I’m alread convinced we’re going to beat Florida this year regardless, but imagine the glory that victory could carry if Tebow does enjoy a senior slump. This would likely entail at least 2 more SEC losses somewhere along the way, and guess who could be there to take advantage of it? Your 2009 Georgia Bulldogs. Granted, that’s a heck of a slump to hope for.

Last night, when I called in to EDSBS Live, Peter Bean asked me that very question (“How much do you hate Tim Tebow?”) and I couldn’t bring myself to swing at that pitch. I put him in the same category with Peyton Manning and Danny Wuerffel: I didn’t like what he did to my team on Saturday afternoons in the autumn, but I couldn’t bring myself to dislike him as a human being, however much the media adulation of him may make me want to puke.

In fact, after Clay Travis’s “Are you saving yourself for marriage?” question at SEC media days, I briefly considered posting that famous picture of Tim with the obviously starstruck well-endowed young lady with a snarky comment along the lines of, “If he’s passing up these sorts of opportunities to save himself for marriage, he’s going to enter into holy wedlock that’s only legal in Vermont.” That thought lurked around in my head for about three seconds before I dismissed it as being in bad taste and a cheap shot at something genuinely admirable.

The guy is the biggest of big men on campus at a time when the Gators are on top of the football world; if he so chose, he could lay more pipe in Gainesville than the Alachua County Water and Sewerage Authority. That he chooses not to do so due to his religious faith and moral beliefs without being preachy or patronizing (he only mentioned it because he was asked a direct question about it) deserves praise, particularly in an era in which far too many professional athletes are far too irresponsible about siring children to whom they are fathers in name only.

Fortunately, before matters got too sappy, Orson Swindle asked me what I thought about Auburn, and we were able to get right back on track with the pure unvarnished hatred.

I had seen some, though not all, of those pieces, and my focus will be strictly on the legal aspects of the new policies; all I could add about the ESPN/SEC contract itself would be to say what you already know: Mike Slive shrewdly used the existence of the Big Ten Network and the mere (and largely idle) threat of an SEC Network to bilk a boatload of money out of the Worldwide Leader, to the greater betterment of mankind.