TALLAHASSEE -- They'll change Tim Tebow soon enough.

In a few months (or next year, in a Florida Gators fan's giddiest dream), NFL coaches will professionalize Tebow's quarterbacking by teaching him the dubiously fine art of avoiding contact at all cost. He'll learn to slide cowardly before a tackler might bruise him. His bravado will see an encroachment of designed daintiness.

Until then, damn is this kid fun to watch!

He is so skilled as a passer that you forget what a physical load he is at 6-3 and 240 pounds. Suffice to say the Florida State Seminoles were reminded Saturday in a 45-15 Gators rout that had the vintage Tebow stamp: part deft touch, part balled fist.

Snapshot: Tebow hoofing through the rain for a 24-yard run upon a Doak Campbell Stadium turf-turned-world's largest slip n' slide, and at the end of it lowering his shoulder and knocking FSU free safety Jamie Robinson cleanly backward -- Robinson playing the pin to Tebow's bowling ball.

Snapshot: Gators at the Seminoles' 4, Tebow keeps, is stacked up at the goal line by a surrounding thicket of garnet jerseys -- and pushes the entire pile into the end zone for the touchdown. For a second, I recalled the way Dolphins fullback Larry Csonka used to carry defenders on his back like Serengeti birds on a rhinoceros in 1973.

`BRONKO NAGURSKI'

FSU coach Bobby Bowden said of Tebow: ``He brings a little Bronko Nagurski to the quarterback position.''

That bull-force scoring run was soon after the predominantly FSU crowd of 83,237 cheered as the Gators' Percy Harvin lay writhing with a sprained ankle.

''That really irritated me,'' Tebow said. ``I told coach to give me the ball back.

``I wanted to hit somebody extremely hard.''

Bowden again: ``He is a great quarterback that can run you over physically, too. His teammates rally around that.''

Tebow likely won't win a second consecutive Heisman Trophy this year but ought not be discounted. He continues as the singularly indispensable reason Florida is now 11-1, has solidified its No. 2 Associated Press ranking and heads to next week's marquee Southeastern Conference championship game against Alabama with a strong chance to reach the BCS title game and capture the school's third national championship.

On Saturday, the venue, the rivalry, the weather and the stakes could have conspired to conjure a major upset, but Florida would have none of it, steamrollering the Seminoles the way Tebow did Jamie Robinson.

''Just a real good whipping,'' Bowden called it. ``Tail whipping.''

By the time the catalyst Tebow was out of the game for good with 8:48 left, his uniform was as filthy as anyone's, soaked, discolored by dirt and grass, and taking on a weird purplish-maroon cast from all the times those garnet shirts had ground into him.

The rain pouring from the battleship-gray sky was such the end zone paint was running like mascara before the game and tuba-carrying band members were pratfalling at midfield.

Most players change jerseys at halftime in conditions like this. Tebow didn't. It was his kind of game. He liked the look and feel of his scarred, sodden uniform.

''They made me change my socks, that was it,'' he said. ``I've loved playing in the rain since I was a little kid. It brings out more of a physical presence and toughness. Roll around in the mud a little bit. I enjoy it.

``Just go out and be a football player.''

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