Published September 28, 2012 - 8:25am
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Remember when Nick Saban made Tim Tebow cry during the 2009 SEC Championship? I love Tebow, and we all knew he wore his emotions on his sleeve. Now, Nick Saban has his team watching Tebow’s “Promise” video in preparation for Ole Miss.
Thursday marked the four-year anniversary of Tebow’s speech after losing to Ole Miss at home 31-30, and Saban is doing everything in his power to make sure his players don’t have to give that speech.
Florida, at the time, was the #4 ranked team in the country and looked nearly invincible, and that’s almost exactly the position Bama is in hosting the Rebels this weekend, except for the #1 ranking.
Dee Milliner talked about it:
“We watch that during our workouts,” junior cornerback Dee Milliner said. “They’ll have it playing. Then we’ll come in in certain groups and watch it. We’re trying to not let it be us that same way that happened to them. We’re not trying to make it have a loss and then we have to give a big speech after it because we lost the game.”
Saban also talked about it:
“I think this is a game that should be all about what we have at stake,” Saban said after practice Wednesday. “If you have a chance to be significant as a team, it’s about what you do each week in this game. This is the most important game of our season because it’s the game we play this week.
“I saw a video tape a couple of weeks ago when we played somebody about Tim Tebow giving his famous speech after they were undefeated for a year and won the national championship and were going undefeated the next year and had won 20-some games in a row or whatever.
“Guess what? Guess who? Guess when? Somebody beat them. At home, in their place and then there was the famous speech. ‘It’s never going to happen again.’ Well, do you have to have an ‘I told you so’ game and does somebody have to give that speech for you to do what you need to do to realize what’s at stake, to realize the opportunity you have to have a very successful, significant season if you can play one game at a time and respect the people you play, and play to your very best each and every time that you play?
“That’s the challenge and that’s what we’re looking forward to as coaches.”
LOSING HURTS..