Meyer, Liar; Did Retire (Sorta)

There is something extremely disingenuous about a person doing something for one reason and then making another decision that completely contradicts their first action. It’s quite another thing to go back on the original choice less than a year later. Of course, I’m talking about former Florida football coach Urban Meyer.


While in Gainesville, Meyer won two national championships (2006 & 2008), dominated the Southeastern Conference and had a pretty good record with a damn good quarterback, but you already know all of this. When Urban retired from the Gators at the end of last season, he said it was due to his poor health caused by the stress of his job and so he could spend more time with his wife and kids.

Instead, he joined the “Mother Ship” of sportscasting and became a color commentator for ESPN, traveling across the country every week calling college games. Now, being a sportscaster myself I can assure you the stresses of this job are nothing compared to that of a Division I football coach. However, the travel and time needed to do this at a high level can take away from that precious family time. That immediately made me question Coach Meyer’s truthfulness in retiring.

Yesterday it was announced that Urban Meyer would be the new head coach of the program formerly known as THE Ohio State University. Meyer had denied ever speaking with the Buckeyes in the weeks leading up to this announcement but everyone knew it to be true. Why? Cause once he put on a headset everyone knew he wasn’t quitting football for good and it certainly wasn’t to be with his family.
So the question now is, why did he leave Gainesville and a conference that is still the best in Division I football? Was it that he knew he could not win with Tim Tebow gone? Did he begin to lose his recruiting touch with the rise of Auburn and Alabama again? Did he see what was happening at Auburn with Cam Newton and decided to get the hell out of dodge before something bigger about Newton’s time at Florida came out? Or was it simply because he wanted an excuse to leave Florida and wait until another prolific program opened its doors?

Let’s be honest, if Meyer had stayed at Florida one more year and Jim Tressel was still dismissed from OSU, everyone would have pegged Urban to replace him. The guy is an Ohio native and was a Buckeyes assistant in the late ‘80s. At Utah he was Chris Peterson before there was a Chris Peterson. Nobody would have blamed him if he left the Swamp for the Horseshoe, nobody. Instead we question his methods and I, personally, have lost a lot of respect for what was a great man and still is a great coach.

Maybe I’m wrong. The guy is a miracle worker after all: He built the Utes into a BCS Buster, he birthed Tim Tebow, and apparently, he’s even cured all his stress related illnesses and watched his kids grow up just a year. Even that is impressive.

 
 
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