| 27 December 2009
Stunned.Even 12 hours after hearing the news, chewing on it, swallowing it, digesting it, sleeping on it and chewing on it some more, I just can’t believe it.
Urban Meyer resigned as head coach of the University of Florida on Saturday, effective after this year’s Sugar Bowl, and I’m just stunned.
How else could I react?
While 2009 will always be remembered as the year of Tiger and his birdies, this story felt strangely bigger. It wasn’t, but for a moment, it did feel that way.
With Tiger, we got information little by little, drop by drop, until we had enough to piece together our own puzzle.
With Urban Meyer it was different. It was a blind-siding bombshell that no one saw coming.
It happened on a long holiday weekend when there wasn’t much else going on in sports or really anything otherwise, giving it a weird, “I know where I was when I heard the news,” feel to it. People who know nothing about football were texting me, asking if it was true, and what the details were. Now I ask you, how many other college football coaches would have received that kind of response?
Like anyone who is truly great at anything, Meyer leaves the game as revered by many, and hated by others.
For the detractors, the case is compelling:
He held grudges against other coaches, and ran up scores. He took a lot of chances on a lot of kids, with some of them working out, and some others not so much. More players than Meyer probably cares to remember ran afoul of the law.
This year was especially tough, as Brandon Spikes was suspended for trying to gouge an opponents eyes out, Carlos Dunlap was arrested for drunk driving before the SEC Championship game, and Meyer himself had a run-in with the conference commissioner’s office for questioning referees.
To his supporters though, Meyer wasn’t just a great coach, but a great man too. Meyer is known to be devoted to his family, inviting coach’s wives and children into the Florida football offices. His own wife and kids were almost always on his side for postgame interviews, as his oldest daughter was after this year’s win over Florida State.
He was a man who was so motivated by the missionary work of quarterback Tim Tebow, that for the first time in his life, he did some of his own this summer in the Dominican Republic.
And he was a man who, no matter what people said about his players, he stood by them, and gave them as many chances as each individual warranted. And I ask you, isn’t that all any parent of an 18 or 19-year-old could ask for?
But no matter how you felt about Urban Meyer the man, it’s hard to argue with the success of Urban Meyer the coach.
He leaves the sidelines with the highest career winning percentage of anyone in the game, at over 84 percent. He went 95-18 in nine years, and 5-1 in bowl games. And of course besides his two SEC Championships, he’s got two National Championships as well.
Beyond just wins and losses though, Meyer’s impact has been felt well beyond.
Although Boise State gets all the credit for breaking down the BCS doors for small schools, it was actually Meyer’s Utah team that was the first to beat a big boy, on the biggest stage. His Utes didn’t use memorable trick plays though, they just went out and dominated Pitt from the opening kickoff to the last whistle of the 2005 Fiesta Bowl. For anyone who watched the game, the 35-7 score was a final in name only, in a game that really wasn’t even that close.
Upon coming to Florida, Meyer had bigger challenges, namely proving that his spread-option offense could work in the SEC.
Well after winning the National Championship in 2006 with Ron Zook’s players, he followed up with another in 2008. Florida also started this season 12-0, proving that it doesn’t matter what offense you run, just as long as you’ve got a great coach running it.
In the end, Meyer made the right choice, one that many of his contemporaries might not have been able to make. He chose life without football, over potentially no life at all.
He’s suffered from bad migraines his whole coaching career, and was hospitalized after this year’s SEC Championship game. And reports surfacing Saturday night showed that the stresses of the Florida job were too much for his heart as well.
Don’t be fooled or mistaken, Meyer is very likely done on the sidelines. This isn’t him walking away for a cushy NFL job, or getting bored, taking a few years and finding another fit in college. He’s done coaching for the foreseeable future, and if I had to guess, forever.
As he walks away from the sidelines, my fondest memory of Meyer won’t be any from Florida, but that last game from Utah that I just mentioned. There was a great image of the great coach, leaning on the goalpost padding before that game, watching his team warm up. It proved to be greatly symbolic of the Coach Meyer we got to know: Alone, taking a moment to step back and reflect, before taking on a challenge and succeeding.
So there it is, Urban Meyer, walking way on top of his game, and on top of the game.
The only even semi-contemporary example of something similar happening, would probably be John Madden walking away from the NFL at a similar age because of ulcers.
Of course to our generation, Madden is nothing more than the video game guy with the bushy eyebrows. But at least to people under 40-years-old, we got to know Madden as something. He was smart enough to walk away from the game, before the game took him itself.
Luckily, Meyer did the same. It’s sad to see Meyer leaving football at such a young age, but at least he’s doing it on his terms.
This may be his coaching obituary, but it’s better than writing a real one too soon.
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