FLORIDA COACH MEYER STEAMED ABOUT LATE HIT ON TEBOW

In theory, Florida coach Urban Meyer should be a happy man this week.  He’s got his Gators ranked at #1 and the team just demolished their biggest SEC rival in the annual game dubbed ‘The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party’.  His quarterback, Tim Tebow, passed former University of Georgia and NFL great Herschel Walker on the SEC all time rushing list.  Instead of celebrating the victory, however, Meyer is steaming about what he suggests was a late hit on his star quarterback that wasn’t called by SEC officials.

According to Meyer, Tebow was flattened by Georgia linebacker Nick Williams well after he had handed the ball off to running back Jeff Demps.  Tebow was out of the play when he was blindsided by the Georgia defender.  Meyer also suggested that the play happened right in front of the referee making the non-call even more egregious.

He went as far as sending a video of the play to the SEC commissioner and to Rogers Redding, the league’s coordinator of officials.  He declined to say what sort of response he had received, suggesting he didn’t “want to step out of line”.  That was a thinly veiled reference to the recently enacted SEC policy for criticizing officials—the league beefed up their penalties for the infraction to fines and suspensions rather than ‘reprimands’.  A spokesman for the league informed the media that SEC commissioner Mike Slive was ‘traveling’ and would address the situation later in the week.

Meyer had this to say on his weekly media conference call:

"That should have been a penalty, in my opinion. Obviously, it should have been. You've got to protect quarterbacks. That's the whole purpose. It's right in front of the referee. I'm not sure how they're going to handle that, but ... that was one of the plays we did send in."

Fortunately, Tebow emerged unscathed from the play and after the game was more interested in talking about beating Georgia for the 17th time in 20 games and the significance of becoming the SEC’s all time leading rusher:

"Breaking Herschel's record means a lot. Just to be mentioned in the same breath as Herschel Walker, it's extremely humbling and a little bit breathtaking because it's Herschel Walker. How am I going to be in the same league as Herschel Walker? I still can't understand it. It's pretty cool and it's really special."

The Gators will now host Vanderbilt on Saturday, having clinched the SEC East title last weekend when Tennessee beat South Carolina.  Florida is a whopping -34’ favorite against the Commodores.  After that game, they’ll face their longtime coach Steve Spurrier and the University of South Carolina at Columbia’s Williams-Brice Stadium on November 14th.