College football

College football will miss Urban Meyer

Sport won’t be the same without one of its most respected figures

John Bazemore / AP

Urban Meyer will be not just at Florida, but in college football in general.

By Dave Curtis

updated 12:17 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2009

The word Saturday night was that Urban Meyer's life is not in danger, and that with better attention to his health, he will be fine. The Florida Gators, with their talent pool and tradition and dollars, figure to endure Meyer's resignation and remain among their sport's elite. Everything, it seems, will be OK in Gainesville.

College football, on the other hand, slipped some with the news that Meyer will step down after Friday's Sugar Bowl against Cincinnati. As long as he's off the sideline and the recruiting trail and the one-on-one player meetings, be it for a year or forever, the sport loses some of what makes it great.

"In every way," Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson told Sporting News, "he's one of the most successful coaches there has been."

Meyer, named a head coach for the first nine years ago this month, already owns a Hall of Fame-worthy career, from building Bowling Green into a winner, to making Utah the original BCS buster, to re-energizing dormant Florida. He coached a Heisman winner, a couple handfuls of All-Americans and maybe this year's NFL Rookie of the Year. He made Sporting News' College Football Coach of the Decade an easy choice.

Of course, the two national championships he won with the Gators will lead his resume. And they lifted Florida from SEC middling to a spot in the debate about the top program in the country.

"It's hard to express what Urban has done," said Jack Youngblood, an NFL Hall of Famer, Florida grad and member of the school's Ring of Honor. "He brought it back to the level we have all, forever, expected our program to be."

Love it or loathe it, a powerhouse Gators team makes college football more fun. Ditto for USC and Alabama, Texas and Notre Dame. And that achievement alone shows Meyer's contribution to the game. But it has company for the coach's best attribute.

Meyer has long insisted that football is personnel-driven and that coaching is a people business. The words are staples of his media interviews and booster club speeches and messages to assistant coaches. And his work has provided a model for how to manage a thriving college football program.

Sure, he had players break the law in most dubious ways. Almost every coach in the country can relate. But Meyer drew admirers across the board, from his peers to his players, for how he handled those cases. Some players he dismissed, some he gave myriad chances to change their lives.

"He's the greatest coach I've ever had," said Ray McDonald, a San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman who started at Florida in 2005 and 2006. "When I was going through my knee surgeries, he opened his house to me, like I was family. He helped so many guys like me. It meant so much."

Florida knows how much it means. And that's why over the next few days, athletic director Jeremy Foley should hire as close to a Meyer clone as there is.

"We have to continue the plan he has instituted and developed," Youngblood said. "His legacy needs to continue right now."

If it does, then everything will be fine for Florida football. But the game overall, without one of its most respected figures, just won't be the same.

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