1 » On a lighter note than the story from Thursday about Super Bowl XLVI being a dream come true for New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes and his mother comes this story about Spikes’s preplanned attire for the occasion. As he did before the 2009 BCS National Championship, Spikes donned his all-pink suit as the team left New England and may very well rock it again on Sunday before the game. “Brought the lucky suit out again!” Spikes tweeted, adding that it is his lucky championship game suit. Below are a handful of pictures Spikes has taken over the weekend while in Indianapolis, IN including two with teammates and fellow former Gators tight end Aaron Hernandez and defensive tackle Gerard Warren.

Click to expand and read three more BITS in this post.

Tags: Aaron Hernandez, Bill Belichick, Brandon Spikes, Cleveland Browns, Draft, Gerard Warren, Jermaine Cunningham, Justin Trattou, New England Patriots, New York Giants, NFL, Super Bowl XLVI

1 » Early Friday morning, Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow sat down with Hannah Storm for another interview, this one mostly about the 2011 season. Though the below video is only a clip of the interview, it will be aired in full on ESPN‘s SportsCenter on Friday. If/when the network makes it available online, OGGOA will update this thread with a video of the complete interview.

Click to expand and read three more BITS in this post.

Tags: Azania Stewart, Brandon Hicks, Buffalo Bills, Cornelius Ingram, David Lerner, Denver Broncos, Lanita Bartley, Maravich Assembly Center, Marcus Gilbert, Ndidi Madu, NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tim Tebow, women's basketball

1 » Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow has been making the rounds in Indianapolis, IN this week and sat down Thursday for a pair of interviews with ESPN and NBC. His interview with Skip Bayless appeared on ESPN2‘s First Take Friday morning and the entire thing can be viewed in the three videos below. He discusses the Super Bowl, some of the highlights of the 2011 season, his religion making him polarizing and whether or not Denver’s brass is giving him the proper support.

Watch the rest of the interview videos after the break!
Continue Reading » TWO BITS: Tim Tebow on ESPN, NBC this week

Tags: Denver Broncos, Tim Tebow

The Florida Gators doubled up on 2013 linebackers Thursday, receiving a commitment from James Hearns (Tallahassee, FL) just over an hour after it was announced that Daniel McMillian (Jacksonville, FL) pledged to join the Gators.

Another player who took part in Florida’s Junior Day last weekend, Hearns is the second Lincoln High School player to commit to the Gators in as many days. His teammate and three-star wide receiver Raphael Andrades (Tallahassee, FL) was a surprise addition to Florida’s 2012 signing class on Wednesday.

At 6’3” and 230 lbs., Hearns was one of two Lincoln players – the other being WR Reggie Davis (Tallahassee, FL) – to visit the Gators last weekend. Both took a number of tours and met with the coaching staff, which told Hearns they were fond of his athleticism but wanted to look over his film early in the week after he missed most of the 2011 season due to a knee injury.

“He always liked Florida. He always liked 3-4 teams like Florida and Alabama,” former UF receiver and Lincoln’s offensive coordinator Jacquez Green told OGGOA. “When I took him down to Junior Day Saturday, he got a chance to really see [Will] Muschamp, and he sat with Coach [D.J.] Durkin at the game and got a chance to talk to him.

“It was the one-on-ones, the attention he got and the fact that Florida is down and [he and Andrades] feel they can help get Florida back up to where it used to be.”

Like McMillian who also committed Thursday, Hearns has an impressive offer list with Alabama, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Miami, Notre Dame, South Carolina and Tennessee as some of the standout schools.

Read the rest of this story and watch a highlight tape of Hearns after the break.
Continue Reading » LB Hearns makes it four 2013 commits for Florida

Tags: Adam Lane, Caleb Brantley, Daniel McMillian, Jacquez Green, James Hearns, Raphael Andrades

Less than 24 hours after hauling in 17 new recruits on 2012 National Signing Day, the Florida Gators have added a third player to their 2013 recruiting class by securing a verbal commitment Thursday afternoon from linebacker Daniel McMillian (Jacksonville, FL), according to InsidetheGators.com‘s Bryan Holt.

McMillian is listed on ESPNU’s recently released “top 100 prospects of 2013” and is considered by the recruiting service to be a four-star player. He was originally planning on announcing his commitment during the 2013 U.S. Army All-American Game but wanted to make his plans official now instead.

Florida did not host 2012 recruits on the final weekend before the dark period but instead brought a number of extremely talented juniors to campus.

McMillian was one of those juniors and has reportedly decided to make his call for the Gators despite carrying a number of other impressive offers from schools like Alabama, Arkansas, Clemson, Florida State, Ohio State and South Carolina.

Read the rest of this story and watch a highlight tape of Hearns after the break.
Continue Reading » LB McMillian becomes Gators’ third 2013 commit

Tags: Adam Lane, Caleb Brantley, Daniel McMillian

For a young kid growing up in certain areas of Shelby, NC, dreams of playing college football – let alone someday in the NFL – can seem entirely impossible.

Throw in the fact that his brother was sentenced in 2003 to life in prison without parole on first-degree murder charges stemming from a drug deal gone wrong in 2001 and many expected Brandon Spikes to go down with the ship.

“There was a lot of negative people who said, you won’t do this, you won’t do that because he didn’t do this, he didn’t do that,” Spikes told USA Today in 2008 about his neighborhood growing up. “You won’t ever get a scholarship, you won’t go to Florida and play as well as you did. My whole career has been about proving people wrong.”

He started on that path during his time in Gainesville, FL with the Florida Gators. Spikes went from five-star recruit and the No. 13 prospect in the nation to a player who looked like he might be underwhelming after the Gators’ defense struggled mightily in 2007.

Months after the season ended, Spikes sat down with then-Florida head coach Urban Meyer, shed some tears, and told him he had no choice but to succeed going forward.

“I let him know this is my life. Without this, I don’t know where I would be. Football has been everything. It was my way out; it was my way here,” he said. “I just told him this is what I do. I wake up in the morning and I breathe, and this is the first thing on my mind.”

Spikes became the defense’s leader that season, the parallel to quarterback Tim Tebow and what he did for the Gators’ offense.

His hit on running back Knowshaun Moreno at the start the 2008 Florida-Georgia game is one of the most famous tackles in school history, and it fueled a 49-10 victory that helped propel the Gators to another win in the 2008 SEC Championship over Alabama and eventually to the 2009 BCS Championship.

Spikes promised when leaving for college that he would make his mother proud. His second national title in three years undoubtedly put a smile on her face, but his decision to stay a fourth year and graduate rather than leave early for the NFL likely made that smile grow exponentially wider.

Continue Reading » Sunday a dream come true for Spikes and his mom

Tags: BCS, BCS Championship, Brandon Spikes, Draft, New England Patriots, NFL, SEC, SEC Championship, Tim Tebow, Urban Meyer

1 » Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow was a guest on NBC‘s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Wednesday night/Thursday morning and sat down with the host to talk about the Tebowing phenomenon, Fallon’s parody of Tebow and David Bowie – “Tebowie,” and the charitable work he is doing. Tebow was introduced by The Roots playing “On Bended Knee” by Boyz II Men and concluded his segment by shooting a signed jersey into the crowd with at T-shirt gun.

2 » Speaking of television clips of Tebow, ESPN2‘s First Take has continued to make him a topic of conversation long after Denver’s season ended. This week the show featured singer/songwriter John Legend remixing one of his own tunes to create a song called “Extra-Ordinary Tebow.”

Continue Reading » FOUR Video BITS: Tebow, Legend, Diggs, Miller

Tags: Denver Broncos, Miami Heat, Mike Miller, National Signing Day, Stefon Diggs, Tim Tebow, Udonis Haslem

Florida Gators head coach Will Muschamp held a press conference after his coaching staff received 23 National Letters of Intent on National Signing Day.

Opening statement:

“I’m real pleased with how recruiting went. Any time you get to this day, it’s a combination of a lot of hard work and effort by our staff. I think our staff did an outstanding job. You got to improve your program where you know you need to improve your program. Of the 23 players that joined our program today, 14 are line of scrimmage players – mid-skill and big-skill guys. We saw very easily in our season this year we struggled on both lines of scrimmage consistently being able to run the ball and stop the run. I certainly feel like we’ve addressed our most pressing need on both lines of scrimmage. We’ll develop playmakers and depth on both lines of scrimmage.

“I’m really excited about the guys we’ve got in that group and also eight skill guys, which includes a quarterback. We’d like to sign a quarterback every year. I think that’s important. A kicker, Austin Hardin, a guy that came in and did an outstanding job for us. We’re real pleased about him.

“We’ll know about this class in two or three years. I’ll tell you the same thing I did last year: Football is a developmental game, and you got to develop he players. I’m really excited about Jeff Dillman and Jesse Ackerman and our strength staff, our coaching staff – the job that they do in getting our players in here and doing a nice job with them. We’ll know a lot more about this class in two or three years. At the end of the day, this is a developmental game. We’ll be able to address that. It’s not about winning in February. It’s about winning in the fall and developing your football team and addressing your needs, and I think we’ve done that.”

» On Florida recruiting so well in the state of North Carolina: “D.J. Durkin, first of all, is our area recruiter for that area. He does a really nice job of recruiting, period. It was a full team effort. [...] We honed in on the guys we want and the guys we feel like can come and make a difference in our program, and we go after those guys.”

» On three/four-star defensive end Alex McCalister: “Alex McCalister is a guy that came to our camp, he broad jumped over 10 feet, close to a 40” vertical leap. A guy that is 6’6” and 220 lbs., his best football is ahead of him. That’s a very, very explosive athlete and a guy that hasn’t played a whole lot of football.”

» On flipping five-star DE Dante Fowler: “You recruit through this process and sometimes when you get there on signing day, you’re leaving it up to the young man and his family to make a decision. I think Dante had a good fit here at Florida as far as his position was concerned, his opportunity was concerned. We’re excited to add another good pass rusher to our program.”

Continue Reading » Will Muschamp on Florida’s 2012 recruiting class

Tags: Alex McCalister, Austin Hardin, Brent Pease, Brian Poole, Brian White, Bryan Cox, Bryant Young, Colin Thompson, D.J. Durkin, D.J. Humphries, Dan Quinn, Dante Fowler, Jafar Mann, Jeff Dillman, Jeremi Powell, Jessamen Dunker, Jesse Ackerman, Jonathan Bullard, Kent Taylor, Latroy Pittman, Marcus Maye, Matt Jones, National Signing Day, Quinteze Williams, Raphael Andrades, Skyler Mornhinweg, Will Muschamp