The Urban Meyer Departure Tour continues on

I’m getting the impression that the Florida media didn’t exactly throw a party for Corch when he left the Gators for good.  Gene Frenette joins the club by calling Meyer “disingenuous” and “… awfully fickle and a classic frontrunner”.  Funny, but I don’t remember seeing those descriptions being tossed around when Seat 37F was in play.

Wouldn’t you love to see the bravery on display if one of those guys got shit-canned in the Sunshine State and could only find a replacement job covering Ohio State?

About these ads

Wednesday morning buffet

Something to get you through the start of another long offseason, since Justified wrapped up last night:

• Bobby Lowder’s departure from Auburn’s board of trustees is final.
• Kwame Geathers and John Jenkins are getting lots and lots of love this spring.
• Now that Urban Meyer is safely out of state, Pat Dooley can get all courageous about Corch’s shortcomings.
• On the other hand, you knew how Mike Bianchi was going to react to Matt Hayes’ piece.
• It’s 2:20 in the morning at a Whataburger in the Florida Panhandle and an Auburn fan is chanting “War Eagle”.  Repeatedly.  What do you think is gonna happen?
• Christian Robinson channels his inner Zooker, talks about not being distracted by “noise”.
• Here’s a list of dos and don’ts for NCAA bowl advertising and promotional policies.
• When it rains, it pours.
• And in things you need to know, Bill Connelly gives you the poop on Missouri’s cornerbacks.

Urban Meyer’s Circle of Trust

When you have a story that starts out with this…

The uproar and controversy of Urban Meyer’s stunning recruiting coup at Ohio State settled in and Stefon Diggs, still on the Buckeyes’ wish list, was debating his future.

Diggs, the second-highest rated wide receiver in the country, had narrowed his list of potential schools to Maryland, Florida and Ohio State. For more than a week following National Signing Day on Feb. 1, and before Diggs eventually signed with Maryland, Meyer relentlessly pursued Diggs.

Multiple sources told Sporting News that Meyer—who won two national championships in six years at Florida and cemented his legacy as one of the game’s greatest coaches—told the Diggs family that he wouldn’t let his son go to Florida because of significant character issues in the locker room.  [Emphasis added.]

… and goes downhill from there:

But multiple former players and others close to the program say the timing of his departure was also tied to the roster he left behind. Remember it was Meyer who hinted the program that won 13 games in 2006, 2008 and 2009—and lost only 10 games from 2005-09—was flawed beyond the unsuspecting eye.

Now those issues have surfaced for all to see. Left in the wake of Meyer’s resignation were problems that can destroy a coaching career: drug use among players, a philosophy of preferential treatment for certain players, a sense of entitlement among all players and roster management by scholarship manipulation.

The coach who holds himself above the seedy underbelly of the game; who as an ESPN television analyst in 2011 publicly berated the ills of college football; left a program mired in the very things he has criticized.

“The program,” former Florida safety Bryan Thomas said, “was out of control.”

… all you can say is wow.  (Meyer is probably saying something much stronger.)

I don’t know what the Ohio State equivalent of Seat 37F is, but this piece is so damaging that I think Matt Hayes should consider himself extremely fortunate if that’s as far as Corch banishes him.  In the meantime, I expect to hear that this article is being handed out to parents on the recruiting trail like candy.  It’s brutal.

“Don’t screw him up.”

The New York Times traces the evolution of Tim Tebow from college quarterback with mechanics problems to Tim Tebow, college quarterback with mechanics problems that his head coach (despite public utterances to the contrary) didn’t really care about.

“I don’t know if there’s ever been anybody in a team sport that’s dominated as much as Tim, and yet everyone would go, ‘Can he play at the next level?’ ” said Gary Danielson, a longtime college football analyst for CBS Sports and a former quarterback.

Skepticism abounded two years ago for the same reasons it does now: his throwing mechanics, which are about as awkward as a seventh-grade dance. He adjusted his motion at least twice at Florida, once more with a team of quarterback gurus before the draft and again with the Denver Broncos, who, unconvinced of his long-term viability, sent him to the Jets, who almost certainly have their own thoughts on the matter. The subject is bound to come up Monday, when Tebow, almost surely the N.F.L.’s most famous backup, is introduced at a news conference at team headquarters in Florham Park, N.J.

“If there’s something that needs improving, he just works relentlessly at it,” said Temple Coach Steve Addazio, who was Florida’s offensive coordinator when Tebow was a senior. “He’s just wired that way.”

Addazio has saved the evaluation he wrote more than six years ago of Tebow, then a junior playing for Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. On it, he wrote this sentence: “We want this guy on our team.” Tebow fit perfectly into the Gators’ dynamic spread offense, a system devised to win games — which he did — but that did not necessarily prepare him for the N.F.L.

The point here isn’t that Florida had the wrong approach with Tebow.  It didn’t.  It wasn’t Meyer’s responsibility to prepare Tebow for the NFL; it was his responsibility to best deploy his talented quarterback to win as many games as possible.

But what’s interesting is to compare what Mullen was asked to do with his star quarterback and compare that to Loeffler’s marching instructions.  Mullen had a concern that Tebow’s mechanics were potentially harmful in a physical sense and sought to mitigate the problem.  Loeffler was brought in with all sorts of PR hype but behind the scenes was instructed not to muck up a good thing.  How did that work out?  About as you’d expect.

It was never about getting Tebow ready for the pros.  It was about shielding Corch from criticism on the recruiting trail that his system wasn’t conducive to producing quarterbacks who could prosper on the next level.  With Tebow at least, the jury is still very much out on that.  It’ll be interesting to hear if anyone tries to use that against Meyer in recruiting now.

************************************************************************************

UPDATE:  This hilarious Charles Pierce skewering of the lastest embarrassment from Ross Douthat begs the question of why God doesn’t go ahead and fix Tebow’s mechanics.

Friday morning buffet

You’re about to survive another working week, so dig in.

• I’m looking forward to seeing Ray Drew at the G-Day game.
• Georgia is getting better national title odds than any SEC teams not named Alabama or LSU.
• No Pac-12 team will play in one of those neutral site openers unless all broadcast rights are given to the conference.
• Aaron Murray believes he’s at his best when he’s having fun playing.
• But he’s not happy Malcolm Mitchell is on defense this spring.
• I’m sorry to see this news.
• Michael Carvell actually wanted to know if SOD ever thought about hiring his dad to recruit for Tennessee.  Jeebus.
• As a prediction, it’s not that interesting, but as a reflection of conventional wisdom it might be:  CFN picks Georgia to go on a winning streak against Florida.
• Urban Meyer employs the Johnson Doctrine.  It works.

Don’t cry for me, Gainesville.

This weekend, between the fried shrimp and classic cars, I managed to read this epic troll from Mike Bianchi.  And when I say epic, I mean epic.  I’m not sure how Bianchi ever tops this, for one:

As the years have passed since he was run out of Florida, I’ve often wondered whether Zook got a fair shake — from fans, from administrators and from those of us in the media. When you see where the program is now after Urban Meyer left it in a mess, the Zook years are starting to look pretty good. Zook’s teams were never as pathetic as UF has been the past two seasons, when the Gators won just 15 games and trotted out offenses that were unwatchable.

As the years roll by, UF fans more and more seem to appreciate what Zook did for the program.

Gosh, that almost makes you wonder why Jeremy Foley didn’t man up, admit his mistake and beg Zooker to come back and salvage the program when Corch left.  Who really cares about those two national titles Florida won under Meyer, anyway?

Speaking of which, a man can dream can’t he?

Two years after Zook was axed, Meyer won the national title with 21 of 22 Zook recruits starting for the team. Zook still wonders what might have happened if he had been able to survive longer than 21/2 years at UF. Would he have won a national title?

I don’t know,” he says, “but I sure would have liked to have had the opportunity to try.”

Spoken like a man who was Croom’d.

Zook just shakes his head.

“That’s my legacy to the profession,” he says. “I’m the first guy who had a FireTheCoach.com website. I had no chance. From the day I walked into the introductory press conference, I was fired.”

Bianchi has painted his masterpiece.   A man can do great things when the threat of being banished to Seat 37F no longer looms large.

Friday morning buffet

Grab a plate and do your thing.

• SOD defends signing Deion Bonner.  Sure sounds noble, but I still wouldn’t want to be the guy with the locker next to Bonner.
• Mark Richt thinks the way to improve last year’s horrendous showing on special teams is with personnel.  We’ll find out, because he’s not making any changes in the coaching assignments.
• Matt Hayes’ piece on the plus-one is a perfect exercise in cynicism.  Well, almost perfect:  “The biggest problem I have with the Group of 12 — all good men trying to do the right thing — is they’re being pushed into a situation they want no part of.”  Yeah, right.
• There’s no way the WWL can bring back Craig James after his Texas Senate campaign goes up in smoke, is there?
• Rating 2011′s  college quarterbacks by QB score (“if you generate yards and avoid turnovers, you will be rewarded”) yields some different results than does the standard passer rating formula.
• “The biggest thing I took from working with Coach Meyer was that Xs and Os are about one percent of why we were successful (at Florida) and why we will be successful here.”
• List of projected SEC quarterback starters in order of career wins here.
• Georgia isn’t wasting any time filling the slots that opened up in the defensive backfield.

***********************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Promises, promises.

Asked ESPN PR following Q today: How would Craig James's political comments be weighed by ESPN/Disney regarding any attempt to get re-hired?—
Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) February 24, 2012

Responded an ESPN spokesperson:"You are asking a hypothetical since we don’t intend to bring Craig [James] back." So it's on the record.—
Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) February 24, 2012

ESPN, we’re holding your ass to this, understand?  (h/t Doug)

Tuesday morning buffet

Time to grab a bite.

• Gordon Gee continues to say the darnedest things.
• Mike Bianchi doubles down on the Urban Meyer bashing.
• With the new kickoff rules, the NCAA intends to monitor directional kicking.
• Wishful thinking:  “Every day Craig shares his message with voters, he gathers more support,” said Meredith Turney, a spokeswoman for James.
• Harvey Updyke’s lawyer:  Wess has argued previously that the trees, which are the focal point of post-game celebrations, are not venerated objects because they are “routinely rolled with toilet paper.”  It’s gonna be a fun trial.
• Jordan Jenkins has the lowdown on some position moves on Georgia’s defense.
• SEC coaches were wrong about the effects of an expanded conference schedule the last time it happened.
• The Red and Black gets its groove back:  writer admits she doesn’t know the facts behind the Commings suspension as well as Richt, but still finds the coach to have been too lenient in his treatment of the player.

Every day, every day, every day Corch writes the book.

And you can feel that next chapter coming on.

“I was very angry that would even be brought up, and there were fellow Big Ten coaches who were angry as well. And the commissioner was very angry, so there was a lot of…to have that make the presses, especially when it’s inaccurate, legally you’re not allowed to do that. That’s slander. To use someone’s name in terms like that is very wrong, but we moved on.”

Yeah, right.

Friendly word of advice for Bret Bielema:  the next time you face the Buckeyes, you might want to keep an eye on how they’re managing their second half timeouts.

“We at the Big Ten don’t want to be like the SEC—in any way, shape or form.”

Hell has truly frozen over.  In a mere two months, Bret Bielema and Mark Dantonio have managed to accomplish something that never happened in five years in the SEC – make me side with Urban Meyer.  Bielema, in fact, is so upset over Meyer’s recruiting tactics that his mommy is going to the principal his athletic director is going to the conference commissioner about it.

Just so we’re clear: Bielema wasn’t talking about winning national championships. He was talking about Meyer’s recruiting tactics—and how after a little more than two months on the job, Meyer already is getting under the skin of his colleagues.

Just how much, you ask? Bielema, whose teams have won more games than any other Big Ten team in his six seasons in Madison, says Badgers athletic director Barry Alvarez will speak Friday with Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany about Meyer’s recruiting methods during the league’s athletic director meetings in Chicago.

During his National Signing Day press conference, Bielema hinted that Meyer was using “illegal” recruiting practices. He said as much again Thursday when contacted by Sporting News, and without getting into specifics offered this:

“I called Urban and we spoke about it,” Bielema said. “We talked about it, and he said it would stop and it did. I’ll let our commissioner deal with anything else. That’s not who we are (in the Big Ten). We settle things among ourselves as coaches.”

The big complaint?  That Meyer won’t adhere to the Big Ten’s “gentlemen’s agreement”.

Wisconsin’s Bret Bielema thinks otherwise: he thinks that the Big Ten should adhere to a gentlemen’s agreement that, according to Bielema, has defined the conference’s recruiting efforts for generations. At its core, this agreement makes verbal commits — that’s a non-binding, unofficial commitment, by the way — out of bounds for any coach working within the conference.

How quaint.   How irrelevant.

What does a Big Ten coach do when one of his verbal commitments gets flipped by a coach from another conference?  Hold his breath until his face turns blue?  Does Bielema really think Delany is going to order Meyer to stop talking to recruits who have given verbal commitments to other Big Ten schools?  (My prediction:  watch for Big Ten coaches to lead a push for an early signing period.)

Whining about Urban Meyer is a bad move.  It’s a sign of weakness.  Hint to Bielema:  if you’ve got to whine about something related to recruiting, save it for an 18-year old who has a hard time making up his mind.  That’s the way we roll in the SEC, bitch.

*************************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Game on.

Meyer reportedly fired back while at the Ohio High School coaches clinic on Friday morning.

“You’re pissed because we went after a committed guy? Guess what, we got 9 guys who better go do it again,” said Meyer. “Do it a little harder next time.”

*************************************************************************************

UPDATE #2:  Barry Alvarez to Bret Bielema:  Shut up, boy.

*************************************************************************************

UPDATE #3:  The Big Ten’s most useless athletic director chimes in.

This statement from Ohio State AD Gene Smith was released by the school early afternoon on Friday:

“I am disappointed that negative references have been made about our football coaches and particularly head coach Urban Meyer regarding recruiting. In our league appropriate protocol, if you have concerns, is to share those concerns with your athletic director. Then your athletic director will make the determination on the appropriate communications from that point forward. The athletic directors in our league are professionals and communicate with each other extremely well. Urban Meyer and his staff have had a compliance conscience since they’ve arrived.”

Pretty rich, coming from Jim Tressel’s enabler.