Franz Beard column:
With Urban Meyer We Got Exactly What We Demanded
They were indeed “The Swamp Kings,” those Florida Gators from 2005-2009, the first five of the six-year reign of Urban Meyer at the University of Florida. During those first five years, the Florida Gators were the best team in all of college football, driven hard by a hard-driven coach who did what he was brought to Gainesville to do.
Coaches give kids second chances all the time because they realize so many of the kids who play for them come from single-parent homes or else they’ve been raised by a grandmother or an aunt. Coaches are the only male dominant figures in their lives. Take that away and bad things tend to happen. We don’t keep track of all the kids who got a second chance who made the most of it, got their college degree and now have a success story in something other than football, but we hear all about the ones who got kicked off teams and wound up in prison.
There are quite a few kids who played football at Florida for Urban Meyer who were given an opportunity to turn their lives around. There are also kids who are bitter about how hard Meyer drove them and how it drove them to either quit or forever hold a grudge. At the end of “Swamp Kings,” Meyer said he would like to apologize to all the kids he drove too hard. For some, that admission might have soothed some old wounds. For others, it might not be nearly enough, but you can’t relive the past. What happened is over and done with.
Those who still feel jilted because Urban Meyer walked away from Florida football are dead wrong. The University of Florida got exactly what it wanted although Meyer’s reign lasted only six years. Urban isn’t to blame for what Florida football became from 2011-21. If you want to point a finger, point it at the people who hired the coaches who went 84-48.
If you’re of the opinion that “Swamp Kings” should have been more of a hit piece on Meyer, then do take into consideration that Netflix produced this documentary, not Urban Meyer. Netflix chose the content and directed the narrative. If Netflix had wished a hit piece, it had plenty of opportunity to point out every discretion during the Meyer years.
Instead, it chose to show how one of the greatest coaches in college football history – 187-32, an .854 winning percentage that ranks third all-time – was as vulnerable as he was driven. It chose to show how the sheer intensity of his will rescued Florida from becoming a program where losing four and five games a year is acceptable. Meyer was hired to win championships and he delivered without once incurring the wrath of the NCAA (see Muschamp, see Mullen) or lying that Florida fans were making death threats to his family (see McElwain).
Let’s not fool ourselves here. Urban Meyer was a hired mercenary, brought here to restore Florida football to a championship level before it sagged maybe not past a point of no return, but at least so far that it would take years, maybe decades to restore. Hired to replace Ron Zook, a brilliant recruiter but an on-the-job trainee as a head coach, Meyer was like the 38-foot Sea Ray that he takes out in the Gulf of Mexico from his home on Longboat Key. The boat, just like the coach, only functions best at full throttle.
Boats run out of gas. So did Urban.
So, once and for all, let’s dismiss that silly notion that Urban Meyer left the Gators high and dry, that the only reason he retired was because he knew the Ohio State job was going to come open. First off, he gave Florida football two Southeastern Conference and two national championships. The Gators went 65-15 for the entire six-year run, 57-10 for the five years covered in the “Swamp Kings” documentary on Netflix. Meyer gave the Gators three 13-1 seasons, two 9-win seasons and an 8-5 swan song in 2010 when he should have been taking care of his health rather than attempting to coach.
As for the Ohio State job, put yourself in his shoes. He took a year off from coaching, got his health back in order – it was indeed bad when he retired at UF – and got an offer he couldn’t refuse to coach at one of the premier football programs in the country. At Ohio State, he did what he did at Florida, rode the kids hard, won a national championship and coached until he ran out of gas.
Do you know what the difference in Florida 2011 after Meyer retired and Ohio State 2018 after he stepped down from that job? Ohio State made the right hire by turning the program over to Ryan Day, a grad assistant at UF on Florida’s 2006 national championship team. Florida made the wrong hire in Will Muschamp, then compounded matters by hiring Jim McElwain and then Dan Mullen. Ryan Day is 45-6 since taking over for Urban in 2019. Muschamp went 28-21, McElwain 22-12 and Mullen 34-15. That’s a combined 84-48 record.
At schools that are content to take bowl trips to exotic locales like Shreveport and Birmingham, you can go 84-48 over an 11-year span and the fan base will celebrate with tractorcades and parties. At Florida, it gets you fired. Three times fired, in fact.
Urban Meyer was brought to Gainesville to keep Florida from becoming that perpetual 7-5 or 8-4 team, which the Gators seemed destined to be in the three years of Ron Zook. Zook was a fabulous recruiter but he had a rather nasty habit of losing games he shouldn’t have lost while occasionally winning one he had no business winning (see LSU, 2003). There were also several embarrassing off-the-field incidents such as Taurean Charles punching a student in the head at a party and then heaving a beer keg at him. There was also the famous Zook vs. the frat boys incident. It’s actually what got Zooker fired, although Bernie Machen had to wait until an embarrassing loss to Mississippi State in Starkville, otherwise the frat boys would have won the PR debacle.
The off-the-field incidents didn’t end when Meyer became the head coach, but the Gators won championships. During the Bobby Bowden dynasty run at Florida State there were plenty of off-the-field incidents like Julian Pittman getting jail time for burglary in 1997. There are rumors he got work release that allowed him to practice. What we do know for sure is that once Pittman served his time, he rejoined the Seminoles and played in their final four games including the Sugar Bowl. Remember Peter Warrick and Bobby telling the world he was “praying for a misdemeanor”? Those are tip of the proverbial flaming spear that Chief Osceola spikes into the Doak Campbell Stadium turf at midfield before every home game.
Public opinion recalls Bobby Bowden as a good ole boy from Alabama who would have been a Baptist preacher if he hadn’t gone into coaching. Bobby was made out of Teflon. You could aim a flamethrower at him but the Teflon would deflect the flames. Urban Meyer, on the other hand, was John Dillinger in the eyes of the press and public perception. Bobby skated because he won championships. Urban was tolerated and vilified for the same reason.
Bobby got a pass when Devard Darling died during mat drills in 2000. Urban Meyer was recently skewered by a nationally famous columnist for the death of Avery Atkins. Avery Atkins should have been an All-American and should have gone on to a fabulous professional career, but he hit a woman and was dismissed from the team. Back home in Daytona Beach, Avery succumbed to the pressure of the same guys he escaped when he enrolled at Florida. Meyer reached out and did his best to bring him back to Gainesville, but Avery was past the point of no return. He died of a drug overdose.
Urban Meyer was torched by the media when Avery Atkins died and he would have been lit up if he had brought him back. I know this story all too well because Avery Atkins was my friend and it still brings me to tears that he died so early.
Back to the premise of how championships tend to whitewash sins of football players with testosterone to burn, have you bothered to check on what is going on up in Athens? 313 (and counting) traffic incidents including an accident that killed a player and recruiting analyst with a first round draft pick leaving the scene of the tragedy allegedly to sober up. There is a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit by the player’s family against the Georgia Athletic Association and another recruiting analyst who was severely injured in the accident was fired after she filed a suit. Oh, and there are those 11 sexual assault incidents discussed in an investigative report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Georgia cried foul, strongarmed the AJC and got much of the story retracted and the award-winning journalist who wrote it fired.
Yet, in the state of Georgia Kirby Smart walks on water. Championships will do that for you.
This is in no way to condone the off-the-field problems during the Meyer era at Florida, but you’re naïve to think that it only happened at Florida or that similar things don't happen at championship level football programs nationwide. A former Columbus detective told me on numerous occasions that I would be shocked at what Ohio State players got away with during the Jim Tressell era. I told him nothing would shock me. Then he told me. I was shocked.
I’ve had numerous people tell me that we should be recruiting more Tim Tebows. Tim Tebow is one of the greatest players in college football history, but a Boy Scout just the same. There aren’t enough Boy Scouts capable of playing college football at a championship level. College football championships are won by teams with a few Boy Scouts and a bunch of very talented borderline psychopaths who have learned to channel their hostility to the football field. Most of the time.
If you want a roster of Boy Scouts, then you’re on speed dial for every team that needs a homecoming opponent. That is not an exaggeration.
I’ve also heard that coaches should NEVER give players second chances. Once they screw up, then they have to be kicked off the team and dismissed from school. Let’s see. A chemistry major who’s on academic scholarship gets in a bar fight and nobody thinks anything of the fact he doesn’t lose his scholarship and continues in school, but a football player? Kick him to the curb?
After Avery Atkins died, Urban Meyer tried to save every kid he could by giving second and third chances. There was punishment for mistakes, but Meyer gave second chances and third chances.
Remember Chris Rainey in 2010? That’s discussed in “Swamp Kings.” Chris made a threatening text to a woman and was suspended for half the season. That Meyer didn’t dismiss him from the team created a hailstorm of media outrage. I guess nobody ever understood that football was Chris Rainey’s ticket. He was born in prison. His dad was in prison. His mother was in prison when she brought him into the world. He grew up on the streets of Lakeland until he wound up in the care of Lisa and Rob Webster, parents of Mike and Maurkice Pouncey. Chris Rainey came back to UF, played the rest of the 2010 season and made All-SEC as a senior playing for Will Muschamp. He played in the NFL and became a perpetual all-star in the Canadian Football League. He has a degree from the University of Florida. He’s married and has five kids. That doesn’t happen if Urban Meyer had given up on him.
Coaches give kids second chances all the time because they realize so many of the kids who play for them come from single-parent homes or else they’ve been raised by a grandmother or an aunt. Coaches are the only male dominant figures in their lives. Take that away and bad things tend to happen. We don’t keep track of all the kids who got a second chance who made the most of it, got their college degree and now have a success story in something other than football, but we hear all about the ones who got kicked off teams and wound up in prison.
There are quite a few kids who played football at Florida for Urban Meyer who were given an opportunity to turn their lives around. There are also kids who are bitter about how hard Meyer drove them and how it drove them to either quit or forever hold a grudge. At the end of “Swamp Kings,” Meyer said he would like to apologize to all the kids he drove too hard. For some, that admission might have soothed some old wounds. For others, it might not be nearly enough, but you can’t relive the past. What happened is over and done with.
Those who still feel jilted because Urban Meyer walked away from Florida football are dead wrong. The University of Florida got exactly what it wanted although Meyer’s reign lasted only six years. Urban isn’t to blame for what Florida football became from 2011-21. If you want to point a finger, point it at the people who hired the coaches who went 84-48.
If you’re of the opinion that “Swamp Kings” should have been more of a hit piece on Meyer, then do take into consideration that Netflix produced this documentary, not Urban Meyer. Netflix chose the content and directed the narrative. If Netflix had wished a hit piece, it had plenty of opportunity to point out every discretion during the Meyer years.
Instead, it chose to show how one of the greatest coaches in college football history – 187-32, an .854 winning percentage that ranks third all-time – was as vulnerable as he was driven. It chose to show how the sheer intensity of his will rescued Florida from becoming a program where losing four and five games a year is acceptable. Meyer was hired to win championships and he delivered without once incurring the wrath of the NCAA (see Muschamp, see Mullen) or lying that Florida fans were making death threats to his family (see McElwain).
After six years, Urban Meyer crashed and burned. The easy thing is to say he could have done it differently, but Urban Meyer without the intensity doesn’t work. He’s like his Sea Ray. He’s at his best when he’s full throttle. That’s what we got for six years. It’s time for the entire Gator Nation to appreciate it.
With Urban Meyer We Got Exactly What We Demanded
They were indeed “The Swamp Kings,” those Florida Gators from 2005-2009, the first five of the six-year reign of Urban Meyer at the University of Florida. During those first five years, the Florida Gators were the best team in all of college football, driven hard by a hard-driven coach who did what he was brought to Gainesville to do.
Coaches give kids second chances all the time because they realize so many of the kids who play for them come from single-parent homes or else they’ve been raised by a grandmother or an aunt. Coaches are the only male dominant figures in their lives. Take that away and bad things tend to happen. We don’t keep track of all the kids who got a second chance who made the most of it, got their college degree and now have a success story in something other than football, but we hear all about the ones who got kicked off teams and wound up in prison.
There are quite a few kids who played football at Florida for Urban Meyer who were given an opportunity to turn their lives around. There are also kids who are bitter about how hard Meyer drove them and how it drove them to either quit or forever hold a grudge. At the end of “Swamp Kings,” Meyer said he would like to apologize to all the kids he drove too hard. For some, that admission might have soothed some old wounds. For others, it might not be nearly enough, but you can’t relive the past. What happened is over and done with.
Those who still feel jilted because Urban Meyer walked away from Florida football are dead wrong. The University of Florida got exactly what it wanted although Meyer’s reign lasted only six years. Urban isn’t to blame for what Florida football became from 2011-21. If you want to point a finger, point it at the people who hired the coaches who went 84-48.
If you’re of the opinion that “Swamp Kings” should have been more of a hit piece on Meyer, then do take into consideration that Netflix produced this documentary, not Urban Meyer. Netflix chose the content and directed the narrative. If Netflix had wished a hit piece, it had plenty of opportunity to point out every discretion during the Meyer years.
Instead, it chose to show how one of the greatest coaches in college football history – 187-32, an .854 winning percentage that ranks third all-time – was as vulnerable as he was driven. It chose to show how the sheer intensity of his will rescued Florida from becoming a program where losing four and five games a year is acceptable. Meyer was hired to win championships and he delivered without once incurring the wrath of the NCAA (see Muschamp, see Mullen) or lying that Florida fans were making death threats to his family (see McElwain).
Let’s not fool ourselves here. Urban Meyer was a hired mercenary, brought here to restore Florida football to a championship level before it sagged maybe not past a point of no return, but at least so far that it would take years, maybe decades to restore. Hired to replace Ron Zook, a brilliant recruiter but an on-the-job trainee as a head coach, Meyer was like the 38-foot Sea Ray that he takes out in the Gulf of Mexico from his home on Longboat Key. The boat, just like the coach, only functions best at full throttle.
Boats run out of gas. So did Urban.
So, once and for all, let’s dismiss that silly notion that Urban Meyer left the Gators high and dry, that the only reason he retired was because he knew the Ohio State job was going to come open. First off, he gave Florida football two Southeastern Conference and two national championships. The Gators went 65-15 for the entire six-year run, 57-10 for the five years covered in the “Swamp Kings” documentary on Netflix. Meyer gave the Gators three 13-1 seasons, two 9-win seasons and an 8-5 swan song in 2010 when he should have been taking care of his health rather than attempting to coach.
As for the Ohio State job, put yourself in his shoes. He took a year off from coaching, got his health back in order – it was indeed bad when he retired at UF – and got an offer he couldn’t refuse to coach at one of the premier football programs in the country. At Ohio State, he did what he did at Florida, rode the kids hard, won a national championship and coached until he ran out of gas.
Do you know what the difference in Florida 2011 after Meyer retired and Ohio State 2018 after he stepped down from that job? Ohio State made the right hire by turning the program over to Ryan Day, a grad assistant at UF on Florida’s 2006 national championship team. Florida made the wrong hire in Will Muschamp, then compounded matters by hiring Jim McElwain and then Dan Mullen. Ryan Day is 45-6 since taking over for Urban in 2019. Muschamp went 28-21, McElwain 22-12 and Mullen 34-15. That’s a combined 84-48 record.
At schools that are content to take bowl trips to exotic locales like Shreveport and Birmingham, you can go 84-48 over an 11-year span and the fan base will celebrate with tractorcades and parties. At Florida, it gets you fired. Three times fired, in fact.
Urban Meyer was brought to Gainesville to keep Florida from becoming that perpetual 7-5 or 8-4 team, which the Gators seemed destined to be in the three years of Ron Zook. Zook was a fabulous recruiter but he had a rather nasty habit of losing games he shouldn’t have lost while occasionally winning one he had no business winning (see LSU, 2003). There were also several embarrassing off-the-field incidents such as Taurean Charles punching a student in the head at a party and then heaving a beer keg at him. There was also the famous Zook vs. the frat boys incident. It’s actually what got Zooker fired, although Bernie Machen had to wait until an embarrassing loss to Mississippi State in Starkville, otherwise the frat boys would have won the PR debacle.
The off-the-field incidents didn’t end when Meyer became the head coach, but the Gators won championships. During the Bobby Bowden dynasty run at Florida State there were plenty of off-the-field incidents like Julian Pittman getting jail time for burglary in 1997. There are rumors he got work release that allowed him to practice. What we do know for sure is that once Pittman served his time, he rejoined the Seminoles and played in their final four games including the Sugar Bowl. Remember Peter Warrick and Bobby telling the world he was “praying for a misdemeanor”? Those are tip of the proverbial flaming spear that Chief Osceola spikes into the Doak Campbell Stadium turf at midfield before every home game.
Public opinion recalls Bobby Bowden as a good ole boy from Alabama who would have been a Baptist preacher if he hadn’t gone into coaching. Bobby was made out of Teflon. You could aim a flamethrower at him but the Teflon would deflect the flames. Urban Meyer, on the other hand, was John Dillinger in the eyes of the press and public perception. Bobby skated because he won championships. Urban was tolerated and vilified for the same reason.
Bobby got a pass when Devard Darling died during mat drills in 2000. Urban Meyer was recently skewered by a nationally famous columnist for the death of Avery Atkins. Avery Atkins should have been an All-American and should have gone on to a fabulous professional career, but he hit a woman and was dismissed from the team. Back home in Daytona Beach, Avery succumbed to the pressure of the same guys he escaped when he enrolled at Florida. Meyer reached out and did his best to bring him back to Gainesville, but Avery was past the point of no return. He died of a drug overdose.
Urban Meyer was torched by the media when Avery Atkins died and he would have been lit up if he had brought him back. I know this story all too well because Avery Atkins was my friend and it still brings me to tears that he died so early.
Back to the premise of how championships tend to whitewash sins of football players with testosterone to burn, have you bothered to check on what is going on up in Athens? 313 (and counting) traffic incidents including an accident that killed a player and recruiting analyst with a first round draft pick leaving the scene of the tragedy allegedly to sober up. There is a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit by the player’s family against the Georgia Athletic Association and another recruiting analyst who was severely injured in the accident was fired after she filed a suit. Oh, and there are those 11 sexual assault incidents discussed in an investigative report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Georgia cried foul, strongarmed the AJC and got much of the story retracted and the award-winning journalist who wrote it fired.
Yet, in the state of Georgia Kirby Smart walks on water. Championships will do that for you.
This is in no way to condone the off-the-field problems during the Meyer era at Florida, but you’re naïve to think that it only happened at Florida or that similar things don't happen at championship level football programs nationwide. A former Columbus detective told me on numerous occasions that I would be shocked at what Ohio State players got away with during the Jim Tressell era. I told him nothing would shock me. Then he told me. I was shocked.
I’ve had numerous people tell me that we should be recruiting more Tim Tebows. Tim Tebow is one of the greatest players in college football history, but a Boy Scout just the same. There aren’t enough Boy Scouts capable of playing college football at a championship level. College football championships are won by teams with a few Boy Scouts and a bunch of very talented borderline psychopaths who have learned to channel their hostility to the football field. Most of the time.
If you want a roster of Boy Scouts, then you’re on speed dial for every team that needs a homecoming opponent. That is not an exaggeration.
I’ve also heard that coaches should NEVER give players second chances. Once they screw up, then they have to be kicked off the team and dismissed from school. Let’s see. A chemistry major who’s on academic scholarship gets in a bar fight and nobody thinks anything of the fact he doesn’t lose his scholarship and continues in school, but a football player? Kick him to the curb?
After Avery Atkins died, Urban Meyer tried to save every kid he could by giving second and third chances. There was punishment for mistakes, but Meyer gave second chances and third chances.
Remember Chris Rainey in 2010? That’s discussed in “Swamp Kings.” Chris made a threatening text to a woman and was suspended for half the season. That Meyer didn’t dismiss him from the team created a hailstorm of media outrage. I guess nobody ever understood that football was Chris Rainey’s ticket. He was born in prison. His dad was in prison. His mother was in prison when she brought him into the world. He grew up on the streets of Lakeland until he wound up in the care of Lisa and Rob Webster, parents of Mike and Maurkice Pouncey. Chris Rainey came back to UF, played the rest of the 2010 season and made All-SEC as a senior playing for Will Muschamp. He played in the NFL and became a perpetual all-star in the Canadian Football League. He has a degree from the University of Florida. He’s married and has five kids. That doesn’t happen if Urban Meyer had given up on him.
Coaches give kids second chances all the time because they realize so many of the kids who play for them come from single-parent homes or else they’ve been raised by a grandmother or an aunt. Coaches are the only male dominant figures in their lives. Take that away and bad things tend to happen. We don’t keep track of all the kids who got a second chance who made the most of it, got their college degree and now have a success story in something other than football, but we hear all about the ones who got kicked off teams and wound up in prison.
There are quite a few kids who played football at Florida for Urban Meyer who were given an opportunity to turn their lives around. There are also kids who are bitter about how hard Meyer drove them and how it drove them to either quit or forever hold a grudge. At the end of “Swamp Kings,” Meyer said he would like to apologize to all the kids he drove too hard. For some, that admission might have soothed some old wounds. For others, it might not be nearly enough, but you can’t relive the past. What happened is over and done with.
Those who still feel jilted because Urban Meyer walked away from Florida football are dead wrong. The University of Florida got exactly what it wanted although Meyer’s reign lasted only six years. Urban isn’t to blame for what Florida football became from 2011-21. If you want to point a finger, point it at the people who hired the coaches who went 84-48.
If you’re of the opinion that “Swamp Kings” should have been more of a hit piece on Meyer, then do take into consideration that Netflix produced this documentary, not Urban Meyer. Netflix chose the content and directed the narrative. If Netflix had wished a hit piece, it had plenty of opportunity to point out every discretion during the Meyer years.
Instead, it chose to show how one of the greatest coaches in college football history – 187-32, an .854 winning percentage that ranks third all-time – was as vulnerable as he was driven. It chose to show how the sheer intensity of his will rescued Florida from becoming a program where losing four and five games a year is acceptable. Meyer was hired to win championships and he delivered without once incurring the wrath of the NCAA (see Muschamp, see Mullen) or lying that Florida fans were making death threats to his family (see McElwain).
After six years, Urban Meyer crashed and burned. The easy thing is to say he could have done it differently, but Urban Meyer without the intensity doesn’t work. He’s like his Sea Ray. He’s at his best when he’s full throttle. That’s what we got for six years. It’s time for the entire Gator Nation to appreciate it.
