Tag: Urban Meyer (Page 5 of 9)

2010 College Football Predictions

August 30, 2010 / Anthony Stalter

Jan 1, 2010; Pasadena, CA, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes players huddle before the 2010 Rose Bowl against the Oregon Ducks. Photo via Newscom

Conference winners, sleepers, power rankings and one big, fat national championship prediction.

Enjoy.

Big Ten

Champion: Ohio State
Yes, it’s true – the Buckeyes need Terrelle Pryor to be more consistent in the passing game this year if they expect to win a national championship. But stop acting like that’s the difference between OSU winning the Big Ten and them turning into Vanderbilt. Choke on this for a second: The Buckeyes return all three leading rushers from 2009 in Pryor, Brandon Saine and Dan Herron, the secondary features three senior NFL prospects, and they own the best defensive end in the nation in Cameron Heyward. Pryor is also coming off a dominating performance against Oregon in the Rose Bowl and reports state that he has committed himself this offseason to being a better teammate. Sorry Buckeye-haters, but the gap between them and Alabama is closer than you think.

Conference Champion Sleeper: Michigan Slate
My biggest concern with the Spartans is that despite pulling off an upset nearly every year, they also manage to lose a game they shouldn’t. But they have a slew of playmakers and plenty of depth on both sides of the ball, plus feature a ton of offensive firepower in Larry Caper, Edwin Baker, Keith Nicol and Mark Dell. Oh, and linebacker Greg Jones is the best defender in the nation. If this team can avoid being tripped up by an inferior opponent, they could easily surprise this season.

Conference Power Ranking: #1 Ohio State, #2 Iowa, #3 Wisconsin, # 4 Penn State, #5 Michigan State, #6 Northwestern, #7 Michigan, #8 Purdue, #9 Illinois, #10 Indiana, #11 Minnesota.

I admit that I had Michigan rated too high when I did my Big Ten preview last week. Having any sort of trust in Rich Rodriguez right now is a dangerous proposition for obvious reasons. Just when you think he’s going to figure things out in Ann Arbor, he makes a decision to muck everything up. Penn State might be ranked a little high given their quarterback concerns. Wisconsin is going to give teams trouble this year and Northwestern is going to be a tough opponent every week as well.

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Need practices closed? Just blame the Internet people.

August 10, 2010 / Anthony Stalter

01 January 2010: Florida head coach Urban Meyer is pictured during Sugar Bowl game against Cincinnati at the SuperDome in New Orleans, Louisiana. Florida defeated Cincinnati, 51-24.

Urban Meyer is the head coach of the Florida Gators and as the head coach of the Florida Gators, he has the right to have closed practices, open practices or no practices if he wants.

And Urban gets what Urban wants.

According to a report by ESPN.com, Meyer has closed Gator practices to the public, citing problems with agents and autograph hounds.

“We can’t live the players’ lives, but we can certainly do the best we can,” he told the newspaper. “You should have the right as a player to walk from here to there without being bothered.
“When I tell my colleagues that you get dressed, you walk across and people just maul you and bother you and internet people grabbing helmets, ‘Sign this,’ and we don’t have security saying, ‘Get the heck out of here.’ You’ll see a lot more ‘get the heck out of here’ from now on and let the kids go practice and concentrate on football.”

He’s right – players should have the opportunity to walk around a practice facility without being bothered by autograph seekers. But this isn’t about agents or those crazy “internet people” bothering players – this is about Meyer’s need to control every situation.

It’s always to a coach’s benefit to have a closed practice. Players arguably stay focused longer, coaches don’t have to worry about revealing anything (plays, schemes, etc.) and they can scream at the kids without having anyone peering in from the sidelines. Meyer saw an opportunity here to cash in on Nick Saban’s comments about player agents and use it as an excuse to close practice.

Meyer is arrogant. What happened when he didn’t like how an Orlando Sentinel reporter quoted one of his players? He threatened to kick him out of practice and even deemed him a “bad guy” just for doing his job. This is the same man that also plugged Tim Tebow in the media like he was a bottle of Bud Light and now he wants practices closed because some autograph seekers are bothering the players? Come on.

I don’t like your article – you’re banned from practice. I don’t like how you asked for autographs – you’re banned from practice. What is he, the “Soup Nazi?”

I’m not suggesting that Meyer doesn’t care about his players, because he does. But does he really have their best interests at heart here, or is he satisfying his own wants?

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Urban Meyer goes off on reporter

March 25, 2010 / Anthony Stalter

Urban Meyer just tongue-whipped this reporter:

Here’s the back story (from Rivals.Yahoo.com):

“You’ll be out of practice—you understand that?—if you do that again,” Meyer told the reporter. “I told you five years ago: Don’t mess with our players. Don’t do it. You did it. You do it one more time and the Orlando Sentinel’s not welcome here ever again. Is that clear? It’s yes or no.”
Meyer was reacting to a story posted on the Sentinel’s Web site following Monday’s practice. Thompson was asked what the biggest difference was between Tebow and Brantley.
“You never know with Tim,” Thompson said. “He can bolt. You’ll think he’s running, but then he’ll just come up and pass it to you. You just have to be ready at all times. With Brantley, everything’s with rhythm, time. Like, you know what I mean, a real quarterback.”
Thompson was embarrassed by the remark and the attention it got, mostly because he likes Tebow and never wanted to say anything negative about him.

You can read Fowler’s originally story here.

Meyer is out of line here. The reporter was just doing his job, which was quoting a player (not misquoting, mind you) verbatim. While Fowler wasn’t being protective of Thompson in his piece (not that he has to), he did go on to write that Thompson was “either intentional or he meant to say Brantley’s a more conventional style of quarterback.” When I read the quote, I took it as Thompson was saying that Brantley is a more conventional quarterback and didn’t mean any harm to Tebow. If other media outlets twisted Thompson’s words around and made it sound like he was ripping Tebow, then they’re the ones Meyer should be mad at.

There are some guys that would have been rational about the situation and put the fire out with water. Meyer tried to put it out with a gallon of gasoline and a sledgehammer. He could have made a public statement in defense of Thompson and moved on, but instead he had to be Tommy Tough Tits and rip a reporter to make a point. He handled the situation poorly and here’s hoping he’s ripped because of it.

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911 call reveals Meyer suffered severe chest pains

December 31, 2009 / Anthony Stalter

Urban Meyer’s chest pains apparently started well before Florida’s loss to Alabama in the SEC title game.

From SI.com:

Meyer’s wife told an Alachua County dispatcher that her 45-year-old husband had a pulse but wasn’t talking when she contacted emergency officials at 4:27 a.m. on Dec. 6, hours after the Gators returned home from their 32-13 loss to Alabama.
“My husband’s having chest pains,” Shelley Meyer said. “He’s having chest pains, he just woke up in the middle of the night and said he’s having chest pains.”
Shelley Meyer said her husband had taken a sleeping pill that night and had suffered chest pains before. She repeatedly tried to rouse Meyer, who was lying on his stomach on the floor.
“Urban, Urban, talk to me,” she says.
Initial reports indicated that the Florida coach checked into a Gainesville hospital, where he was treated for dehydration and released. Shelley Meyer told dispatchers that her husband was breathing and appeared to be grunting.
“He almost sounds like he’s kind of trying to cry,” she said.

It’s no wonder Meyer wants to take some time off. These college coaches work non-stop year round and I’m surprised we don’t hear about more of them having health issues. I’m sure Meyer is getting a ton of pressure on the home front to hang it up for a while, which is why he first stated that he was leaving the program.

We may never know the impact, but it’ll be interesting to see how Meyer’s health situation affects recruiting. Florida will recruit well no matter what, but will some prospects go elsewhere if there’s no guarantee Meyer will coach them in the fall?

Photo from fOTOGLIF

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Urban Meyer flip flop

December 27, 2009 / Gerardo Orlando

So much for faith and family.

Less than 24 hours after announcing that he was stepping down has the head coach of the Florida Gators, Urban Meyer has now decided that he will not be resigning but instead will begin an indefinite leave of absence. The ESPN gang is speculating that he’ll be back by the beginning of next season, though nobody knows how long this will take.

What changed his mind? Earlier today his wife stated that Urban Meyer would NOT change his mind.

So what happened? A news conference will be starting shortly, so we’ll learn more soon. But I suspect the alumni went crazy, and I suspect that recruits were upset as well. The option of taking a leave of absence was always on the table, so he obviously had a change of heart after the reactions started coming through.

Needless to say, this is a fluid situation. Will Meyer be able to deal with his health issues while he stays involved? The guy is a control freak, and anything less than a clean break would seem to be difficult.

I guess anything is possible, but this story will be front and center for some time as Meyer, his family and the Florida athletic department work through these issues.

UPDATE: Urban Meyer is now speaking to the media. It sounds like he just couldn’t go through with his resignation after speaking to his players. He’s a hyper-competitive guy, so this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Meyer also said he expects to be on the field as head coach for the 2010 opener. Frankly, he looks and sounds a little like a boxer who doesn’t know when to hang things up.