From a Bowden no less! Merer's Magic Meyer's magic By Terry Bowden, Yahoo! Sports December 9, 2007 Terry Bowden Yahoo! Sports How can anyone be surprised that Tim Tebow won the 2007 Heisman Trophy. He does play quarterback for Urban Meyer, doesn't he? Nobody does that without something really good happening. Meyer has been a head coach seven years at three different schools. He has had four quarterbacks. Every one of them has won big games. Every one of them has set records. Every single one of them has had a remarkable college career. Meyer's first head coaching position was at Bowling Green in 2001. He inherited a quarterback named Josh Harris who was entering his sophomore season. Although Harris only started four games that year, he set the single-game rushing record for a quarterback with 148 yards against Ohio and also threw for more than 400 yards against Northwestern. He also led Bowling Green to the greatest turnaround of any football program in the NCAA that year going from 2-9 the previous season to 8-3. In 2002, in his first full year as a starter for Meyer, Harris became the most prolific duel-threat quarterback in the country rushing for 737 yards and 20 touchdowns and passing for 2,425 yards and 19 touchdowns. He led Bowling Green to a 9-3 record and ended up second in the nation in scoring averaging 21.09 points per game. Harris ultimately was selected in the sixth round of the NFL draft and is currently a backup for the New York Giants. In 2003, Meyer moved out to Utah and again found a sophomore quarterback on the roster to run his shotgun option attack. Alex Smith, proceeded to go 9-1 as a starter in his first year under Meyer, and then in 2004 led the Utes to a perfect 12-0 record including a 35-7 victory over Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl. Like Harris, Smith became one of the most prolific duel-threat quarterbacks in the country passing for 2,952 yards and 32 touchdowns and rushing for 631yards and 10 touchdowns. His greatest achievement came in April of 2005 when he was selected as the first overall pick in the NFL draft. The next stop for Meyer was the University of Florida, where he would again develop an offense around an existing quarterback. This time it would prove to be a little more difficult. He found himself trying to build his spread option attack around a true dropback quarterback, Chris Leak. Although Florida ended up 9-3 that first year in 2005, Meyer began to redesign the offensive attack to better suit Leak's passing style. The Gators promptly went 13-1 and won the national championship. Leak was named the offensive MVP in that BCS championship game and eclipsed Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel as the all-time passing leader in Florida football history. Which brings us to Tebow. He is the first quarterback who has ever started for Meyer who the coach actually recruited. Tebow, who was the leading duel-threat quarterback in the country coming out of high school, is the first QB Meyer hand picked to run his spread option attack. So, in his first year as a starter, he becomes the first player in history to win the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore. Along the way, he became the greatest duel-threat quarterback in NCAA history, passing for 3,132 yards and 29 touchdowns and rushing for 838 yards and 22 touchdowns. It is the first time a quarterback has ever passed for 20 touchdowns and rushed for 20 touchdowns in the same season. After Tebow and his family, the happiest people in the world right now are the Florida fans who know they have the QB back again next season. No telling what good things are in store for the next quarterback to start for Meyer.