Tim Tebow Injury Update

By now, you’ve probably seen the footage of Tim Tebow going down yesterday during the game against Kentucky. The sack by Taylor Wyndham was pretty hard, but the real doozy was his head knocking forward off of the leg of another Gator, Marcus Gilbert. Watch the slow motion footage if you want to see what really happens. Here it is again, if you haven’t seen it:

To be clear – as the announcer said, it was a clean hit. It was a hard hit, yes, but the injury came from Tebow’s head bouncing forward off of the leg of another player, not from some kind of illegal, bad sack. Poor Wyndham will probably get death threats from rabid fans, when all he did was play some ball.

Image: Newscom

Tebow was taken to the University of Kentucky Medical center after laying on the field, possibly blacked out, for two or three minutes. He walked off the field under his own power, but felt ill on the sidelines, so an ambulance took him away. At the hospital, sources say that he got a CAT scan and MRI.

Several fans showed up at the hospital and have been asking to go back to his room and pray with him, but security is tight. Sources also say that his dad and brother are there. Coach Urban Meyer talked to the press after the game, and said that Tebow’s first question to him was “did I hold onto the ball?” and later said “it’s great to be a Gator.”

They haven’t released anything official yet, but I’m sure that he has a concussion. Hopefully, it isn’t anything more serious. I may not be a Florida fan, but I don’t want to see any player get hurt. From my own experiences, I know that concussions typically aren’t super serious unless there’s bleeding or discharge from the holes in your head or unless you throw up. I say typically because we all know what happened to Natasha Richardson after a little bump on the head. He definitely was sick after that hit, but I’m not sure if he vomited or not, and you’ll need a true Gator fan to actually look through the tape of the game at the sidelines to see if there’s pictures of him puking.

Of course, Tebow was sick before the game, so that could have something to do with it. He actually took a private plain to Kentucky, separate from the general team, as did other players with flu symptoms, as a precaution. I think Jen at RightFielders makes a good point though: why was he playing at this point? Florida was way up at the end of the third, and Tebow was definitely already sick. He should have been out of the game at that point.

Image: Newscom

All of this information is up to date as of the time of posting (Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 5:30 AM EST), but I’m sure there will be new information during the day today about Tebow’s condition and the likelihood that he’ll play against LSU. At least he has next weekend off for sure – it’s Florida’s bye week.