Pasadena on Jan. 7.

What a horrifying thought.

Texas beat Nebraska 13-12 only after a replay official ruled there was one second remaining in the championship when Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy lazily threw a pass out of bounds, allowing Hunter Lawrence to drill a 46-yard field goal on the final play.

That call and that kick saved the BCS from the worst title matchup in the 12-year history of the system. The transitive property does not usually work in COLLEGE FOOTBALL, but Alabama clobbered Florida 32-13 in the SEC championship Game 27 days before the Gators crushed the Bearcats 51-24 in the Sugar Bowl. You do the math.

The eyeball test is an even better indicator, and Cincinnati failed on every front against Florida (13-1).
The Bearcats deserve credit for going 12-0 out of the Big East in the regular season, but they are nowhere near good enough to play with the nation’s best teams.

Tebow had not thrown for 300 yards all year, while Florida’s passing game struggled without wide receivers Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy, who are playing in the NFL after helping the Gators win the national championship last season. He torched the Bearcats for 320 yards in the first half alone, coming 18 yards shy of his career best for a full game. With each pass seemingly easier than the last, he hit 17 of his first 18 as the Gators scored on every first-half possession before missing a 39-yard field goal on their last one.

They added touchdowns on all but one series of the second half before the game ended with them at the Bearcats’ 7-yard line.

“I didn’t see this coming as far as that many yards and everything, but I knew we had a good game plan,” Tebow said. “I knew we were going to try to spread it out a little bit. We felt like that would be successful. We were hitting and clicking, so we kept going with it.”

No real shock there. Cincinnati had allowed an average of 424.5 yards and 36.5 points in its last four games, winning shootouts by scores of 47-45, 49-36 and 45-44 against Connecticut, Illinois and Pittsburgh, respectively.

The Bearcats’ only chance was to match Florida touchdown for touchdown, and that turned out to be as much of a pipe dream as slowing down Tebow. Quarterback Tony Pike blew an early opportunity on a flea flicker, failing to spot wide receiver Armon Binns when he was 10 yards behind anyone in the Gators secondary and throwing instead to tight end Ben Guidugli, who was covered tightly by All-America cornerback Joe Haden.

The ball landed incomplete. The rest of the game was complete domination.

Cincinnati lost 16 yards on its next seven plays, punting three times. Its receivers could not get open against Florida’s talented secondary and Pike, sacked a season-high four times, did not have enough time to find them anyway before the pocket collapsed.

Clearly, the Bearcats had some built-in, legitimate distractions. The architect of their perfect season, coach Brian Kelly, jilted them for Notre Dame soon after they rallied from a 21-point deficit at Pittsburgh to win the Big East the same day Florida lost to Alabama. Kelly doubled as the play-caller, leaving interim coach Jeff Quinn with a nearly impossible task.

The predicament became even more difficult when Cincinnati hired former Central Michigan coach Butch Jones to replace Kelly. Quinn responded by jumping to Buffalo, effective after the Sugar Bowl, becoming a lame duck as he prepared the Bearcats for the Sugar Bowl.

Florida had its own problems, and not just because of coach Urban Meyer’s bizarre 24-hour resignation earlier this week (again, effective after the Sugar Bowl) that was amended to an indefinite leave of absence.

Gators defensive coordinator Charlie Strong agreed to become Louisville’s coach after the SEC championship game, giving him divided loyalties as he prepared the Gators for Cincinnati’s prolific passing attack. Wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales left for LSU and was on the sideline for the Tigers in the Capital One Bowl earlier Friday.

The biggest issue, though, was the gaping disparity in talent between the two teams.

Before Cincinnati, only traditional powers in BCS conferences had gone undefeated in the regular season during the BCS era. The complete list reads like a who’s who of big-name programs: Tennessee (1998), Florida State (1999), Virginia Tech (1999), Oklahoma (2000, 2004), Miami (2001 and 2002), Ohio State (2002, 2006), USC (2004, 2005), Auburn (2004), Texas (2005, 2009) and Alabama (2009).

But the Big East is a BCS conference in name only. Cincinnati looked much more like the undefeated Hawaii team that was exposed as a fraud in 41-10 loss to Georgia in the Sugar Bowl two years ago.

“The Cincinnati Bearcats this year have been counted out 13 times,” linebacker Andre Revels said. “Twelve times in a row we came away with a victory. One time, one time you guys got it right, and that’s today, but don’t take anything away from our credibility.”

Sorry, there’s no other way to say it after watching the Bearcats fall apart against Florida. They said they would need to play a perfect game to beat the Gators, but the way Tebow played, even that would not have been good enough to keep them close.

After 13 largely frustrating games in which he never completed more than 20 passes or threw for more than 255 yards, Tebow showed why some analysts labeled him the best player in college history before the season.

He likely will fall short of that lofty status, but he deserves to be in the conversation. He leaves Florida with two national championships (2006, 2008) a Heisman Trophy (2007) and this hallmark performance as a punctuation point.

He also put a period on Cincinnati’s claim to legitimacy.