Brandon Spikes was suspended for a half by Florida coach Urban Meyer today for eye-gouging Georgia running back Waushaun Ealey in the third quarter of the Georgia-Florida game on Saturday.

(One of two times UGA pulled off Spikes helmet during a play)

Why did Spikes do it? Perhaps because he was eye gouged himself by Georgia fullback Shaun Chapas in the first quarter of the same game, along with getting his helmet ripped off and hit in the head by helmeted Bulldog Josh Davis after the play.

How come there’s been no talk of disciplining those Georgia players after that incident?

The video of the Spikes-Ealey gouging was on YouTube as early as Saturday night. This new video hasn’t come to light, at least publicly, until today. Thanks to blogs, the YouTube video of Spikes gouging Ealey soon hit the main media, and forced Meyer to address it.

Will Georgia Coach Mark Richt now address his own player, Chapas, gouging Spikes earlier in the game? We’ll see after practice in Athens today.

Video of Spikes getting gouged after the jump.

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Tim Tebow arrives at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge today before the Florida Gators meet LSU Tigers.

(Source)

Tebow has been cleared to start by doctors, which surprised no one. Or, at least very few of you.

One more photo of Tebow warming up after the jump. Read more…

The ORLANDO SENTINEL is reporting, via an inside source, that Tim Tebow will be pass his medical tests today and start against LSU.

I was going to write about the ridiculous charade by Urban Meyer perpetrated this week regarding Tim Tebow’s prospects to play against LSU today, but I though I’d take your temperature instead.

We’ve all endured the massive media coverage of the illness outbreak within the Florida football team, which includes quarterback Tim Tebow.

(Filipino Authorities Might Want To Take Note)

Before Florida took on Kentucky today with Tebow at quarterback, Chris Low of ESPN.com reported, “(Tebow’s) illness is not being called the flu and Florida officials were optimistic Tebow would play Saturday night.”

ESPN’s Wendi Nix added in the same story that Tebow’s condition was descibed by a source as a “respiratory illness.”

And ESPN’s Joe Schad chimed in with, “respiratory condition involving congestion.”

Okay, so Tebow’s illness “is not being called the flu“. But just for fun, let’s look up what exactly Swine Flu symptoms are - per the World Health Organization:

“H1N1 Flu Virus is a respiratory illness that causes symptoms similar to those of the regular human seasonal flu.”

Hmmm.

Keep in mind that Tebow’s “respiratory illness” was contracted at a school which has seen a massive Swine Flu outbreak in the past month. The Gainesville Sun noting that 97 percent of cases involving flu-like symptoms at UF have been confirmed H1N1.

Gainesville Sun reporter Nathan Crabbe wrote this on Tuesday:

“While the University of Florida football team battles the swine flu, the number of cases appears to have leveled off in the rest of the student body.”

Wait, didn’t Crabbe get the memo from ESPN’s “sources“? You’re not supposed to call it Swine Flu! Read more…

Some Web sites offer you “insider” information on which teams to put money on during the week’s big football games. But only Sports by Brooks has the ultimate insider: Jesus Christ. That’s right, each week Our Lord and Savior will descend from Heaven to offer His insight into the week’s top games. And with over 60 percent of all college and NFL players attributing their success to Him, no one is more qualified to pick winners.

I know a lot of people wrote into me (bigbettinjc@godmail.com) to give me grief for going 2-3 last weekend. To the people who doubt my wisdom, I can just say that this is a journey and not a short trip. Or as Proverbs 19:11 says, “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.” So instead of asking how your picks did, we’ll just use our knowledge gleaned from last week’s games to make better picks.

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Normally, you don’t see a broadcast booth spend a plurality of a football game raving about the “time of possession” statistic. Then again, normally, you don’t see a team win said battle by a full 30 minutes of game time, which is precisely what Miami did to Indianapolis last night. And then again, you don’t normally see a team control the ball for fewer than 15 minutes of the game… and win anyway.

(”Okay, so you just scored the go-ahead touchdown. Allow me to retort: BOOOO THUMBS DOWN TO YOU BOOOOOOO!”)

But lo and behold, thanks to the quickest of quick-strike offenses, the Colts did exactly that; thanks to touchdown drives of 1, 6, and 4 plays, Indianapolis prevailed in Miami, 27-23. Indeed, the Colts’ longest drive of the night was a 9-play drive that led to a 2nd quarter field goal; on the other side of the field, the Fins had exactly one shorter drive: an 8-play, 25-yard drive that ended in a punt. After that, literally every drive of theirs was 9 plays or longer. That’s the longest shortest drive since [ERROR WE ARE NOT ELIAS SPORTS BUREAU CLIENTS ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?].

Ah, but without turnovers, time of possession is effectively meaningless. Read more…

The biggest story by far leading up to this past weekend’s college football games was the impending beatdown of Tennessee by Florida. It was the game that was going to expose Lane Kiffin as a spoiled, inept brat and cement Tim Tebow’s second Heisman. Urban Meyer, master coach and motivator, would have his Gators so fired up to crush Tennessee that the only concern for the Gators was whether they could fit triple digits on the scoreboard.

Only, um, that never happened. Florida gritted out a rather sloppy 23-13 victory over the Vols that failed to live up to the media’s hype. Kiffin himself was the orchestrator of much of the hype, and quite a few postgame stories fed into that, undeservedly praising him for reigning in the defending national champs and the Football Messiah. Undeservedly? Yeah, turns out that the biggest opponent the Gators might have faced last week wasn’t Kiffykins, but the ever-looming Swine Flu.

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• After a purported pic of pot pops up on his Twitter account, Miami Heat player Michael Beasley has been checked into a rehab facility.

• Car accidents? Plane crashes? Stranded in the Canadian wilderness for days? Junior hockey coach Punch McLean has survived it all.

• Will American sports teams soon follow their European counterparts and start banning unruly fans from their games?

• Ron Zook takes exception to Urban Meyer’s recent mutterings about the Zooker’s alleged terrible treatment of Florida freshmen.

• ESPN plans on showing this season’s USC-Ohio State football match-up in 3-D. Cringe in terror as Jim Tressel’s sweater vest engulfs you!

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Last Friday, we wrote about Urban Meyer questioning Ron Zook’s reign at Florida, and how horrified the new Gators coach was to learn that during his predecessor’s tenure, freshman players were treated as “non-people“. Hey, you can’t just go around zinging the Zooker without expecting any kind of heated response.

Well, you’ll eventually get a heated response. At first, Zook was allegedly amused by Meyer’s comments, even joking that he doubted anyone in Gainesville would even remember who he was. But after having a few hours to think about it, Zook soon changed his tune from amusement to annoyance.

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Other than a few folks in downstate Illinois, a washed-up NFL QB, and perhaps a certain native Mattoonian writer, it’s hard to find anyone who would admit to being a big Ron Zook fan. At this point in his career, the book on the Zookster is pretty much written - he’s a great recruiter-slash-snake-oil salesman who, when it comes to actually running a major-college football program, is essentially clueless.

But it’s one thing for the media and fans to bash the guy; it’s quite another for his successor at the University of Florida, Urban Meyer, to do the same. But that’s exactly what Meyer did today. As Zook himself would say, this is “getting better and better.”

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