Tim Tebow is serving as a source of motivation for one of his biggest former rivals. Heading into what would be the perfect trap game scenario at home against Ole Miss, Nick Saban is trying to keep his No.1-ranked Alabama squad focused. One loss can cost a team a season, and that loss could come at any time if the Tide fail to take all of their opponents seriously. That’s where a famous Tebow speech comes in.
As The Birmingham News pointed out, Saban said he has played video of Tebow’s “I promise” speech that he gave after Florida — which was ranked No. 1 at the time — lost at home to none other than Ole Miss.
“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,” Saban told reporters. “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?”
In other words, Saban doesn’t want his team putting itself in a position where somebody has to apologize the way Tebow did. The Tide also want to avoid having a player cry after a loss the way Tebow did when Alabama beat Florida in the SEC Championship game a few years back. Tebow may be spending a lot of time on the bench or getting hit in the head with passes in New York, but he’s still making his mark on the SEC.
