Urban Meyer is the story of the weekend; Last word on a few comments

On a weekend when the only real story in sports appeared to be the jockeying for NFL playoff positions, Urban Meyer put the spotlight squarely on himself early on Saturday evening with the stunning announcement that he was stepping down as Florida’s football coach at the age of 45 after a remarkable five year run of success.

To say that Meyer’s announcement overshadowed the Meineke Car Care Bowl and the Emerald Bowl would be like saying that Tiger Woods’ absence from the 18 man exhibition he was supposed to host a few weeks ago overshadowed Jim Furyk’s victory in the event.

This really was a big deal.

And then on Sunday it wasn’t nearly as big a deal. Meyer showed up at a press conference in New Orleans and said, never mind, he was just taking a leave of absence and he expected to coach Florida next fall. All that talk about taking care of his health and his family and all that sadness in the voices of the ESPN talking heads, well, it wasn’t all that sad after all. Meyer decided after watching his team practice on Sunday that regardless of what the doctors have told him about his heart issues, a couple months off and he’ll be ready to go.

Look, I’m the last person in the world to in any way make light of heart issues. I can tell you from personal experience this isn’t something you mess around with. A doctor looks at you on Friday afternoon and says you need open heart surgery on Monday, you don’t call him on Saturday and say, “you know I wrote a really good column this morning, so I’m just going to take it easy for a few months and then, you know, be good as new.”

I understand Meyer doesn’t have seven blockages in his arteries and he hasn’t got a doctor looking at him telling him he’s headed for, “A Tim Russert episode,” (which is exactly what I was told) but this is serious stuff. You don’t call your team together a week before a bowl game and tell them you’re quitting unless some doctor (or doctors) has put the fear of God in you.

I’m sure what Meyer is thinking is hat he can put together a health regimen that will make it possible for him to continue to coach and not jeopardize his health. Without knowing the specifics of his problem—which he continues to be coy about at least at the moment—it is difficult to say exactly what Meyer will have to do to get himself cleared to coach.

Here’s what I do know: People rarely change; especially successful people. Oh maybe for a little while after they get a scare put into them. When Joe Gibbs came back to coach the Washington Redskins in 2004 he explained that the exhausting lifestyle that had driven him from coaching was a thing of the past. There would be no more sleeping at the office; no more all-nighters preparing game plans. That lasted until about midway through the first season back. You are who you are.

Even in my own life I can see it. The first couple months after my surgery I behaved impeccably: I ate well, I didn’t drink at all, I went to bed early, I did my walking just about every day. Then I started to feel better and stronger. A steak slipped into my diet here and there; some wine on occasion. My exercise, even now that I’m back swimming, has been sporadic. I have now made a vow that starting New Year’s I’m back to my post-surgery regimen: more exercise, less food. Can I do it? I honestly don’t know.

Whenever Meyer comes back he’s going to tell his doctors and himself that he won’t put in killer hours and he won’t stress so much about the South Carolina game or that recruit who runs a 4.24 from Delray Beach who might want the Gators but might want Miami or Florida State too. He’ll absolutely believe that he’s a changed man and he’s learned his lesson from the scare he got after losing to Alabama in The SEC title game.

Maybe he can do it. Football coaches are remarkably disciplined people who almost get used to being sleep-deprived during the season. But the chances are good that he’ll gradually revert to being the Urban Meyer who came from nowhere 10 years ago to being the most successful college football coach in the country. That means obsessing about every detail and trusting your lieutenants with everything except the really important stuff—like making sure the redshirts get their time in the weight room while the team is on a trip. Or that all the tickets for recruits are in the correct section of the stadium. Stuff like that.

Having nothing to do with football, you have to wish Meyer the best. But he made an interesting comment Sunday, one that he might do well to think about. He was talking about when he first got into coaching 24 years ago. “I didn’t realize then,” he said, “what it was really going to end up being all about.”

He was talking about the time commitment, the emotional commitment, the draining nature of the job. He talked about how awed he was by Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden. Paterno became the Penn State head coach when Meyer was two-years-old. Meyer was six when Bowden got his first Division 1 head coaching job at West Virginia.

Right now Meyer believes the one thing he can do well in life is coach football. That’s rarely the case with smart, driven people. He’s climbed the college football mountain and made the huge money coaches at his level make. My hope is that during his ‘leave of absence,’ he gives some thought to finding a second act. I’m just guessing but I suspect that would probably be the best thing he can do for himself and for those who love him.

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On a much less pleasant topic than the hope that Urban Meyer can find future health and happiness, I’m going to say a few FINAL words on this whole Rutgers thing and then those who disagree with me or think me the devil are free to post away but this is the end of it on my side of the equation.

Reading the pro-Greg Schiano/anti-me comments that were posted by some I was reminded of something Bob Knight said to me many years ago: “I know as long as I continue to win (at Indiana) people will think me eccentric. If I ever stop winning, they’ll think me an embarrassment.”

That pretty much sums up the life of a coach. Schiano has (as I’ve said repeatedly) done a good job turning Rutgers from a laughing stock into a solid Division 1-A program. Thus, he MUST be a good guy in the hearts and minds of his fans. I get that. I’m happy to simply agree to disagree but I have to respond to a few things, especially some “facts,” that are just wrong.

• --Someone posting said that when you talk about “bad,” people you should be talking about Osama Bin Laden. That name doesn’t belong in any conversation about sports. There’s a large, large gap between being a bad guy and being evil incarnate. Let’s keep it real folks
• --Several people wrote that I showed my ‘bias,’ in expressing my opinions on Pernetti and Schiano. Um, yeah folks, that’s sort of what a blog is about—sharing stories and opinions. That assumption is that you understand opinions comes with bias.
• --One guy actually went ballistic because I dared say that Schiano was a bad coach and Pernetti’s bobo. I am hoping he didn’t learn to read at Rutgers: I wrote that Schiano was a GOOD coach and that Pernetti was HIS bobo. Everybody take a deep breath.
• --Another poster said that Rutgers had a better graduation rate for football players than Navy. Wrong. Rutgers graduation rate is very good; Navy’s has led the country in, I believe, seven of the last eight years.
• --Someone else said I had taken my dislike for Schiano and Tim Pernetti and used it to attack Rutgers. Please READ the blog. I’ve specifically and repeatedly talked about my respect for Rutgers.
• --Another poster claimed the reason Rutgers stayed on the field at Navy during the march-on was because someone on Schiano’s staff screwed up and didn’t properly pass the information on to him. Oh please. No assistant would fail to tell his boss something like that. That’s what is called excuse-making. I will say this: Schiano has made a point of keeping his team on the field, win or lose, for the playing of the Navy alma mater the last few years. Maybe he felt guilty about messing up that first year but he did get it right.
• --Someone said running the score up against Division 1-AA schools “didn’t matter.” Actually running the score up against a conference opponent doesn’t really matter because those programs are on equal footing. Embarrassing kids sent in to a 1-A stadium so their school can collect a guarantee check is what’s unseemly. I don’t care if Rutgers beats Louisville 100-0. That’s on Louisville. Norfolk State is another story.
• --Finally, someone actually tried to invoke the Buckley amendment as the reason for Schiano’s in-game secrecy about injuries. Sorry, doesn’t wash. We aren’t talking a kid’s grades here, we’re talking an injury that has taken place in a public place (including national TV). You don’t have to give specifics of his treatment you simply need to say, “he’s hurt his knee and is being taken for x-rays and won’t return,” or “it’s just a twisted ankle, they’re taping him he should be back.” Or whatever.
  

Finally, thanks to all those who saw this is what it is: a minor argument and nothing more, a discussion topic that happened to come up during a radio appearance.

Bottom line: Schiano wins games, no one needs to make excuses for him. But I’m guessing those who have posted before will--again. Have at it. I’m done on this topic.

Discussing the Rutgers talk from The Kornheiser Show

I was going to take the day off—and give all of you a day off—to contemplate the holidays and the joys of the season.

Then this morning someone told me I needed to check the comments from my appearance yesterday on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show (which you can listen to here on the blog if you so desire).

It seems I’ve upset some Rutgers people by saying bad things about the school’s football coach and athletic director. The irony is, if you listen, I started my response to Tony’s question about a long simmering controversy at Rutgers about the importance of—and the money spent on—athletics by saying, “look, Rutgers is a very good school.” Tony instantly challenged that because he believes the only institution of higher learning in the United States that is any good is Binghamton, his alma mater.

I then said that there had been an ongoing battle between the academic side at Rutgers and the jock side over how much should be invested in trying to have a good football team. One angry poster conceded that was true but said the battle was, “completely un-necessary.” Perhaps true but there’s no doubting its existence.

I then said that Greg Schiano was a good coach and a bad guy. That set Rutgers people off and they demanded I ‘back up,’ those comments. Okay, here goes.

• Schiano is not (as you point out) the only coach who runs up scores. But he constantly insists he’s NOT running up the score. A few years ago, up 42-0 in the SECOND quarter against Norfolk State (Norfolk State?) he used all three of his time outs to score again before halftime. He then insisted the move was justified because you never knew if a team might rally in the second half. Please.
• The first time Schiano took a team to play at Navy he was sent—as is customary—a pre-game itinerary. Navy’s is a little different than most schools because the Brigade of Midshipmen marches on before the game, which means the teams (BOTH teams) need to leave the field a few minutes earlier than normal. Coaches are always alerted to this and know it is part of playing a game at Navy. Schiano not only objected, he kept his team on the field while the brigade began its march-on. Then he insisted after the game he hadn’t been informed about the march-on. Sorry Rutgers folks, that just wasn’t the case.
• Schiano (like a lot of coaches) is an absolute control freak. Did any of you watch the bowl game? Even the ESPN sideline reporter was frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t get anything resembling a semi-honest answer—or any answer at all—about Rutgers players who came out of the game hurt. What was Schiano doing, hiding an injury from next week’s opponent? Oh wait, the next game isn’t until September. Again, he’s certainly not unique in doing this but it gets old with all these guys.
  

As for Athletic Director Tim Pernetti, as it happens, I have had direct, unpleasant dealings with him dating back several years. Without going into too much detail—we’ve all got better things to do—this is what happened: Pernetti was program director (or something) at CBS College Sports and they picked up the rights to The Patriot League basketball package, which I had done since its inception as the color commentator. Pernetti had cut a deal with the league that the network would pay the production costs for the Army-Navy game (usually it is the other way around) but HE wanted control of the so-called ‘talent,’ for that game.

If there’s one game in that package I always want to do and believe I should do it is Army-Navy. I got a call from Billy Stone, who worked then as now for CBS College and is a friend of Pernetti’s. “If you want to do Army-Navy you’re going to have to send Tim an e-mail and ask him to let you do it,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m telling you, this is the way Tim is. He likes to feel in control of things.”

I was tempted to say the heck with it (or something worse) but I decided to play the silly game. I wrote Tim a note, pointed out my connection to the two schools (in case he didn’t know) and said it was important to me to do that game. I always asked Carolyn Femovich, the league’s executive director, to let Tim know that the league wanted me to do the game. Tim wrote back and said he would be happy to have me do the game.

Okay, fine. A ridiculous ritual but I swallowed my pride and dealt with it. That was in August. A week before the game I received an e-mail from Pernetti. It said that Steve Lappas would be doing color on the game and he would like to “invite,” me to “play a role in the telecast.”

I wrote back and said, “no thanks.”

His response was to write back and ask me, “what the problem was.” I said that when we had agreed in August I would do the game it certainly wasn’t as a sideline guy or something like that. I happen to like Steve Lappas a lot but having him do color on Army-Navy instead of me would be like having me do color on Villanova-U-Mass over him. I told him I was going to let Carolyn know she’d need a color guy for the rest of the package (Army-Navy was the opener) since if I didn’t do that game I would pass on the rest. My feeling was that I had played Pernetti's power game in the summer and now he was still trying to stick it to me--I honestly don't know why other than his power thing--and two could play at that game.

The league’s athletic directors and coaches weren’t happy when they heard this news. I’ve known most of them a long time and I believe they think I know and understand their league quite well—better than Steve Lappas. They made it clear to Carolyn that she needed to get this fixed. She called Pernetti and told him I had to do the game.

So, I got another call from Pernetti. “I just wanted to close the loop on this Army-Navy thing,” he said.

“Close the loop?” I said.

“I’ve decided to put Steve Lappas on another game.”

HE had decided. Rather than call him on it, I just said, fine, I’d be happy to do the game. Then he said, “I just want you to know I don’t appreciate the way you handled this.”

I won’t repeat my entire answer here but I told him if he didn’t like the way I’d handled him big-timing me in the summer; lying and then trying to bully his way through the whole thing, I really was okay with it.

Since then, Tim and I haven’t been close. I do believe he’s a bad guy and his relationship with Schiano got him the AD’s job. If you were to ask people who worked with him at CBS College I think you’d find there were few tears shed when he left.

So, Rutgers fans, we can agree to disagree on how I feel about Schiano and Pernetti but I didn’t make those statements without having reason to make them. I do NOT think the 11,000 seat expansion was needed—sellouts are better than empty seats. I DO think Rutgers is a very good school no matter what Tony says and there are few people I admire more in sports than Rutgers alum David Stern.

So, as I said, let’s all disagree and try—in the holiday spirit—to get along. For the record, one of my favorite college basketball teams as a kid was the Rutgers team that finished third in the 1967 NIT with a coach named Bill Foster and guards named Bobby Lloyd and Jim Valvano. I have nothing but respect for the school. I just don’t especially like the football coach—who has done an excellent job—or the athletic director.

Happy holidays.