Someone bring in the clowns and the elephants because the swamp turned into a grey, rainy, cold circus today at Tim Tebow's pro day. 

By most accounts (except those of the haters), Tebow did some things that can only help improve his stock.  According to scout.com writers and various sources on scene in Gainesville, Tebow's footwork and long slow looping motion have been corrected.

Tebow's passes were clean and he hit recievers on various routes that even has a few scouts shaking their head in approval, according to Bob Redmond of FoxSports.com.

This article may not be about tailgating, but it's a rant that we at GatorTailgating.com felt was too good not to be shared with the members of our site. 

Lately it seems like every time I turn on the TV or go online there’s some new commercial or marketing statement trying to sucker men into doing something simply by adding the word “man” onto the name of the activity or product. It’s never been cool but it’s really starting to get ridiculous. Frankly, I find many of these to be just plain insulting to men everywhere.

Man cave – There was a time when a man’s home was his castle. Now apparently he gets just one room. Even then it’s like he won the lottery and he’s “so lucky his wife lets him have his own room”. If the rest of your place looks like it belongs on the Oxygen Channel I don’t care how nice your “cave” is, to me that’s just the room where you keep your family jewels. I’m not saying your whole house should look like a bachelor pad either but your house should look like it’s your house and you should know at least some of the people in the photos on the fridge. Just keep your underwear out of the living room please, and no empty pizza boxes.

I’m not disappointed, just a little confused.

The men’s basketball team, finishing with a 21-12 overall record, with an SEC record identical to both Mississippi bball teams (neither of which are dancing), and with one SEC tournament win before being bounced…By Mississippi State, who then went on to take the monsters from Kentucky into overtime before losing by one little point and are now taking their 23-11 season to the NIT. Two more wins than the Gators, one less loss, and Miss St isn’t playing for the championship. The team that beat us, beat Vandy, then almost beat a Wildcat team coming off a complete demolition of 2010 SEC upstart Tennessee (beating them by almost 30) is out, we’re in.

Huh?

As far as being in the recruiting mix, the Florida Gators are always right there.  This is even more apparent with the intense recruiting of Arkansas stud QB Keihl Frazier, a 6'3'', 215 pound 4A All State prospect.

Unfortunately for the Gators, there are about 30 other schools in the mix as well. 

Frazier, who threw for nearly 4,000 yards and 48 touchdowns last season, is receiving offers from top schools such as Notre Dame, Nebrasksa, Miami, and LSU among others, according to Gatorcountry.com.

Put away the home whites! Dan Werner's last home game really was on Senior Night! No more NIT! The Gators are in! Thank you God! Thank You! That's the only explanation I can come up with. The Gators are going to the Big Dance!

Mississippi State was flat out robbed. In what has to be one of the worst snubs in NCAA history, Mississippi State is off to the NIT. That is a joke. Did the committee watch any of the SEC Tournament? They must've. They gave Kentucky a #1 seed. Can you not find a spot for the team that had them beat?

When Tim called me in 2006, I had no idea how prophetic his words would be.

"Go to YouTube and put in the name Tim Tebow," he told me. "This is the guy the Gators just signed. You're going to hear a lot about his guy."

Following him for some holes, thoughts went through my mind as to how I might attract his glance.

Playing with K.J. Choi only increased the size of the gallery even though it was only a practice round.

But surely he'd know. We shared something in common. Would he notice? Or was I just looking for a way to get some attention.

These and more raced through my head on that day in 2005.

Nolan Fontana, what took you so long to get here?

Last year, he was the guy who got to live the baseball dream, facing a 3-2 pitch in the last inning, two outs in the 6A-District 4 title game. What he proceeded to do was tattoo a walk off homer in his last at bat for West Orange High School, something Coach O’Sullivan hoped to bring to the Gators this season when he was so aggressively pursuing him last year. His senior season in high school, Fontana brought a .521 batting average in the lead off spot, has one career error in 25 games, and is widely known for a Tebowesque work ethic.

Well, it's that most wonderful and favorite time of the year, when media types gather around to trash high profile SEC players headed to the combine. Every year it's the same thing: guys who supposedly lack the work ethic, character or intelligence to make the NFL. The reason why this happens: there are few large media markets in the SEC, and few of the national writers live in the SEC region or went to SEC universities. Instead, the big media markets and the institutions that produced most of the media writers represent places and schools like USC, UCLA, Stanford, Northwestern, Michigan, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Miami, North Carolina etc. So, far better to take a hard working high ethics kids from a Pac-10, Big 10 or ACC elite academics institution than from an SEC aggie school from flyover country. Basically, the same nonsense that worked against LSU and Auburn in the media-driven BCS controversies in 2003 and 2004 (costing the SEC a national title and a half) works against SEC players in the draft. And every year, we get to hear how stupid/lazy/criminally inclined/disappointing various SEC players are.

After reading a write-up by a journalist calling Coach Meyer out for the number of arrests the Gator Football Team has had under Urban Meyer, I had to write this story. The journalist was trying to make the case that if Meyer had been more strict the first time around with a lot of players (i.e. Wilson, rickerson, and Hornsby), the latter charges that occurred wouldn't have happened. He also made the case that if the team had seen the needed discipline in regards to those players instead of letting them work their way back on the team; the team wouldn't have as many arrests either.

The media and sports bloggers are trying to paint this arrest record over the past three years as if Meyer doesn't care about his players or the trouble they get into as long as they keep winning. They couldn't be farther from the truth.

The NFL Combine is finally over and Todd McShay has retreated to his cave, where he will put homeless men through cone drills and deflate Taylor Mays' draft stock.

The Florida Gators had ten participants at the Combine this year: Tim Tebow, Riley Cooper, Maurkice Pouncey, Brandon James, Aaron Hernandez, Carlos Dunlap, Jermaine Cunningham, Joe Haden, Brandon Spikes, and Major Wright.

So, we’ve learned that we don’t like Steinbrenner or his field.

The historic Florida baseball classic of the future, the Florida Four, old Yankee George’s new tournament to get the top collegiate baseball teams together in his house, took place in Tampa on Tuesday.

The Gators, hot during their third consecutive 5-0 start under O’Sullivan, went as cold as the frigid Florida wind against FSU, giving up as many runs in the first inning (7) as they’ve scored in all their first innings combined this season (again…7). There was no rally, no comeback, no last second almost (though that last gasp win strategy hasn’t worked out too well lately for the men’s basketball team anyway) and the Gators come back north today with a 10-5 loss (to the #3 team) and a win-loss that doesn’t look so unbalanced, unfortunately.

First let me state that the Florida Gators, in
my opinion, have already done enough to make the NCAA Tournament field
this year. 20 wins, including victories over Florida State, Michigan
State, NC State, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Ole Miss, and
Tennessee should be enough.

However, not knowing ahead of time what upsets there may be in the
conference tournaments that may knock a Kentucky or a Duke from the
automatic to the at-large status, Florida needs to win one more game
this week to go into the SEC Tournament without a worry.

When Sports
Illustrated ran the cover which accompanies this piece in
September of 1982, we knew things had changed.

The Florida Gators had gone big time. And we were right there.

Quarterback Wayne Peace was my Phil Simms, before Simms was Simms.

I can remember singing the praises of the then much-maligned New York
Giants' quarterback during the 1986 season. Giant fans never thought
that Simms could deliver in a big spot. I always liked him.

What's the greatest game ever played at Florida
Field, also known as the Swamp?

My high school football coach at Fletcher Senior High School in
Jacksonville Beach, Florida told me something I hadn't known.

Running track for him in high school was a kid named Robert McGinty.
He'd go on to become Auburn's placekicker in the mid-1980's. After the
1985 season, he transferred to Florida after missing a last second
attempt against Alabama.

You
know, for a quarterback slotted to be taken well outside of the first round of
the NFL draft, Tim’s getting an awful lot of press again.

With
injury no-shows Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford, the Combine is turning in to
another Senior Bowl, with a Tebow media frenzy hoping for…What are you people
hoping for?

Early this week, Tebow announced that he would
not be throwing at the NFL Combine.  The announcement is not much of a
shock considering the short amount of time that has elapsed since he
overhauled his throwing motion.

Instead, Tebow will run, lift, and jump at the Combine and throw
later next month at Florida's pro day.

Unfortunately for Tebow, running, jumping, and lifting won't exactly
wow scouts.

It is over! The two straight years of NIT Bids?
Done. Florida is going dancing. I know, I know, there are still three
games left. And then there is a little matter of the SEC Tournament. No
matter. The Gators are in. Like Mick Hubert no doubtedly said many times
after Erving Walker launched a three point shot, "Book it!"

You’ve got to love when you start a season like this.

Gator baseball completed the weekend sweep of USF, taking
the third game even after going to the ninth down 6-3. After a few odd plays on the part of USF to
give up two runs (they were hitting and walking batters for a good part of the
inning), an infield dribbler by sophomore Preston Tucker turned in to a game
tying error with two outs left in the game.

If you watched them last year, you know full
well the down field impotence displayed by the Florida Gator offense in
2009. This, coupled with its red-zone woes, had me and just about every
other Gator fan I know, pulling our hair out to no end.

Maybe some of that had to do with an over-reliance on quarterback Tim
Tebow, but maybe it had more to do with a lack of a really reliable
down field threat.