Through My Eyes (27 page)

In the end, it was a mild distraction. We pushed it aside, because we had work to do, and I just kept my head down and got back to it.

Though I worked hard
that summer, training for fall, there were moments to relax. For a few days that summer, we went on a family vacation, and while we were away, I got a call out of the blue from none other than Phil Mickelson, the pro golfer. He’d gotten my number and invited me to play golf at Sawgrass, home of The Players Championship. Under NCAA rules I couldn’t play there, but I was allowed to play at Timuquana Country Club, where my dad is a clergy member.

I cut my stay at the beach vacation short to be able to meet him at Timuquana the day before he played in the TPC. I was excited to start off the first three holes playing out of my mind, simply because playing with him was helping me to play better. I usually shoot around ninety, but I just don’t play very often, so my short game isn’t very good. After those first three holes Phil and I were tied at one under. Maybe this was a career path for me I hadn’t even thought about. Certainly the physical abuse on the body is a whole lot less. Eventually, reality set in, and I started to fall apart a little bit, but I still had a good round. Playing from the tips (the longest yardage) with Phil, I shot an 82, which was the best round of my life.

We had a great time talking about life, faith, and things of importance. He was going through some tough times, and I just tried to encourage him. How about that? You never know what God may use you for—no matter your age, place, or position in life.

Interestingly enough, he told me that whenever he comes to a club, he makes it a point to play well, but not too well. You don’t want the members to suddenly think that their scores aren’t that good. At the same time, you don’t want to play badly because then they’ll think the course is too hard.

So after a couple of holes, he said, “I’m just going to shoot a 67 and that’ll be perfect.”

Probably on the fifth or sixth hole, he said, “Man, you can really hit it a long way with your driver.” Then he offered me his, telling me that it would be much better than mine. (We’re both left-handed.) He was right—the ball went at least thirty yards farther. It was an insane drive.

On the fifteenth hole, a par 5, he handed his driver to me again and said, “Let it rip, man.” He told me to tee it up just a little higher and I might get more carry, plus a better roll. So I did. I teed it up higher and hit it as hard as I could. Absolutely crushed it. Except that I got under it a bit too much, and the ball literally went straight up in the air. It may have landed five yards down the course still on the tee box, after going eighty yards straight up.

Even worse than the embarrassment of that shot, it made a crazy sound right when I hit it. I had hit so far under the ball that it had scuffed the top of his driver. I felt terrible and apologized, but he said not to worry about it—he’d told me to do it. Thankfully, I was sure that he had ten of those drivers. Right?

“No,
this
is my driver. It’s my baby. I love this club.” He looked stricken as he said it but was trying very hard to be nonchalant and gracious, but I still felt terrible. He ended up using his favorite driver all week and played well but didn’t win the tournament. Hopefully he doesn’t blame me.

We kept playing, and then after a while we were both bragging about our strong throwing arms. Finally, on the last hole, with a crowd gathering at the clubhouse, we challenged each other to a throwing contest. He had somebody bring us a football, and the challenge was that I would throw it from my knees farther than he would throw the ball standing up.

He’s got a good arm and probably threw it fifty or fifty-five yards. So I got on my knee, didn’t say anything, and just let it fly. It went at least five yards past his.

He wanted a do-over, and I beat him again.

By the way, he shot a 67. Amazing.

Every year at the end
of July we’d have a Strong Man competition at Florida for fans. After that we would get a few days off and then start training camp to get ready for the beginning of the season. During that Strong Man competition I was flipping tires end over end down the field with Brandon Spikes, my partner. I hadn’t warmed up that great, and I’m not sure what happened—if it slipped from Spikes’s grip or whatever—but I tried to pull up with all my might to lift it, and I felt instantly that my lower back gave out. I can be an idiot sometimes because I’m so competitive, and since the competition was still going on, I didn’t stop. I kept going through the pain.

Fortunately, I had only strained my lower back, but I ended up having to rest at the beginning of training camp that August. When I finally was able to start practicing, I wasn’t allowed to engage in any contact. I was getting better each day until I was carrying out a fake and didn’t even have the ball, and not thinking, Carlos Dunlap pushed me from the side and I aggravated my back again and had to sit out even more practices. That loss of practice time due to my back strain bothered me a bit, as did a slight nagging strain during the first half of the season, but it finally cleared up over time.

As a team, we had a good training camp and were well prepared for the season. We knew we still had to find an identity because we’d lost Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy. Of the offensive players that we lost in the off-season, Louis was one of the toughest to replace because he had become my go-to receiver, especially on third downs. Of course, the loss of Percy hurt, too, but in a different way—he was such a playmaker and his explosiveness would always make something special happen on the field.

So we had to find receivers who could take their places. One of those was Riley Cooper, my roommate for two years, who made it clear from the start of camp that he was stepping up his game. Another was Aaron Hernandez, who did a good job catching the ball for us, since his speed at tight end made him a real match-up problem for defenses to cover with a linebacker. But as good as Riley and Aaron were, we didn’t have the same deep threats we’d had the year before, which was going to make things more of a struggle offensively.

Similarly, we had two fast running backs with Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps, who would be outside guys with their fantastic speed, but we struggled to find an inside presence who could run the ball up the middle and help us out on short-yardage plays.

One thing we knew was that we had a great defense that we would need to rely on since we lacked the deep threats we had the year before. We knew we could still have a great team—we had a ton of talent—but we would just have to find new ways to get the job done.

From the score of our first game you wouldn’t have noticed that anything was different. We opened the year with Charleston Southern and beat them 62–3. But we didn’t play great, and we all knew it. In the end we were fine, and that was more than enough to win the game.

Then, for the second time in three years, we played Troy. I don’t think that this version of their team was as explosive on offense as their 2007 version, but the rain would have slowed them down anyway. It poured in Gainesville that day, but it didn’t make much difference on the field. We were a little sloppy but played a bit better than we had the week before and won, 56–6.

Things seemed to be headed in the right direction, but it was hard to tell. Neither of our first two opponents was as good as the teams that were to follow. You never want to look past teams like that, but I understood when guys did. In fact, maybe the rain helped us focus a bit. For me, it reminded me of games on the farm in the rain; as my dad says, “There’s nothing more fun than football in the mud.”

Where the weather made a big difference was off of the field. My sister Katie was down from her home in Atlanta for the game. Katie had obviously recovered from her double hernia surgery in the Philippines nicely and was toting my niece, Abby, everywhere, despite being pregnant. The family headed into their regular seats in the stands, but Katie and Abby, a toddler at the time, were headed up to Bill Heavener’s box above the west stands in the stadium to stay out of the elements.

At one point, someone on the university staff overheard Katie mention that I was her brother, and because people at Florida have gotten very sensitive to NCAA regulations since the early 1980s, they incorrectly informed Katie that she couldn’t stay in the box. Because Uncle Bill had been a college roommate of my father, Katie’s presence in the box did not constitute an impermissible benefit to the family, but those words fell on deaf ears. Compounding matters, even beyond the rain, was the fact that Katie realized she no longer had her ticket to her seat in the stands. She couldn’t reach any of the family on their cell phones in the packed stands in the pouring rain, so Uncle Bill escorted her down into the stadium and to the seats. That game wasn’t as memorable to me, but I know Katie will never forget it.

Lane Kiffin seemed
to have a lot to say when he brought the Tennessee Volunteers to play us the following week. In person he’s actually very nice, but in the weeks and months leading up to the game, he had way too many things to say to the press about Coach Meyer and the rest of us. At his first press conference right after he was hired, he said he’d stay up all night long singing “Rocky Top” after they beat us in Gainesville that fall. Then, over the summer, he had told Tennessee boosters that Coach Meyer had committed a recruiting violation, so the SEC office got involved; he ended up apologizing to everyone for his statements.

All that talk added up to an emotional game. It was also a frustrating game. Eric Berry got me again early on in the game with an interception on a poorly thrown ball, but aside from that, we did move the ball a bit. We were up 13–6 at the half and then had a chance to separate ourselves in the second half. We were up 23–6, and then I had a really good run down the right sideline, broke a few tackles, and was down around the two yard line where I spun and was stripped of the ball. Fumble. Recovered by Tennessee.

That run would have put the game away, but instead, they drove down and scored, making it 23–13. Later, when they got the ball back, something curious happened. Down by ten in the fourth quarter in a conference game against a bitter rival, Tennessee kept giving the ball to Montario Hardesty, their running back, who was having a big day. There was no sense of urgency, however. They were huddling up and taking their time. I appreciate that our defense intercepted their quarterback, Jonathan Crompton, three times on the day, but it still was curious that they weren’t trying to win the game; rather, it appeared that they merely wanted to keep it close.

Whether it was that lack of urgency or our stellar defense, we ended up winning, 23–13. I think they were happier with the score than we were—Coach Meyer even had to try and encourage us in the locker room after the game.

It was turning into a strange season, with the pressure to achieve something special and the expectations we had placed upon ourselves. At this point in 2009, we were 3–0 and had won thirteen straight games over the course of the last two seasons, the longest streak in the country . . . but we were miserable. Simply winning didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy us.

I didn’t see it at the time, but looking back, I think we maybe should have embraced the 2008 National Championship longer than we did. We immediately applied pressure to ourselves in the off-season, which some guys didn’t respond well to. Even those who did find themselves burned out and stressed out early in the season. Certainly we should have worked hard and diligently, but I think we may have overdone it. Despite wins, it simply wasn’t a very good situation.

With Kentucky up next, we tried to get past our issues and return to the drive that had fueled us for all of the previous year. Unfortunately, my health turned out to be the story of the next week. Actually make that the next three weeks.

It started on Thursday when I came down with the H1N1 virus, which at the time everyone was calling “swine flu.” It came on fast and was awful. I threw up all night and got IVs all day Friday along with several others on our team who’d also gotten it. The doctors kept us away from the rest of the team because the virus was so contagious. That fall, a couple of college and pro teams had it sweep through their entire roster in days. Because we still had symptoms on Friday, the doctors had those of us who had been sick fly separately on Saturday to join the team before the game.

By game time I felt much better, and the game itself started off well enough. As in most of our games against Kentucky over that last two decades, we dominated them. I was having a big day running, even though I had to have fluids administered intravenously throughout the game because of the flu. They used a big—huge really—diameter needle and squeezed the IV bags to force the fluids into our veins that much quicker, so we were able to get back on the field quickly.

I had rushed sixteen times for 123 yards into the third quarter, and we were driving again. We called Trick Left 351 P-Stick Lion, and as we were breaking from the huddle, I remember thinking that we actually should have scored on the play before. I went into my count and caught the snap. I looked for my receiver who was on a slant across the middle.
This
play would be a touchdown.

Darkness.

My parents looked serious, with a low metal ceiling above them.

Darkness.

“It’s okay, Timmy,” Kyle, our assistant trainer, said. “Just roll over.” I couldn’t figure out why I was rolling over or what the white metal was around me.

“They’re just gonna slide you in there for a CAT scan.” I rolled, stayed quiet, and waited for an explanation of why I was there.

As I was waiting
for the slant to come open, a Kentucky defender had flown into me, hitting me below the chin. They told me much later that the blow to the chin wasn’t what caused my concussion, but rather the back of my head hitting my offensive lineman, Marcus Gilbert, in the knee as I fell backward from the hit. Rather than being apologetic, Marcus pointed out that he was the one who should be hurt and that no one was asking if I’d damaged his knee with my head. (I hadn’t.)