By CHRISTOPHER RAMIREZ

Brett Bowers looked very much at home fielding questions on Monday from a front-row seat at Dolphin Stadium, wearing a Florida Marlins ball cap and showing off his tattoos devoted to the Sunshine State.

But Bowers was also wearing his Oklahoma football jersey, days before the Sooners are to face the Florida Gators in the BCS National Championship Game on Thursday.

Bowers is the lone player from Florida on an Oklahoma team where one-third of its players hail from Texas. His teammates rarely let him forget that.

“It’s Texas is this, Texas is that,” Bowers said. “It’s been like that for the past two years. When I went in my freshman year, we had about eight or nine of us” from Florida. “Since then, they just kind of dwindled away, and I’ve become the only player.”

But Bowers, a senior defensive back who has played in all 13 of Oklahoma’s games this season, hasn’t been discouraged from showing off his Florida heritage.

“I love Florida,” he said. “I have all the tattoos symbolizing that.”

Bowers has two tattoos on his left arm. One is of the pair of oranges commonly depicted on Florida license plates. The other is a vertical row of letters — JVILL — representing Jacksonville, Fla., where he moved to from Texas when he was 6.

He was a star at Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville, helping his team capture Class A titles during his junior and senior seasons. One of his teammates was Tim Tebow, now Florida’s Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.

Tebow played a pair of seasons at Trinity, when Bowers was a junior and senior, before transferring to Nease High School. Tebow saw most of his action on defense while at Trinity Christian.

Bowers said Tebow’s talent was apparent.

“I just knew he would be a great kid,” Bowers said. “All the hype he got, it was well deserved.”

Bowers also recalled that Tebow displayed notable strength even at an early age.

“Just catching the ball five yards from him, he was throwing it a million miles per hour,” Bowers said.

But the players have not met for some time.

“I haven’t talked to him in a while or seen him this week,” Tebow said of Bowers. “But yeah, I do remember my freshman year a little bit, and he was a big part of our state championship team.”

When it was time to pick a college, Bowers decided to follow the path of his coach, Bob Stoops. Stoops was the Gators defensive coordinator before he left for Oklahoma.

“He had a great team at Florida, and that’s what kind of made my decision a little bit easier,” Bowers said. “I love the decision I made as far as coming out to Oklahoma.”