Urban Meyer Spent a Year with His Family and Decided He’d Had Enough

Urban Meyer may be a fantastic football coach, but he’s a horrendous liar. Two years ago, he retired citing health concerns. The reason was legitimate given that he went to the hospital after a game for heart problems. He was spooked by the sudden death of Skip Prosser. But as soon as Florida began talking about his replacements, he decided his health was no longer too important.

A year later, Meyer decided to step down again, only this time he cited family as his reason.

“At the end of the day, I’m very convinced that you’re going to be judged on how you are as a husband and as a father and not on how many bowl games we won,” Meyer said at a campus news conference.

“I’ve not seen my two girls play high school sports. They’re both very talented Division I-A volleyball players, so I missed those four years. I missed two already with one away at college. I can’t get that time back,” he said.

Alright, so Urban was a family man. He wanted to spend time with his children. Perfectly understandable, and in many senses, his desire was even admirable. But what does it say about him if he goes back to coaching less than a year later? That he’s no longer a family man? That being a dad was no longer as important? It’s probably just that he loves coaching so much he couldn’t stay away too long, or maybe he didn’t like his situation at Florida (was there a conflict with the administration?).

Urb would have been much better off saying he needed a break from coaching. The way he was talking, it was like he was going to take 4-5 years off instead of 10 months. Plus, he was doing so much work for ESPN even his daughter complained about all his travel. Oh yeah, and remember back in April when his daughters were adamant that he was not going to Ohio State? How does that look now. Once again, Urban Meyer has only taught us that he’s just not very good at telling the public how he’s really feeling.