TD Jump Pass -- 2009 BCS

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The best? Surely you jest -- but Tebow just might be the greatest

Jan. 7, 2009
By Dennis Dodd
CBSSports.com Senior Writer
Tell Dennis your opinion!

MIAMI -- It sounds incredibly sappy, maybe even delusional. In this hard-bitten world, it's foolish to call anyone the greatest.

So before going there, let's ease into the subject of this BCS title game. Florida-Oklahoma has a chance to be the best title game of the 11-year BCS era, outstripping the 2006 Rose Bowl classic between Texas and USC. One of the coaches is going to win his second national championship this decade. Two Heisman winning quarterbacks meet for the second time in a title game. The amount of future NFL talent ready to go to the next level could make this game a different kind of classic -- in draft war rooms.

But there is something more at stake here. Think if you got to see Babe Ruth call his shot at Wrigley Field.

Or Red Grange account for six touchdowns three different ways against Michigan.


We've seen Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan revolutionize their sports.

Doesn't Tim Tebow have a little of all those guys in him? The flair of Gretzky and Jordan? The confidence of Ruth (remember Ole Miss)? The game-changing ability of Grange? The problem is, no one has ever made the leap you're about to read with a straight face.

It's not cool for a sportswriter to gush, but when it's right there in front of you, you've got to report the facts.

Tim Tebow might be the greatest college football player of all time.

Not the best. Lord knows, there are others bigger and faster. We're talking greatest. Total package: Impact. Championships. Football skills. Humanitarian skills. College football's GOAT. And a legacy that, like Grange or Jim Thorpe before him, has a chance to last decades.

"I don't know if he's the best passer. I don't know if he has the best arm," said Florida teammate Percy Harvin. "I do think he'll go down as the most dominating player to play college football."

In this meeting of Heisman-winning quarterbacks, Tebow has overshadowed Oklahoma's Sam Bradford. Not intentionally. Tebow is Superman, Larry Csonka with an arm, the milk-guzzling superstar with 108 career touchdowns and almost 2,000 career rushing yards.

The 2008 winner, Bradford, is the quiet, humble, pocket-passing hero of the Cherokee Indian Nation.

"It's not going to come down to one player," Bradford said of the quarterback comparison.

Actually, it might. Ask Barry Switzer.

"Who would I rather have?" the former Oklahoma coach asked. "If I was coaching, I'd probably want Tebow."

"We always tell him," Bob Stoops said, cautioning Bradford about trying to do too much, "don't try to be Superman."

There's only one of those.

All that is said with the reminder that Tebow's numbers are down across the board from his Heisman-winning season. Whatever the result Thursday night, it will be because what Tebow does -- or doesn't -- do.

Oklahoma has to stop or slow him to win. End of game analysis.

Alabama was preoccupied with Tebow in the SEC Championship Game a month ago. Nick Saban thought he had devised a defense to slow, if not altogether stop, Tebow and Florida's single-wing hybrid offense. 'Bama came to line with three different defensive options based on Florida's offensive look. Other teams came to the line showing Florida what it was going to do. Alabama disguised it and led after three quarters.

Saban and Tide still couldn't prevent a fourth-quarter comeback. It was the first in Tebow's 25 career starts.

Even more than that, how do you measure a man who barged into a defensive huddle on the sideline that night and urged his teammates to get a stop? A loss against Ole Miss in September got him so fired up that he went out and helped lead the team to nine consecutive wins.

It's the total package that puts him near the top of any all-time list. Florida's junior quarterback is attempting to win his -- and the Gators' -- second national championship in three years. That might surpass, in many fans' minds, the accomplishments of the greatest Gator of them all, Steve Spurrier.

"He's the quarterback of the future," Spurrier said during Tebow's freshman year. "Actually, he's the quarterback of today. He's just a guy that can run around and break some tackles and still gets balls off. He's really the type of quarterback that almost everyone is looking for."

Two years later, Tebow has solidified his spot among all-time Gators while the one-time, standalone all-time Gator still can't find a quarterback.

The comparisons go beyond Bradford and Spurrier for Tebow. Thorpe played multiple sports and is known by some as the country's greatest amateur athlete. But to call him a humanitarian probably would be a mistake.

Barry Sanders was basically a one-and-done guy at Oklahoma State, where he set the single-season rushing record and left after his junior season. Sammy Baugh was an innovator. Herschel Walker bulldozed the way for the Bulldogs. The best comparison to Tebow might be to modern-day greats -- Vince Young and Tommie Frazier.

Both won championships. Both were option guys. Young is considered by many to be the best player in Texas history. Frazier wasn't much of a thrower, but his spectacular performance in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl convinced Spurrier to go out and hire a young-buck defensive coordinator from Kansas State. Bob Stoops was part of a national championship in his first season at Florida.

Now, as Oklahoma's coach, Stoops is trying to defend against the next evolution of those players. Frazier's coach, Tom Osborne, has admitted to channel surfing on game days and being most impressed with Urban Meyer's version of the zone read offense that has made Tebow a star.

"Boy," Osborne told the Omaha World-Herald, "I wish I had thought of that."

Like Tebow, Grange had otherworldly skills for his time and helped stamp college football in the national consciousness. That ideal still exists today in small way. College players are still generally portrayed as young and innocent until they prove otherwise. Tebow has never given us reason to doubt his character.

"Most people are just very skeptical," Bob Tebow said between shots during a round of golf with his sons on Wednesday.

Those skeptics can't believe, Bob says, that his son is so squeaky clean. They can't believe he drinks a glass of milk the night before a big game or that he enjoys Sinatra.

"Send In The Clowns," Tim said proudly.

"There are fake, counterfeit $20 bills out there," Bob said. "That doesn't stop you from spending your real $20 bills in the world. Especially from some cultures in our country, you have a tendency to be skeptical and see a lot of fake people. Real and genuine doesn't mean you have no flaws. Are you who you claim to be? He doesn't claim to be perfect. "

True, Tebow has missed on 33.9 percent of his career passes. (Obviously, a 66.1 percent completion rate isn't bad.) He doesn't pick up every third-and-short. But he does show up at 6 a.m. to work out with the offensive linemen when his teammates are still catching Z's. He did stand up in front of 10,000 Filipinos at age 15 to talk about his Christian faith.

"I come to work every day with a guy whose sole purpose is to be the best at everything he does," offensive coordinator Dan Mullen said. "Want to go race? Race him around the stadium right now. He's going to win. He's made me a much better person."

On the GOAT question, Mullen doesn't necessarily want to go there. As great as Tebow has been, there is the issue of his senior season still to go if he doesn't opt for the NFL after Thursday.

"I think if he comes back next year, if he develops like he will next year, we will be hard-pressed to put anyone above him," Mullen said. "He might not be the best quarterback, best this, best that. Best football player? He might be."

If Tebow comes back, he could nail down another honor: career leader in awards. One Heisman (at least). A shot at three national championships depending on what happens Thursday night. All-SEC and All-America honors coming out the ying-yang.

Oklahoma's Dominique Franks doesn't think much of the sensation he is about to face. The OU corner said this week that Tebow would be the fourth-best quarterback in the Big 12. At best.

"I'm just thankful for being fourth," Tebow said, smiling.

His teammates, though, see the look in their quarterback's eyes. It doesn't take much to get those competitive juices going. When he lost the Heisman last month (despite getting the most first-place votes), he said, "Why forget about it? I'll be motivated enough."

"You don't want to wake up a sleeping giant," Harvin said. "Tebow, you just kind of leave him alone. Now you've got to deal with him running even harder. You don't want to give him extra ammunition."

"Motivation" is usually an eye-roller for journalists. Just another cliché. Tebow puts a face on it. He will always find a cause. During three offseason breaks, Tebow made mission trips to the Philippines, Croatia and Thailand. He has made 11 visits to prisons to teach the gospel.

He might play two years in the NFL, he might play 15. But at some point his entire life is going to be directed to spreading his faith. The NFL is merely the next goal/hurdle. The family is tired of hearing that Tim can't quarterback at the next level. Tebow has the mobility and size to get around in the pocket, but critics question his throwing ability.

"That's hysterical, hilarious," Bob said, "All the quarterback problems they have in the NFL? He'll be a quarterback in the NFL. It's hard to even comment on it without saying something about the person's intelligence who is making that comment."

Will Superman be OK if he never plays in the pros?

"Yeah, I'll be OK," he said. "Will I be upset? Obviously. That's my goal. But, no, it's not going to mean my life is over because there are a lot more things that are important to me."

Life continues Thursday night.




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CBS Sports
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Wildcat offense is actually a form of the single wing

by David Waldstein/The Star-Ledger
Friday December 26, 2008, 11:08 AM

Like most NFL fans, Billy Granville heard all the hype about the Dolphins' Wildcat offense back in September. So as an ex-NFL player, he was naturally curious to see exactly what it was all about.
When the former Lawrenceville School star and Bengals linebacker finally saw replays of Miami running back Ronnie Brown taking a direct snap, spinning to his left, faking a handoff to Ricky Williams and then running up the gut for a touchdown, Granville first smiled to himself.

Then he thought of Dr. Ken Keuffel, the legendary Lawrenceville coach who single-handedly kept the single wing alive and thriving in New Jersey for a half century.

If anyone would have immediately recognized those plays and understood their genealogy, it would have been Coach Keuffel, who passed away in 2006 at age 82.

"They were calling it the Wildcat," Granville said from his home in Houston. "They can call it whatever they want. But that's the single wing. They resurrected Dr. K."

The single wing is an offensive football formation based on precision timing, deception and power. In its traditional form it's an almost paradoxical combination of razzle-dazzle and power in which the ball is snapped directly to a tailback, which was Granville's offensive position at Lawrenceville.

He can then hand off to another back, pass, spin, fake, run or do all of the above. No one on the planet knew the offense better than the influential Keuffel (pronounced koy-ful), who played it at Princeton, coached it for 30 years, wrote two books about it, and dissected it with a host of other coaches, including his friends Joe Paterno and Bill Belichick.

The Dolphins don't run the single wing in its purest form, which has an unbalanced offensive line designed to muscle through one side of the defense, a highly skilled center snapper, and no traditional quarterback.

But what Miami runs is clearly a second cousin of the single wing, and as such has its foundation in New Jersey high school and college football.

When Brown and the Dolphins line up in their Wildcat formations against the Jets Sunday in East Rutherford, they will bring back to Jersey a style of football that was sustained, nurtured and perfected here by Keuffel.

"He was the Godfather of the single wing," said Jim Benedict, the Watchung Hills coach who became a Keuffel disciple and friend when he was coaching at Summit High School. "He knew as much about it as anyone because he played it and coached it all those years, and he was so passionate about it."

Once the dominant offense of the 1930s and '40s, the single wing eventually fell out of favor across the country -- replaced mostly by the Wing T with the quarterback over center. It was kept alive in pockets for more than a half-century by a substrata of devotees, primarily high school coaches and football eccentrics spread across the country in a loose network of loyal adherents.

Lawrenceville was one of the places where the single wing survived, like a classic piece of living art in a museum, and Ken Keuffel was its curator.

Born in 1924, Keuffel grew up in Montclair and played in the single wing at Princeton in the late 1940s, where Dick Kazmaier would later become the last single wing Heisman trophy winner in 1951.

Keuffel learned at the knee of another single wing master, the great Princeton coach Charlie Caldwell. Boston psychiatrist Phil Isenberg was a linebacker at Harvard from 1948-50 when they played big-time college football, and was charged with stopping Kazmaier and the single wing, and he said Caldwell was an underrated coach.

"They were the best-coached team we ever played," Isenberg recalled. "They were disciplined and just lined up and played with tremendous power and precision."

After graduating from Princeton, Keuffel had a brief stint as a kicker with the Eagles before going to Pennsylvania to get his doctorate in English literature. He coached Penn's freshman team, then went to Lawrenceville in 1954, to Wabash College from 1961-66 and then back to Lawrenceville, where he coached from 1967-82 and 1990-99 until he retired with a record of 151-89-8. But wherever he was, he coached only one offense.

"Football is all about copycats and the flavor of the month," said Ed Racely, a single wing historian and one of Keuffel's best friends. "Whatever is in vogue, well, everyone usually switches to it. But not Ken. He was true to the single wing forever. He never gave up on it, and he was always willing to help anyone who wanted to learn it."

Benedict was one who learned from the master. In 1992 he drove down from Summit to Lawrenceville to learn a couple of plays for short yardage situations. He spent hours upon fruitful hours with Keuffel and came away mesmerized and excited. As he drove back along route 206 he had a revelation. Why not adopt the single wing as our entire offensive system?

"I called Ken and he actually tried to talk me out of it at first," Benedict said. "He wasn't sure I was committed, and to run the single wing offense, you have to be committed. I assured him I was, and he finally agreed."

Shortly thereafter Benedict drove back down to Lawrenceville and got the full treatment -- books, film, charts, diagrams over a 16-hour crash course. That fall Summit instituted the single wing offense and went 8-3 and lost in the state finals. The next year they went 11-0 and beat Mendham for the championship.

One of his assistants, Bill Tracy, won a state championship this year with Livingston using an admixture of wing T, shotgun and the single wing he learned from Keuffel via Benedict.

Benedict, who went on to coach at Westfield, Rutgers and now Watchung Hills, made a tape of Summit's highlights from that undefeated season and, unknown to him, it began to circulate around the single wing community across the country.

Years later Paul Shanklin, a single wing convert in the 1990s who was a volunteer assistant for Benedict at Watchung Hills, told Benedict that highlight tape had become a well-known artifact in the single wing community, although no one even knew who it was. They were simply called: "The Strangers from the East."

Keuffel and his son Ken Jr., who played the critical center position for his dad's teams in the late 1970s, were in the stands when Summit completed its undefeated season, and the coach couldn't have been more pleased to see his offense run to perfection.

That's why Ken Jr. believes his father would have been so excited to see the Dolphins and Brown run their variation that first time in Foxborough. Brown ran for four touchdowns that day and threw for another.

"My dad was a huge Patriots fan and he had the NFL package, so he watched every one of their games," Keuffel, an art reporter in Winston-Salem, said this week while on vacation in Mexico. "I know he would have been watching, and would have gotten such a kick out of seeing it in the NFL, even if it was against Belichick."

Belichick's first encounter with Keuffel came in 1970 while he was at Andover Academy in Massachusetts. He and his teammate, Ernie Adams, who is still one of Belichick's closest advisors, were both early admirers of Keuffel, who also went to Andover in the early 1940s.

As a kind of teenage football nerd, Adams had not only read Keuffel's 1964 book "Simplified Single Wing Football," he had it in his locker when Keufel brought Lawrenceville to play Andover in 1970. After the game Adams ran back to his locker, grabbed the book and had the legend himself sign it for him on the field.

Years later Belichick, whose father Steve played and coached the single wing, kept in contact with Keuffel, and spoke at his clinics. He also wrote a testimonial to Keuffel's updated 2004 book, "Winning Single Wing Football -- A Simplified Guide for the Football Coach." According to Ken Jr., book sales are up with the revival of the single wing through the Wildcat and Miami's remarkable run this year.

"When you think about the Dolphins season, there's no doubt the Wildcat had a lot to do with their success this year," Granville said. "I think it gave them a lot of confidence and momentum when they beat New England. Even though Coach (Keuffel) was friends with Belichick, I know he would have loved to have seen it."



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The Star-Ledger

Glory not Akron coach's story

By Neil H. Devlin
The Denver Post
Posted: 12/18/2008 12:30:00 AM MST


Fun football isn't about selling yourself as much as it is buying into those around you.

So Terrell Owens would probably have trouble becoming an Akron Ram.

Call them quaint, but call them committed.

"The key is getting kids to be able to do things not to get the publicity," coach Brian Christensen said. "Blocking, tackling, not caring who gets the credit . . . It's doing the things it takes that don't get the glory."

The Denver Broncos 2008 high school coach of the year, Christen- sen gets more glory than he cares for, but what is he to do when running the northeastern Colorado machine that sets the schoolboy pace?

In November, Akron won its third consecutive Class 1A title, Christen- sen's fifth since taking over in 1996. The Rams have won 39 games in a row, including 20 shutouts. They won 38 straight from 2001-03. His career mark is 138-22, 36-8 in the postseason.

"It's an amazing feeling," the 37-year-old said. "You have to have talent, obviously, but growing up in this community, there are hardworking kids who have summer jobs and a strong sense of work ethic."

Born in Brush, Christensen, the son of a farmer-rancher, is well-versed in Akron's ways, having lived there since the second grade. Like many Rams past, present and future, he went through youth, junior high and high school play as a Ram, where the single-wing offense is embraced and 3-4 defense is imposed — the Rams allowed only 40 points in 2008.

"To me, that's the common denominator of championship teams, great defense," he said.

Not many others operate out of the single wing, but when considering the NFL's sudden widespread usage of unconventional wildcat sets, perhaps he should be referred to as intelligent instead of prehistoric.

Despite one of the game's most basic offenses thought to be all but abandoned long ago, the single wing continues to survive the test of time (outside of Denver and in smaller classes) and is handed down among Akron friends — Christensen counts a couple of former players, his brother-in-law, his pastor and his former prep coach (school principal Carl Rice) as assistants.

"It has a lot of tradition, but at the same time I think it's different, and that's an attraction, too," Christen- sen said. "We feel like it becomes an advantage in the playoffs. The (league) teams know you have to play it that week, but to prepare for it (in the playoffs) makes it more difficult."

Christensen knows it inside and out, from the spinner who takes the center snap to the defender who tries to stop it. In 1985, he was a freshman linebacker on the Rams' first title team. Apparently, most parts are interchangeable — by the time he was a senior, he was switched from offensive line to running back. Knowing your place, he said, is vital: "It doesn't have to be about seeking personnel attention."

It's a theme that works at Akron, where there's virtually no specialization and less allure by city-fueled distractions. Obviously, there are fewer video games being played at a school within one student of 8-man football enrollment (125).

"It's a neat thing for kids in a smaller community," Christensen said. "Kids here can be a part of every club, three-sport athletes . . . Some people, they think they don't have the opportunities of bigger cities in smaller towns. I would argue just the opposite."

The Rams lose eight seniors for next season's team that is staring at the chance to surpass rival Limon's state-record 50-game winning streak. However, the usual Christensen-led formula of great preparation, then taking it play by play, will squelch any thoughts of looking ahead.

"It'll be a challenge," he said.




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