We joke about how life begins in 1990 for the typical Gator fan, but it looks like we should include Urban Meyer in that group, too.
Meyer is being lionized for some critical comments about his former profession which he made in a radio interview the other day, but here’s the one that caught my eye:
“What I’ve seen the last five years is a complete turn in the integrity of the college coaching profession. It’s completely turned the other way. Right now, it’s not good because the risk-reward is ‘have at it, do what you’ve got to do get the great player, go win games and at the end of the day we’ll find out what happens down the road …”
A complete turn in the last five years? Obviously nobody’s taken the time to acquaint him with the track record of one of his predecessors.
And in 1995, on the NBC News program ”Dateline,” he said of his troubles at Florida (107 charges of rules violations and 59 sanctions): ”Did I violate some rules? Yes. Does that make me a cheater? If it does, yes I am. There wasn’t room for anything but winning. Nothing. Winning was the sole obsession, to a fault.”
Florida had to vacate its first SEC title because of improprieties which occurred under Pell. Funny how Corch sounds unaware of that.
Get The Picture 
All hail the sainted Corch, who is free from the weaknesses of ordinary men, and who conducted himself completely above the fray during his reign.
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Or Clemson, Alabama, Auburn, SMU, etc. etc.
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Yes, Urban Meyer, pillar of integrity, who let a man who threatened to kill his girlfriend back on the team because the guy’s fast. The man’s a regular Eliot Ness.
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And initially suspended Brandon Spikes for a half until the sainted Spikes “requested” he be punished for the entire game.
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And laughed off a guy who fired an automatic assault rifle into the air in a parking lot and welcomed him back onto the team.
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Corch did not coach BIG time college football until 5 yrs ago, Welcome to the SEC! Things are a bit different in Utah & Bowling Green or what ever mid tier stop he had before arriving at Gatorville
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He had to quit because it’s too dirty.
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He would never lie to recruits. He would never be slack on discipline. He would never denigrate media because they wrote something he did not want published. He is such a stand-up guy… but I think that’s because his head is so far up his ass it would be dangerous to sit down.
Case study:
Urban Meyer’s smugness: product of Gainesville livin’ or the factor that attracted him there in the first place?
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What a sanctimonious SOB…I so look forward to hearing his intelligent, smarter than me, analysis this fall. Maybe they’ll pair him with Jesse Palmer…excuse me, I’ve got to go puke…
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Integrity was never a problem for Meyer until other SEC teams started handing his ass to him on the field.
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Tebow granted Corch absolution of all past sins.
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While I get that FL certainly hasn’t been squeaky clean, as far as I can tell, Meyer always tried to be above board in recruiting, much like Richt. If his criticism is directed at Auburn and the (alleged but if half is true) rank disregard for the rules ala Cam Newton, then I am glad he is speaking out.
I think this was mentioned yesterday but on one side of the coin, the Richts of the world are self-reporting the smallest of improprieties and getting slaps on the wrist and the other side thinks they should go ‘all in’ and worry about the consequences later, that is a major injustice and I think that is what he is talking about.
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Maybe, but it’s hardly a recent development. Football is actually probably a little cleaner than it was 25 years ago, on the whole.
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Meyer was a joke of a disciplinarian, but he recruited above the fray. He was trying to do THAT part the right way.
Others…not so much.
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Well, I mean, did he break any rules? No. Did he violate ethics by lying to kids? Yes, I believe he did.
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Urban loved Herschel, I guess he forgot that HW rode around Athens in a new Trans Am. That has been quite few years ago. I would venture to say that it used to be a lot worse in those days before the internet and all the intense media scrutiny that came with it. Lots of cash changed hands back in the day.
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See, those violations happened before 1990….they did not really happen.
You just don’t understand how things are at Florida.
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If Pell had been coaching in the WWL milennium, he would have made those comments to Reece Davis during his introduction as a new college football analyst….then he was just a cheatin MF. Oh….and one should take note of whose knee he learned on.
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the Bear Bryant coaching tree has cheaters on just about every branch. What do these stalwarts have in common: Danny Ford, Pat Dye, Charlie Pell, Jackie Sherill (I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch of names)
They all were legendary cheaters, and they all learned how to cheat from the Bear; it may be, however, to paraphrase LSU coach Charlie McClendon (and former Bryant asssistant) once said after a butt whuppin’ from Alabama, that the Bear taught them everything THEY knew about cheating, he just didn’t teach them everything HE knew.
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The main thing he did not teach these guys was how NOT to get caught.
And the tree has not just cheaters, but convicted and sentenced cheaters.
Course it is also true that many of the things Bear did were not illegal when he did them, course his boys never knew that, either.
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Five years, eh? Just coincidental that five years happens to be how long Meyer was at a major college program, I s’pose.
As someone who has apparently been following major football a lot longer than Urban Meyer, I too am shocked — SHOCKED! to find gambling going on at this establishment.
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I probably dislike (hate) the Florida Gators as much or more than anyone that frequents this site, but reading Pell’s obit left me feeling a little sorry for the guy. Like .01 on a scale of 1 to 10.
You see, Florida was nearly as arrogant in 1976 as the are now. Folks used to say “Florida has the arrogance or Notre Dame and the tradition of Vandy”. They used to stumble and fumble over themselves while playing on an astroturf field. Imagine that, an turf field in Gainesville, FL. That was probably the best indicator of just how discombobulated their program was.
With a history as painful as theirs, it’s easy to understand why they have blocked pre-1990 from their minds – and leaves no doubt why most SEC teams enjoy beating FL more than anyone else.
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JD! Get a grip! Feeling sorry for Pell is akin to feeling sorry for Sadam Hussein right before his execution. He was a dirtbag! He got what he deserved! Even .01 is too much.
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sorry Mayor. Let the record state that he was just another Gator POS.
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While all fan bases are somewhat delusional the UF fan base is so short sighted as to effectively run off great coaches because they fail to win every single game. Steve left because he got tired of the fans pissing and moaning about mere 10 win seasons. Urban left because one season after 2 MNC the fans were carrying torches and boiling the tar. UF has the best recruiting base in CFB so getting quality players to the flagship state university is not that hard. I think Urban is just transferring his feelings toward the Gator Nation to the other coaches. Now is he burning some SEC bridges you bet but he just don’t GAS.
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My post earlier to “You Talk Too Much” won’t be repeated here, but it’s along the same line. FU’s history pees us all off, but take a close look at all these coaches some of you deify. Some of you are poor on your history of some of these people(Saban for one) when they have left schools and the fans in the lurch.
Charlie Pell brought the forward pass to the SEC and used it to defeat the “Three yards and a cloud of dust” teams we all had at that time. Our football god at that time was in the big offensive lines and fullbacks that the Big 10 had. We should thank Charlie for making us the conference that we have become.
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Far be it from me to argue with a historian, but Pell did not do all that well against Georgia, for instance, or Vincent, who was a devotee of the “three yards and a cloud of dust” philosophy. It occurs to me Wally Butts threw the ball now and then, also. And threw it against Florida.
“Charlie Pell brought the forward pass to the SEC”….man, I just not sure about that.
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Read it in a Sports Illustrated article way back. He brought the power of the forward pass to bear in a brutal ground game conference. No other team in the conference used the forward pass so extensively as Charlie Pell. It’s copious use was copied by the rest of the conference since Pell.
Remember Kirby Moore? FU lined up with 9 players on the line when they played us- so did Ole Miss. FU did it once too often when we beat them in the driving rainstorm in Jax. Fifty something to squat! We didn’t pass far( 5-10yds over the middle), but enough that their D would slip and not get their footing . Then we were off to the races over and over and over. We didn’t have a passing QB, but he could throw it those distances without fail.
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I think the 1968 team, with Mike Cavan, stomped the Gators 51-0 in the rain.
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The star running back of that game was Trav Paine. Scored multiple TDs I believe.
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Didn’t mean to imply that no one used the forward pass in the SEC. Pell was given credit for using it extensively as an O weapon where it hardly was used at all. There have been great QBs in the SEC who could pass, but those plays weren’t called very often. The philosophy was expressed by a coach(My memory says he was at Clemson or OSU) who stated,” Three things can happen to a football when passed through the air and two of them are bad.”.
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I’m no big Meyer fan, but he didn’t oversign at Florida.
I haven’t seen a pay-for-play, illegal contact, etc. situation that even comes close to how unethical oversigning (and all that it requires) is. At least with pay-for-play the athletes get paid… instead of kicked out of school.
Supposedly Meyer called Richt the day after he resigned (the second time) and thanked him for doing things the right way.
That Meyer was getting 25-30 mulligans fewer than Auburn, Alabama, South Carolina, etc. every 4 years was surely not lost on him. And apparently not on Bernie Machen either. Don’t think his letter following closely on the heels of Meyer’s departure was some coincidence.
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When all else fails, UGA fans will always fondly remember Florida prior to 1990.
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You’d be best to make sure your humility switch is on when we begin to win our fair share in this rivalry, b/c it will happen whether you believe it will or not.
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If I remember correctly Pell went for a fourth and one near mid-field with the lead and time running out. The Gators were thrown for a loss and Dooley marched down and scored. Game, set, and match, Dooley. Why Pell didn’t punt and force the Dawgs to drive length of the field I’ll never know. Pell may have been a brilliant coach, but that definately was a bonehead call. He was fired soon after that game.
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Fourth and Dumb – 1976. Johnny Henderson of Athens makes the stop and we go on and destroy the Gators. But, Doug Dickey was the coach.
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You are right Sir Vinings. All these years I have thought it was “give’m hell Pell”. Oh well, Pell makes a better story so I am going to stick with him. You can’t let the truth screw up a good story.
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Oh, that game in the pouring rain, Stanfill had Spurrier for lunch. When asked why SOS hated the dawgs so much old Bill said, “he hates us because I whipped his ass.” When Spurrier pounded the ball on the ground after one of those many sacks Stanfill said,”whats the matter Stevie, did I step on your dress?”
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You may be conflating two games here. The driving rain game was 68. The Stanfill all over Spurrier game was 66. Stanfill’s partner on the defensive line was George Patton.
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“If they ever get that Stanfill boy well, he’s gonna be a heckuva player”
Ray Graves after watching Spurrier get sacked seven times. Stanfill was said to have a neck injury before the game.
And the sun, it was a shinin.
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That’s a great story and all, but I’d prefer to hear stories about games played in the 21st century, or at least in the past 20 years. I hate that we have to live in the past the way we do with Florida. I ought to make every living Bulldog fan made as hell that we’ve struggled the way we have with them, although I do believe our time will come.
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If you have one….tell it.
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Anyone who has watched the ’30 for 30′ about the kid from Mississippi knows that things are not as bad now as they were then.
That kid cost Oklahoma $200,000 and a brand new trailer, and perhaps a little spending cash for the uncle. Cam Newton only cost $200,000 last year. So, in inflation dollars, the salaries today are a lot cheaper.
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“Urban Meyer needs a History lesson” Well, so does old Shane. It ain’t my fault that all my shxt be run together. Old age has quit creeping up on me and is running at me like Clay Matthews III after a QB.
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