Tim Tebow reveals he thinks about loss to Georgia more than 11 rivalry wins
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Tim Tebow won a ton of games at Florida and did it with a flair combined with moxie, grit and intensity, and Florida fans loved him every second for it.
The legendary Gators quarterback who starred in Gainesville from 2006-09 has plenty of hardware to show for his efforts, and that hardware was born out of all those rivalry victories that he accumulated during those seasons.
Tebow was known for a lot of great things, and being clutch against those rival schools was one of them. The magical lefty signal-caller is now an analyst for SEC Network, and on Saturday morning the gang from SEC Nation that he’s a part of just happened to be broadcasting live from Atlanta, where No. 17 Florida was set to battle No. 3 Georgia (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
The Gators and Bulldogs are big-time rivals, and Tebow cherishes that rivalry. Tebow puts Georgia in the esteemed group of Gators’ rivals along with Tennessee and Florida State. That’s it for Tebow, and using that arithmetic he considers himself to be 11-1 in rivalry games at Florida.
Tebow broke down those moments in rivalry games and how it made him feel as he walked the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in the hours leading up to Florida’s latest rivalry showdown with Georgia. And, to nobody’s surprise who knows Tebow, it still bothers him that he lost to Georgia in 2007 during his sophomore year, to the point where it casts a deeper shadow for him over those glorious 11 rivalry wins.
“I got to play in 12 rivalry games in my career. We went 11-1. The one loss was my sophomore year to Georgia. I think way more of that one loss than I do of the 11 wins,” said Tebow, who broke down his personal family history and how it bleeds into the fabric of the Georgia-Florida rivalry.
Ever the perfectionist, ever the competitor, Tebow’s line of thinking goes along with who he is, and that’s why he’s an icon in Gainesville.
Here is Tebow’s entire rivalry discussion from Saturday morning, with another Georgia battle beckoning like the ones Tebow still thinks about:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
