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Upon further review: Was Dom Franks right about Tim Tebow?
Published: 8/30/2012 3:46 PM
Last Modified: 8/30/2012 3:50 PM

Does Tim Tebow owe Dom Franks an apology?

Before Oklahoma played Florida in the 2009 BCS title game, a reporter asked the former OU defensive back where Tebow might rank among Big 12 quarterbacks.

Franks, who apparently didn’t get the memo about giving opponents bulletin-board material, decided to offer (imagine that) a candid and much-publicized opinion.

Said Franks, “I’d say he’d probably be about the fourth-best quarterback in our conference.”

Consider that Franks said it after the 2008 regular seeason season and he listed Sam Bradford, Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell and Texas’ Colt McCoy as Big 12 quarterbacks who are harder to prepare for than Tebow.

Maybe the only thing Franks got wrong was which Big 12 quarterbacks have proven to be more adorable to NFL teams than Tebow.

Six quarterbacks (Bradford, Ryan Tannehill, Blaine Gabbert, Brandon Weeden, Josh Freeman and Robert Griffin III) who were on Big 12 rosters in 2008 are expected to start for NFL teams in 2012. Four of those players didn’t start at quarterback for Big 12 teams in 2008, which ought to tell you something about how blessed the league was at the QB position that season.

In the wake of Franks’ comments, folks acted like he owed Tebow an apology. Is the opposite true? Of course not, even though Tebow isn’t a starting NFL quarterback like all those Big 12 fellows.

Tebow was a great college player. He was not, however, the greatest college player of all time, as many liked to suggest. The greatest college player of all time would be starting -- and kicking butt and taking names -- for any NFL team. But Tebow love got so out of control that no one was permitted to offer a dissenting opinion on him without things getting venomous.

So, several years later, it should be fair to ask this question: What if Franks was right?


Reader Comments 1 Total
FYI (6 months ago)
Everyone in Big 12-land knew the same.

We don't have any blind adoration of tbone around here.
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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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