How can an event be boring and wonderful at the same time?
When it’s the Home Depot Awards Show at Disney’s Boardwalk.
Like the Academy Awards, it’s too long, especially when you already know the winners. The media-friendly people who run the show hand the awards list to us as soon as the show goes on. We’re sworn to secrecy under the penalty of having to wear a Pluto head during the Main Street parade if we tell anyone the winners.
But while the show runs long, it is a great place to be. On Thursday night, one minute you could be chatting up Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the next sharing jokes with Kansas coach Mark Mangino (television does not add 10 pounds to him). Jim McMahon walking up the red carpet with sunglasses, a suit and tennis shoes. Howie Long looking like he could still get to the quarterback. The look Tim Tebow shot Glenn Dorsey as the TV screen showed Georgia players rushing the field in Jacksonville.
(Tebow played the part of interviewer on the red carpet as well, interviewing Oregon quarterback Dennis Dixon for Gator Vision.)
Seriously, there was no place I’d have rather been Thursday night. But you have to be a college football fan to appreciate the scene that unfolded on the floor of the Riverfront Dance Hall.
Or an agent. Because on that floor there were millions and millions of dollars worth of future contracts.
It was a very cool night, especially after spending a few minutes with the Tebow family outside the venue after the ceremony.
And now we are sitting in the Orlando airport for the next chapter of the Tebow Experience. Sometimes this job can be difficult and demanding. But every once in awhile I have to pinch myself. Three national championship runs and a Heisman trip in two years? Lucky man, I am.
My wife agrees.
Especially after I told her that at one point Thursday night I was standing there talking to Tebow and Kirk Herbstreit.
Guess who finishes third in that threesome.
