Urban Meyer’s national title-winning team in 2008 was stacked with superstars and talents, and yet the spotlight always remained on his QB1. Not just because he was exceptionally good, but also because Tim Tebow offered more than just those high-profile performances to the media. For starters, he openly prayed on the field, credited God in interviews, and was extremely media-friendly. This sure made him a polarizing figure, but extremely popular, too.

The former Florida head coach, Urban Meyer, never worried about Tebow himself. What concerned him was everyone else in the locker room. Looking back on that period, Meyer admitted that Tebow’s growing fame made him think about how other players might react.

“I worried about the other players on the team,” Meyer said on his Triple Option podcast this week. “I really did. Tim Tebow, he was a very unique cat. There was not much going to take his focus off being a great player. But I would have to talk to the other players a little bit, and I would go after our media people and say, ‘Let’s make sure we get these other guys some deserved coverage as well.'”

It was a reasonable concern. Florida’s roster was loaded with talent. Players like Percy Harvin, Brandon Spikes, Joe Haden, Aaron Hernandez, Maurkice Pouncey, and Mike Pouncey all played major roles in the Gators’ success. Percy Harvin, for instance, was an explosive playmaker notching 1,304 all-purpose yards during the 2008 season and adding 122 rushing yards in the national championship game alone. Then there was Aaron Hernandez.

Hernandez (TE) was a mismatch nightmare for defenses throughout the season. It was a similar case with Louis Murphy, who became a big-play threat. Yet much of the national spotlight centered on Tebow.

“He’s not the only good player on our team,” Meyer said about Tim Tebow. “Because it wasn’t just that now. It was Sports Illustrated. It was in every magazine. And I remember talking to our media people saying, ‘I know the other coach, I’ve talked to other coaches about that. Let’s spread the wealth here a little bit.’ We’re all humans, and so you’d like everybody to get their chances to be on cover as the guys that deserve that.”

Tebow arrived at Florida in 2006 as one of the nation’s top recruits. During his freshman season, he played behind quarterback Chris Leak. Even as a backup, he became one of the most talked-about players in college football because of the way Meyer used him in short-yardage situations. That year, he finished the season with five touchdowns and helped Florida win the national championship, and the next season, he became the starter.

What followed was one of the greatest individual seasons in college football history. In 2007, Tebow threw for 3,286 yards and 32 touchdowns. No player at the FBS level had ever recorded at least 20 passing touchdowns and 20 rushing touchdowns in the same season before him. Those numbers earned him the Heisman Trophy. But it wasn’t just the Heisman trophy that made Tebow famous.

Tim Tebow’s Florida tenure was a cultural phenomenon

At just 20 years old, Tebow became the first sophomore ever to win college football’s most famous award. His fame grew even larger after that. But who can forget Tebow’s famous ‘Promise’ speech after the team’s 2008 regular-season loss to an unranked Ole Miss? That speech and the feat of winning the championship for Florida made him a national sensation overnight.

“I just want to say one thing,” Tebow said after the loss. “To the fans and everybody in Gator Nation, I’m sorry, extremely sorry. I promise you one thing, a lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season, and you will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season, and you will never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season.”

The Gators did not lose another game that season. They finished 13-1 and defeated Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship Game. Tebow’s performance matched his words. During the 2008 championship season, he completed 18-of-30 touchdown passes, and had two touchdowns. Because of those heroics and iconic speeches, the media got all the more reason to cover Tim Tebow, and that only went upwards gradually.