The Ringer NFL Show - 2. Florida | The Cam Chronicles

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Cam heads to Gainesville, Florida, to take on his biggest challenge yet: backing up Tim Tebow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're listening to this episode and don't want to wait till next week to hear where the story goes, head over to Spotify. All episodes of the Cam Chronicles are available for you to binge for free right now in the Rigger NFL show feed. Receit in the bag, all right with you? Cool. And you're all set. Thanks for shopping with us. Chandler Small is the manager of a memorabilia store in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida. He's a fifth-generation gator.

His grandparents are gators. parents met at UF. And so, of course, he went to UF and now works in a store that sells UF merchandise. Like any Gator, Chandler's well-versed in the many popular UF traditions. There's a classic one. You'll know the Gator Chomp is everything, and for anybody who has any questions, it is right over left. You can't do it left over right, it's always going to be right over left, just extended at that angle and chomp away. The first thing you notice when you arrive in Gainesville is the smell of rotting vegetation. The town in the university are built atop a literal swamp. And life here revolves around a Gator football team.

When the football team's doing well, the entire town just kind of explodes positively. You'll notice that people's moods here are completely dependent on how the sports are going. So if your high school or your college is doing well in sports, then you're likely to see the roads by your house. fixed, just plain and simple. Everyone's just a little bit more polite. They let people merge into lanes. It's really the entire energy of Gainesville is based on sports. When a five-star recruit from Atlanta, Georgia named Cam Newton arrived on campus, Chandler was just a boy. At the time, Tim Tebow reigned supreme as Florida starting quarterback. Chandler's parents still talk about Tebow like he's royalty. And they'll always say that the Tim Tebow years are probably the best

they've experienced because it just felt like everyone had something to bring them together. I don't know, I just, I can't even imagine UF keeping Cam over Tim Tebow. This is the Cam Chronicles. I'm Tyler R. Times. Gainesville was Cam Newton's Wonderland. In 2007, he enrolled as a freshman at Florida, where 80,000 people flocked to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on fall Saturdays. As far as Cecil Newton was concerned, Cam had made it. We loved it, Florida.

That was our genuine first love. It was the Hollywood of the South. So when Ken was a freshman and sophomore, it's probably 12 NFL guys on their roster. It's a great place to be. Cecil wasn't kidding. The Gators had just won a national championship and were returning several key contributors,

including Tebow, Gainesville's most famous son of this century. Quarterback is, we get it. It's the most fundamentally unique position in team sports. different story at the University of Florida. That's Richard Johnson. He's a writer who used to cover college football for Banda Society.

He grew up in Gainesville, attended UF, and covered the football team for the student newspaper. One thing he learned early in his Florida fandom is how beloved Gator quarterbacks are. The University of Florida football culture is built on the premise of attractive offense and incredible quarterback play. There are three statues that sit outside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. There have been three Heisman Trophies won by University of Florida football players. All three of them were White Knight quarterbacks. Steve Spurrier in the mid-60s, Dating Warful in 1996, Tim Tebow in 2007. All three of them led the University of Florida to just insanely high heights.

The first quarterback Richard mentions to Steve Spurrier. He's a magical character in college football history. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Spurrier was a Florida boy by way of Tennessee. He broke every UF passing and total offense record and won a Heisman Trophy in 1966. There isn't University of Florida football history until Steve Spurrier comes in the mid-60s. Spurrier later returned to Gainesville as the head ball coach in 1990 and led the program to the most successful period in this history. Coach Spurrier's best teams were led by Danny Werfel, Florida's second Heisman Trophy winning quarterback. Like Spurrier, he was the son of a minister, another Florida boy, too.

And just like Spurrier, Worfell set new Gator records and won a Hizman trophy in 1996. Finally, we have Tim Tebow, Florida's third and final Hizman winning quarterback. Yet another Florida boy, this time the son of Baptist missionaries. He was outspoken about his Christian faith. Tebowin became a term used to describe how he would genuflecting prayer on the field. All this is to say,

to be a successful Gators' quarterback was to be a specific team. type of idol in this community. Definitely warful and definitely Tebow have this white knight, good Christian boy attitude about them. When Cam first arrived at Florida in 2007, Tebow was already anointed as the next savior of Florida football. And he lived up to the billing. People surpassed it. If you want to understand how Florida fans felt about Tebow, listen to this interaction Chandler had

with a customer. A lady came into me and she said, Somebody was dissing Tim Tebow and I just, I cannot have it because if Steve Spurrier is God to Florida, then Tim Tebow is Jesus. Tebow was the first real blue chip recruit for New Florida coach Urban Meyer. Meyer quickly turned the gaiters into a superpower. There were 30 future NFL players from the 2008 roster alone. But if winning was a characteristic of Myers' teams, so too were the legal troubles as players often face. Over 20 players were arrested in Miami.

or six years of Florida. You've got people who are drug problems. You've got people who are stealing. You know, you find a lot of that stuff gets swept under the rug with celebrity, with popularity, especially on like a college level where they're still pretty young. But Tebow, Tebow was UF saving grace.

Tebow's goodness, for lack of a better term, was kind of the thing that a lot of us, myself included, hid behind, as that program was kind of like the Wild West. Tim Tebow was the sun, moon, and stars, and no one else got close. So, yeah, it was going to be hard for Cam to unseat Tebow, but he was willing to buy this time. Cecil was looking forward to seeing Cam and some Wildcat formations, where he could shine as a rusher. Cecil says that's what Florida had promised.

That was our attractiveness to our recruiting package. What Cecil hadn't anticipated is that Cam had to compete to even beat Tebow's backup. against another highly talented freshman, John Brantley. John Brantley was not some scrub coming in. John Bratley was a Gatorade player the year as a high school football player. This dude could spin it. Brantley was another Florida quarterback that would appeal to Gator fans, a traditional, white, dropback pocket presents, the son of a former Gator quarterback and the nephew of a former Gator linebacker.

Throughout preseason, every practice was a tryout between Cam and Brantley for who would back up Tebow. up Tebow. One reporter who watched the practices said Cam ran too many drills like a lethargic blue whale. Another said Newton wasn't good at throwing at all. Brantley appeared to be the more polished passive, his skill set ready made for Myers' offense. But first impressions ain't everything. Never trust practice to evaluate quarterbacks. I know it's the only thing coaches can do, but it can't be the only factor because there's a long list of quarterbacks who are awful in practice and turned out to be fiends on the field. And that turned out to be the case with Cam, right? That's Spencer Hall, a writer who covered college football for years at SB Nation and

Banner Society. Tennessee comes to the swamp and is getting crushed by the gators early in the season, which means Cam gets his first chance to shine on national television. So here's Cam, getting onto the field to replace Tebow and mop-up duty. Freshman quarterback, a big one, 6'5, 243, And he takes a run off the left side. He lowers his head and absolutely annihilates a defender at the goal line. Jukes the shit out of this Tennessee defender. Just blows him up. Here's the keeper left side, Newton.

Oh, he knows how to become a crowd favorite, doesn't he? It's Tim Tebow! I think the camera cuts to Tim Tebow sitting on the sideline. He's got a headset on because he's out, and like everybody's going crazy. Look at Tebow! Oh my! Look at everybody! He knows how to get the crowd.

He watched it on TV last year. You just run over guys at Floyd quarterback here. He doesn't only run over a guy. He gets into the end zone. After Cam scores, he joyously jumps into Tebow's arms and bounces around the sideline, like a happy child. This is exactly what many Florida fans wanted to see. Cam and Tebow.

Tebow and Cam. They had their starting quarterback and their five-star talent waiting in the wings. and Florida sidelines where Cam will happily stay, right, Spencer? My first impression was he's going to transfer. There was no way a talent like that was going to sit behind anyone, even Tim Tebow. So the first time I saw him, I thought, man, that's spectacular. There's no way he's going to stay. And Cecil definitely wasn't going to sit by and let his son ride the bench behind Tim Tebow forever.

sophomore year rose around and I was more emphatic on what our expectation was going to be because I didn't want to eat up and waste my college eligibility. By the fall of 2008, Cam is still backing up Tebow. In the home opener against Hawaii, Cam resumes his familiar role replacing Tebow in a blowout. Looks like a normal day at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium until Cam plants his foot in dirt. He makes wrong pivot. Then he gets hurt and you don't really hear anything about him. With Cam's sideline for the season,

Brantley takes over as Tebow's backup. The Gators finished 13 and 1 and cap off one of their most successful seasons in history with the national championship. Tebow soars again. Hollywood of the SEC has the bright lights burning, rolling on without a sound from Cam Newton. Shortly after winning the national championship, Tebow announces that he's returning for his senior season.

Much to the delight of the gated faithful, their white knight was coming home. Cam Newton was just a backup quarterback to Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow was everything. At the University of Florida, Cam Newton was going to always be in the shadow of Tim Tebow on a team that had talent, left, right, center all over that roster. After two years at Florida, it was abundantly clear that this shadow wasn't something Cam could beat, that he could run past or through. It wasn't something that would be dazzled away by a smile. Florida already had their savior in Tebow.

Hell, they might have had their next savior in Bradley. It was clear Florida thought they ain't need Cam, so Cam and Cecil had to decide how much they needed Florida. And this is where we're going to have to bring up the laptop. Ah, yeah. the infamous laptop incident. The laptop was stolen in October of that year, and by November, the student whose laptop it was reports it's stolen.

Cam logs in to his University of Florida account on that laptop. That's how the university is able to trace it, and the university police department comes to his apartment. The police show up to Cam's door, and they say, Cam, we heard the laptop is stolen, yada, yada, yada. So the police say, fine, we're going to go outside because we need to match the serial number of the laptop to make sure we are here for the right piece of equipment.

The police come back and the laptop is missing. According to University Police, they found a laptop in a garbage can outside of Cam's dorm. It had been painted black and had Cam Newton written in white out on the front. He apparently threw the laptop outside of his dorm window after police came to question him. Now, it's not uncommon.

for college kids to do dumb things. You know what is uncommon though? The quarterback of a major college football team taking an item that's not his, being confronted by university police to return said item, and then chucking that same item, which he's painted his name on, out of the window of a dormitory. So, y'all know what happens next, right? Cam gets arrested.

Caesar couldn't believe it. He tried calling Cam to understand what went down. To this day, Cecil thinks the situation was blown out of proportion. It was, to me, an egregious rush to judgment. Even to this day, it's an egregious rush to judgment over a stolen laptop. Does that make sense, Tyler? You feel me? So the contention is, how did he come into possession of it?

It was a rushed to judgment that he stole it. When it dawned on him that it was going to create a legal criminal problem, what would a person do? Adults, to this day, 30, 40, 50 years old try to hire a discard or obstruct investigations willingly or unwillingly, intentionally or unintentionally. Cecil says he would have handled the situation himself of giving a chance.

We're talking about a laptop. I would have paid for a laptop. Mr. Newman, Ken was in possession of somebody's laptop. We've taken it from him. He needs to get a laptop. laptop by Thursday. The issue goes away. But it didn't go away. Cam's mugshot was all over the news. And it wasn't just a laptop incident alone. Turns out, Cam was involved in some other mishaps while at Florida.

As a freshman, Cam gets popped for cheating. As a sophomore, Cam gets popped for cheating twice. According to a Fox Sports report citing anonymous sources, Cam was faced an expulsion over multiple accounts of academic misconduct. As the story goes, Cam took a paper that someone else wrote, wrote his name on it, and turned it in. The professor went to the original paper writer and said, you know, I didn't get a paper from you. And the person then says, I turned it in. They end up finding out that this paper was his and that Cam wrote his name on him. Cam gets a second chance.

And Cam turns in a paper that they then find out was bought online. It was the final straw. First he was arrested. Now he's facing expulsion. Something had to change. And Cam knew it. He didn't even enroll in classes for the second semester. As for Cecil, he was angry.

Angry that his son's privacy was violated when his alleged academic misconduct was leaked to the press. And he was angry that there seemed to be no way back for Cam, whose transgressions were hardly the most serious offenses committed by a Florida football. player during Myers-Tangier. Cecil thought Cam was made to be a scapego. The way he saw it, there was only one choice to be made. The decision was already made after the sophomore year.

It was made for him. It was actually, in my honest opinion, by divine order, even though it was painful. It was by divine order. Florida, it wasn't in the deck of cards. I think it was of divine order to get out of games field. Whether it was because of the laptop incident, living in Tim Tebow's shadow, or the alleged academic misconduct, Newton's needed an exit plan. Three days before the gate is in Tebow win the national championship, Cam decides to transfer from his wonderland to a tiny junior college in the middle of Texas. And just like that, Cam was gone.

When he left, and it became obvious that John Brantley was going to be the starter, the unease was. palpable and then became outright anxiety and outrage as what became apparent was we got the wrong one and we kept the wrong one john brantley was just not it they could not figure it out at the quarterback position and florida i'd argue still hasn't figured it out it's 2020 who knows what could have happened if cam was the one to succeed tibo we talk about cam noon as the great what if i think it's one of the great what-ifs, and I'm not kidding, in the recent history of the sport. This what if, it's difficult for fans like Richard. It's not like we recruited Cam, and he went and signed somewhere else.

Cam Newton, for two years, lived in Gainesville, Florida. He suited up for the University of Florida. There are pictures. There is evidence. He was on the team and left. that is particularly because of how the program crumbled after 2009. Florida has not figured out the quarterback position since Tim Tebow left at the end of 2009. And the bugaboo, the thing that keeps Florida fans up at night is what happens if everybody lets bygones be bygones?

Cam Newton sticks around and plays that 2010 season out as quarterback at the University of Florida. What if, Sa'side, Cam Newton walked off the University of Florida's campus and didn't return. His mugshot was strewn across the internet and newspapers. He was lost, broken, defeated. Cam went back home to Atlanta to do community service. All of a sudden, people didn't want to be like Cam anymore. He later told ESPN that he felt like his identity was gone. When I came back home and I had to do community service,

I felt this big. Because when I left my high school, I was, boy, most likely to succeed. Then when I went back, I heard so many laptop jokes. I heard so many you blew it jokes. And I'm like, wow. Many nights I would cry, like, man, why me, man? It was a point of his life where, by his own admission, he was childish. He lost communication with Cecil and the rest of his family.

He put entertainment before his roots. He was disconnected from the reality of what his purpose was. We were in a tailspin. I didn't like the mere fact of having to leave Florida. That was a very dark day in Cam's life. Cam just knew one thing. He wanted to get back on top, climbed the ladder, and Dool was necessary to find his way back to big-time college football.

Only he could live himself back up. And, as he later said in a 2014 video series about his life called Huddle Up, he had a mighty motivator from the final thing he heard from his former Florida family. The last words that Coach Myers said to my father over the father, Mr. Newton, you know, whatever decision that y'all make, I was supported and Cam has an unbelievable challenge. But I just don't think Cam's the best fit as a quarterback. He doesn't have that it factor. And I'm listening to him because my father put him on speakerphone and I'm listening like, okay, I'm going to make Irving Meyer eat those words one day.

And boy, they would eat their words. Next time on the Cam Chronicles. I said, bro, this is a business trip. There's a 12-month business trip. Buy in. Do your job. I think he was trying to map out how to bounce back from, you know, a mistake. You don't leave the University of Florida to come to blend without having, you know, it made them a pretty decent size mistake.

Various sports pundits now said, when Cam Newton left Florida, we wasn't going to hear from him again. Thank God they're not God. The Cam Chronicles was written and reported by me, Tyler R. Times, and edited by Connor Nevins. The show is produced by Kara Cornyhaven, Isaac Lee, and Noah Malale and sound designed by Isaac Lee. If you're listening to this episode and don't want to wait till next week to hear where the story goes, head over to Spotify. All episodes of the Cam Chronicles are available for you to binge for free right now in the Ringer NFL show feed.