Should we necessarily hate Urban Meyer?

First of all, I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving…I’ll hastily type up a post about the things I’m thankful for tomorrow (and trust me, it’s a list you’ll want to read). Also, yes, my blog is still alive…on life support, but alive. Getting lazy in every aspect of my life, and it’s kicking my ass right now.

Let’s get down to business though (and not to defeat the Huns): Urban Meyer‘s definitely taking the job at Ohio State. No ifs ands or buts around it….I don’t care how many times he denies it, he’s going there. In some immediate sense, I understand his denial because it will, at least somewhat temporarily, keep the press out of his home for a few days while he spends some time with his family.

Which gets my next point: family. One of the main reasons he “decided to leave” was because of his family (which stemmed from his big Kahuna reason being his health). I still believe him, but I don’t like how he made it seem like he was taking an extended period of time to be with his family. We all knew he was going to come back to coaching some day, even if not in Gainesville. But he made it seem like he wanted to settle down for a bit longer to be with his children and his wife. But let’s be real though…if I’m not mistaken, I think both daughters are now in college? When your kids go off to college, we should know better than to think he’s going to “spend time with them” heavily. Yeah, sure, his daughters are involved in collegiate sports (at least one of them is) and yeah, maybe he wanted to go to their games and such. I’m not saying he’s not a loving parent, not at all. But I guarantee you that no matter what, he would do his best to make it out to his daughter’s games even if he was coaching at UF. If he didn’t, well then maybe that “good parent” claim can be more scrutinized. My point is this: whether it was one year or five years later, we’d still be giving him shit about the family excuse.

Where I’m having issue with some people is everyone knocking him by saying he was lying about health issues…especially with him coming back so early. Now I don’t have any inside information about his real health issues…but assuming what we did hear is true, let’s be real: he had some chest pain/minor heart problems that were greatly exacerbated by stress. I faced these similar issues when I was hospitalized senior year of high school with what we’ll call a hypertensive crisis (220/160 blood pressure, if you must know). After being put on medication (still on it to this day), and learning ways to reduce stress (I know that seems impossible, but believe me I’m better this time around), I got back to my normal routine. If anything, we should’ve smelled something funny in the water when he took a travelling ESPN analyst job. I don’t think being a commentator or analyst is THAT much easier than being a head coach…sure there’s much less stress in one sense, but there’s a different kind of stress that exists in the TV world too. But my point is this: health problems can be recovered from with time, medication, and certain management techniques. Don’t knock him because you think he’s lying, knock him because of the way he exited, and the way he had to be sneaky about it. I understand that there’s confidentiality agreements and galore about this stuff…but kind of like how Lebron handled Cleveland, I felt like Urban could’ve handled this situation better.

Don’t portray Urban as necessarily a big fat liar…be thankful for the fact he brought two National Championships to our doorsteps (even if he may have done it with Zook’s recruits). But you can call him a quitter…that’s the more appropriate term, I think.

And at the very least, he’s not going to a school in the SEC. Be thankful for that.