Gators' Meyer wins on scoreboard, but fails by playing Tebow

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow avoided reinjuring his concussed brain Saturday night against No. 4 LSU, and if your vision extends only to the end of your nose, you probably think UF coach Urban Meyer gambled and won.

Borrow somebody's binoculars and look again, because you're wrong.

Did Urban Meyer do the wrong thing by playing Tim Tebow? (US Presswire)

Florida won 13-3, but Meyer lost. Why? Because he gambled at all.

Meyer gambled Tebow's long-term quality of life, tossing Tebow's recently rattled brain onto the table like a 25-cent ante. At stake Saturday night was much more than a single win at Death Valley. Also on the line were SEC and national championships, an undefeated season, Meyer's own immortality. Meyer went all in by letting Tebow play two weeks after suffering a horrific concussion, gambling something that wasn't his to wager -- the health of his quarterback. Studies show that a second concussion for an athlete, so soon after the first, can lead to a lifetime of depression and even dementia. The odds of that second concussion coming Saturday night weren't great, no. But the odds were there.

So don't tell me Meyer won his gamble. I'm telling you, he lost his way.

This wasn't about football. This was about right and wrong, and playing Tebow was wrong. Only in the most limited viewpoint imaginable did Meyer win the battle Saturday night. Tebow didn't get hurt, Florida didn't get beat, so it's great, to be, a Florida Gator ...

No -- it's not. It's embarrassing to be a Florida Gator. It'll take a while for the sting of Meyer's stupid gamble to fade. He's the guy who hid behind team doctors after they made a guess -- an informed guess, an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless -- and cleared Tebow to play roughly eight hours before kickoff.

Think about the math of that. Two weeks had passed from the time Tebow was knocked senseless by Kentucky until he was cleared to play against LSU. Two weeks is 14 days, which is 336 hours. And Florida physicians needed 328 of those hours -- 97.6 percent of the time available -- to make their best guess that Tebow would be safe to play. Doctors didn't go down to the wire to decide on a tender ankle or a knee. This was a rattled brain. Not to get all Confucius on you, but when a question about brain safety lasts two weeks, there's your answer.

Concussion research is ongoing, and the acknowledged recovery time gets longer and longer, but as of today the minimum time for a player to return to action after suffering a concussion like Tebow suffered is thought to be two weeks. That's the minimum. Playing Tebow after the minimum recovery period was a meathead move, the modern-day equivalent of rubbing dirt on a bruise or withholding water at practice because dehydration would toughen a player up.

It's stupid and dangerous, is my point. In the future, when more and better concussion research is conducted and the minimum recovery time for such a brutal football knockout is extended to three weeks or even a month -- and that day is coming, I promise you -- people will look back on Meyer's decision to play Tebow against LSU on Oct. 10, 2009, as a dodged bullet. Meyer will say he didn't know. He had no idea. Two weeks wasn't enough recovery time for Tebow to play against LSU back in October 2009? Really? Meyer didn't know. That'll be his story.

But he did know. That'll be the truth.

After two weeks of rest, starting with a humble regimen of no television, Tebow wasn't cleared until hours before kickoff. And then he wasn't allowed to play like he normally would. The Gators usually have Tebow run the spread option, letting him decide whether to hand the ball off or pull it from the back's belly and run it himself. Tebow wasn't allowed to do that Saturday night, not until late in the game when the Gators really needed some short yardage.

Why wasn't Tim Tebow allowed to play like Tim Tebow for 3½ quarters? Because Meyer knew. He knew Tebow's brain wasn't ready to be hit. Not all the way. Meyer protected Tebow from contact as much as he could, which means he knew the risk was there -- which means Tebow shouldn't have been on the field in the first place. You saw the game. You know I'm right.

Good news: Tebow's brain survived.

Bad news: Meyer's integrity did not.