The offensive explosion that fans were expecting and players were guaranteeing never came to fruition in Florida’s 24-14 victory over Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship Game. If you turned the television on at the end of the first quarter and saw the score at 0-0, you probably checked your eyes more than once. Well, it wasn’t a typo.
Texas and Utah are clearly out of the split National Championship picture, but if those two teams were rooting for less than impressive football if only to convince themselves of their self-proclaimed rights to the No. 1 spot, they got it throughout the first fifteen minutes. Tim Tebow telegraphed a pass that got picked off by Oklahoma safety Nic Harris. Sooners offensive guard Duke Robinson, a potential first-round draft pick, committed a holding penalty to negate a long pass play then got hit with a personal foul penalty for unnecessary roughness.
One of the oft-discussed keys to the game was Florida’s ability—or lack thereof—to put pressure on Sam Bradford. In the first quarter, a generous Oklahoma line allowed the Gators to do that at will, and that’s why the Sooners went into the second frame of play with a shocking donut on the scoreboard.
Both teams eventually got going—relatively speaking—on offense. From the start of the second quarter on, even though Florida seemed to have the upper hand the entire way, the whole thing really came down to just a few clutch plays. It sounds cliché, but Florida made all the big plays when it had to and Oklahoma did not.
For example, the Sooners got stopped inside Florida’s 10 on consecutive possessions in the second quarter. They couldn’t punch it in despite two chances (on third and fourth down) from the 1, then on their next possession Bradford got picked off at the 1 on a pass that might have set a record for deflections before being caught. To cap it all off, with Oklahoma driving at midfield down just 17-14 early in the fourth quarter, Juaquin Iglesias appeared to have the inside track on a pass around the Florida 20. Instead, safety Ahmad Black flat-out stole it from him for the interception.
And that brings us to the plays Florida made. The Gators converted three third downs, including a Percy Harvin touchdown run, on the drive that put them up 14-7 in the third quarter. They converted two more third downs on the game-clinching drive in the fourth that sealed the deal at 24-14.
And how about Harvin? After missing the SEC Championship with a high ankle sprain, he finished with five receptions for 50 yards and ran nine times for 121 yards and a touchdown.
For the Sooners, however, nobody could find a rhythm. Sure, DeMarco Murray was missed in the backfield, but they were clearly up against a defense the likes of which they had never seen before. Nothing against Oklahoma, but seriously, how bad must defenses be in the Big 12? The Sooners should have scored more than 14 points and would have without the red-zone meltdowns … but 60? Please. They were 46 shy of 60 (the mark they had reached five straight times prior to this game) on Thursday night. That’s more than six touchdowns for those keeping score at home.
Still, as good and as fast as the Florida defense was, the game was—although he won’t admit it—all about Tebow. He came to life in the second half in terms of intensity and production. And could the final touchdown have come in a more appropriate fashion? Doubtful. A patented Tebow jump pass with just over three minutes left finished the night’s scoring and finished off the Sooners.
After Florida’s lone loss of the season, Tebow delivered the legendary speech (now sure to go down in history to an even greater extent) in which he guaranteed Florida would play harder than any other team the rest of the way, that he would drive his team harder than any player on any other team, and that he would play harder than any other player.
He could have guaranteed a lot more; namely, that the Florida Gators would be National Champions.
Dimon can be reached at rdimon@scoreatl.com.
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