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College Football

Case closed on the great Gator trophy caper


The mystery that was the smashed crystal football outside Florida coach Urban Meyer’s office has been solved. The Waterford crystal trophy was destroyed last week after falling off a coffee table and crashing to the floor and the program was hush-hush about how it all went down, leaving the door wide open for conspiracy theories galore. But on Wednesday, the truth came out…it was a damn recruit!

Plant tight end Orson Charles, in town participating in a Nike football camp, was posing for photos with the Tim Tebow’s Heisman Trophy and the 2006 BCS National Championship trophy. While posing with the Heisman, his hip bumped the table, and the $35,000 crystal football on top of the trophy crashed to the floor just outside coach Urban Meyer’s office.

Jaws dropped. For once, Plant coach Robert Weiner, 3 feet from the fall, didn’t know the next play.

“We didn’t know what to do, if we should have started picking up the pieces or what,” Weiner said. “It was surreal, like everything happened in slow motion.”

Weiner whispered to Charles (right): “They’re either going to take your scholarship away or they’re going to make you commit to them today.”

Meyer came to survey the scene.

Plant assistant T.J. Lane broke the silence: “That’s a replica right?”

Awkward. But the craziest part of this whole story comes with coach Weiner’s assessment of his clumsy tight end prior to the big crash.

Before Charles broke the trophy, Plant coach Robert Weiner said Meyer asked him to describe Charles. Weiner told Meyer that Charles was a “physical specimen” but sometimes a “bull in a china shop.”

“After what happened,” Weiner said, “I’m sure Urban now thinks I’m an excellent evaluator of talent.”

Links:

[TampaBay.com]: Follow the breaking ball: Plant’s Charles’ bump broke BCS trophy
[TBO.com]: UF Mystery Solved; Plant High Player Admits To Mishap