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Urban Blight
If offers of big advances from book publishers aren’t bursting apart the mailbox at Urban Meyer’s house, they should be. When the former Florida Gators football coach complained several weeks ago during a radio interview that “garbage” was turning college football into a “cesspool,” he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. In fact, it turns out he may have had a front row seat. According to Orlando Sentinel reporter Mike Bianchi, not only were players under Meyer’s charge arrested 31 times during his tenure in Gainesville, he allowed his star running back to return to the team last year after the player threatened to kill his girlfriend.
Last week there was a story in the Newark Star-Ledger about ex-Gators safety Will Hill, a native of New Jersey who was chosen as the top player in the state after his senior season in high school. Reporter Conor Orr detailed how Hill’s handlers were preparing the player for the NFL scouting combine, in particular paying special attention to how Hill would answer questions that were sure to be put to him during the team interviews. Orr writes “three times a week, Will Hill sits with his team of agents, interview coaches and liaisons and runs through the drill…they'll try to rile him — asking him about fathering three kids by age 20, probing into his suspension at the University of Florida, demanding to know why he left school a year early. And then, of course, there's the big one: Telling him how it looks to have a Twitter page plastered with not-so-subtle references to marijuana use and sex with prostitutes.”
It’s no wonder Meyer quit. If the strain of being a head coach in the SEC isn’t enough to tax a man’s ticker, certainly the off-field behavior of some of the players he recruited is.
But just because Meyer now has a comfy job with ESPN doesn’t mean he should be let off the hook. In fact, he would do the college game a great service by blowing the lid off the cesspool he refers to, so fans, alumni, administrators and the media can have a long look in. We may not like what we see, but at least we’ll be able to offer some recommendations on how to clean it up.
As Bianchi writes, “Meyer may have just completed the most incredible transformation in college football history. In a span of two months, he’s gone from a win-at-all-cost football coach to an ESPN commentator who is lamenting the scumminess that has pervaded the sport.”
It’s time to really come clean, Urban.