Florida football: Cam Newton recalling 2008 LSU game adds to Percy Harvin’s legacy (Video)
By John Buhler
Cam Newton’s story about Percy Harvin when they were Florida football teammates is unreal.
Before Cam Newton won the Heisman Trophy with the Auburn Tigers, he held a clipboard as a backup quarterback for Urban Meyer’s Florida football team. One of his former Gators teammates was the electrifying college playmaker that was Percy Harvin.
Newton shared a story on the I Am Athlete podcast about Harvin when they were playing cross-divisional rival LSU. He said he could hear on the headset from the sidelines that the Gators needed a spark offensively vs. the Bayou Bengals.
On the opening series of the 2008 game, Tim Tebow connected with Harvin for a 70-yard touchdown to give the Gators an early 7-0 lead. They never looked back, as the Gators won 51-21 and that spark Harvin provided was all they needed to put LSU away early in The Swamp. Harvin added a second touchdown in the first quarter and finished with 112 yards receiving.
Percy Harvin was one of the best players under Urban Meyer at Florida
While Newton’s time at Florida did not end well, the Gators did win a pair of national titles under Meyer before he retired from coaching for the first time. Though Tebow is the greatest player in school history, Harvin belongs on the Mount Rushmore of that era of Florida football. If you put the ball in his hands, good things were bound to happen for Florida.
What is interesting about Newton’s recollection of that touchdown by Harvin is how stacked LSU was. This was around the prime of the Les Miles era in Baton Rouge. Superstar cornerback Patrick Peterson may have only been an underclassmen then, but LSU was regularly contending for national titles in the late 2000s and early 2010s under Miles.
Whenever Florida felt it needed a spark offensively, the Gators just gave the ball to Harvin.
Next. 25 best college football stadiums to watch a game. dark
For more NCAA football news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage by FanSided, including Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff rankings, be sure to bookmark these pages.