SEC football: Can anyone stop Florida?

By Tim Tucker

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A roomful of reporters laughed when the brash young Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin predicted the 2009 national championship — and obviously the SEC title, too — would be won by “all the great players” of the Florida Gators.

“That wasn’t a joke,” said Kiffin, quieting the room. “I was serious about that. I really believe that.”

A lot of people really believe that.

The Gators — the defending SEC East, SEC and national champs — enter the season as the prohibitive pick to repeat on all three counts.

All 64 media members polled by the SEC picked Florida to win the East, the first unanimous vote in the annual survey, and 63 of the 64 picked the Gators to win the SEC title game as well. Nationally, the Gators are No. 1 in both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls, garnering 58 of 60 first-place votes in the AP balloting to rate as the most overwhelming preseason No. 1 in the poll’s history.

With all 11 starters on defense and seven starters on offense returning from a team that won its final 10 games last season by an average margin of 34 points, the Gators are hard to vote against.

The main reason, of course, is Tim Tebow, the dual-threat quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore and is picked by a lot of people — Kiffin, for one — to win another as a senior this season.

Then there’s all that speed at tailback and an offensive line that LSU linebacker Jacob Cutrera described as “that big blue wall.”

And there’s the defense, which Gators coach Urban Meyer acknowledges has the potential to be one for the ages, led by returning All-American linebacker Brandon Spikes.

But wait. This is the SEC, not a league that lends itself to coronations. A team hasn’t won back-to-back conference titles in the past 10 years. And Florida, remember, did lose a game last season, 31-30 to Ole Miss in Gainesville in September.

So what’s the secret to beating the Gators, Houston Nutt? “It’s two things if you want to beat Florida,” the Ole Miss coach said.

First, turnovers. Florida committed three against Ole Miss, who committed only one against the Gators. “That’s key,” Nutt said. “Win the turnover margin. Gives you a chance.”

Second, limit the damage. “They’ve got speed all over the field,” Nutt said. “They’re gonna make plays. You got to play great defense. Limit those big plays.”

Georgia coach Mark Richt, whose team beat Florida by 12 points two years ago and lost by 39 last season, was asked at a Bulldog Club meeting his plan for beating the Gators this year. He said he likes having an open date before the game, then offered only this: “I can promise you there has never been one game we have played at Georgia that we didn’t believe we were going to win. And the same thing is true this year of all our games, including Florida.”

So it’s not a coronation.

The Gators themselves have tried to reduce the preseason media buzz about a possible undefeated season and repeat national championship to a “First Things First” mind-set.

“Our goals are always the same,” Meyer said. “And that is, we want to do everything we can to get to Atlanta.”

Getting to Atlanta means winning the East and playing in the title game at the Georgia Dome. From there, everything is possible.

“We feel like if we’re the champions of the best conference in college football, then we should have the opportunity to play for it all,” Tebow said. “Do we want to go undefeated? Absolutely. ... But we’re not going to be heartbroken if we have a loss and still win the national championship.”

The schedule starts softly, with home games against Charleston Southern and Troy. Then another home game — Sept. 19 against Kiffin’s Vols — opens Florida’s SEC schedule.

At the outset, the Gators’ biggest worry appears to be at receiver, where they lost starters Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy from last year’s team.

“That’s concern No. 1 for the Florida Gators,” Meyer said. It’s a concern Tebow doesn’t share.

“Aaron Hernandez, David Nelson, D.T. [Deonte Thompson], Carl Moore — those guys want to be great,” said Tebow, rattling off names of Gators he expects to catch his passes. “They’ve been waiting for their moment. I think they’re ready to step on that field and do something amazing.”

That’s what is expected from Tebow’s senior season — something amazing.

As a freshman, he was the second-leading rusher on a national championship team. As a sophomore, he became the only player in NCAA history to run and pass for at least 20 touchdowns in a season. As a junior, he made the famous “you-will-never-see-a-team-play-harder-than-we-will-the-rest-of-the-season” speech after the loss to Ole Miss, sparking the Gators’ 10-game sprint to the national title.

The 6-foot-3, 240-pound left-hander chose to return for his senior season after getting mixed projections of his NFL draft stock.

“When I was deciding to go or stay, a lot of things crossed my mind,” Tebow said. “But I think the ... No. 1 thing was the opportunity to have an influence in the state of Florida and around the South and around the U.S. for that matter.

“I really had a platform. I wanted to take advantage of that for one more year. I wanted to be a good role model for kids who look up to me, wanted to set an example for them. ... And also I wanted to be loyal to Coach Meyer and to my teammates.

“I wanted to come back and finish this thing strong for them.”