BOWLING GREEN — It was 16 years ago, almost to the day, that I spoke with my friend Tim Dunn here about the news that the young and dynamic head football coach at the university would be leaving to take a job in Utah.
While many in the town and the Bowling Green State University community were sad, angry, or disappointed that Urban Meyer, who had led a remarkable resurgence in the Falcon football program in his first job as a head coach, was departing, Dunn took a much more pragmatic, big-picture perspective on things.
Dunn, a Bowling Green businessman and prominent Falcon booster, said: “That guy is a national championship just waiting to happen.” Well, Tim was right, and Tim also was wrong.
Meyer did win a college football national championship in 2006 while leading the University of Florida, but he went on to win two more in his career, so it turned out that Tim’s very bold prediction was not quite bold enough.
When Meyer announced early last week that, prodded by health concerns associated with a cyst attached to his brain, he would leave the coaching ranks following his Ohio State team’s Rose Bowl game against Washington, some decided it was time to pick apart his legacy. He has gone 82-9 in seven seasons as the head coach in Columbus, and he beat rival Michigan every time he faced the Wolverines. Over his head-coaching career, Meyer won more than 85 percent of his games, including taking a Bowling Green team that had won just two games the previous year and going 17-6 in two seasons with the Falcons.
WATCH: Meyer passes the baton to Day
His record has been lauded, his health problems well-documented, and his flaws analyzed, magnified, and criticized ad nauseum. He wore the alpha headset, so all of that comes with the territory, but the self-important experts really know little about the man, the father, the husband, and the grandfather that is also named Urban Meyer.
In the years since he left Bowling Green, our periodic conversations were never about football, coaching, recruiting, or his golf game. He always talked about his wife, his children, and how he acknowledged daily that the Good Lord had been especially kind to this kid from Ohio named after a pope. Like any college coach should do, he said prayers of thanks every day for his wife, Shelley, since she did 95 percent of the parenting, 100 percent of the home management while he worked, and was likely the best unofficial assistant coach/recruiter in the country.
He shaved off time here and there to take in his children’s sporting events, and once during halftime of her fifth-grade CYO basketball game, his oldest daughter Nicki got a dose of the ultra-competitive and aggressive approach favored by her dad, who said he’d give her “twenty bucks” if she fouled out. She didn’t, but she led her team to victory, nonetheless.
In Meyer’s first year at Bowling Green, he felt the program needed an exorcism after the six straight losing seasons that had come before he arrived, so he made conditioning tougher than any game would ever be, and he left no gray areas when it came to class attendance and character. He ran off a lot of players, but when asked about the many departures, Meyer did not give the textbook coach-speak response of “wishing them well in their future endeavors.” As the athletic director winced in the back of the room, Meyer was painfully blunt, honest, and unfiltered when he said: “Good riddance,” adding that if those players were not as committed as the guy lining up next to them, then they didn’t belong in a BG uniform.
Urban Meyer's departure comes as no surprise around Toledo.https://t.co/3ntpIDsmCb pic.twitter.com/0FzqccI7pR
— Toledo Sports (@toledosports) December 5, 2018
Those Bowling Green players that stayed have remained in touch with Meyer, he has maintained a bond with them, and they adore the guy to this day. Many talk about the life lessons they learned under Meyer being a big factor in the success they have found in life after football.
After his first season at the University of Utah, we visited the Meyers in Salt Lake City and in an afternoon sitting by the community pool and watching our kids splash bomb the place, he talked about the adjustments his family had to make in the nomadic life of a college football coach, and how overprotective he was because of concerns about that issue. We joked about a devout Roman Catholic being celebrated so close to the base of the Mormon church, but there was never a word about his NFL-bound quarterback or his high-powered spread offense. At a cookout one evening, I noticed Meyer’s grill — the cleanest I’d ever seen. He was as meticulous about it as he was about his punt-block unit, and the academic reports on his players.
When Meyer moved on to Florida after leading Utah to a 12-0 record in just his second season, the stage got much bigger, the scrutiny more intense, and the pressure amped up. He was making more money, living in a large home in a gated community, and enjoying unprecedented success, winning that first national championship in just his second year with the Gators.
He could easily have “big-timed” everyone in his past, but the fame and the fortune didn’t change him. Meyer welcomed old friends from Bowling Green to spring practice, and when one of his former BG players showed up, Meyer had a bear hug and plenty of time to catch up, even as Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Tim Tebow ran the Florida offense in the background.
Sure he made some mistakes, made a few bad calls, but I couldn’t help but smell the hypocrisy as the same people who wanted to crucify him over every player foible, also ridiculed Tebow because his parents were missionaries and Tim openly professed his Christian faith. I guess in their eyes Meyer had some players that were too bad, and some that were too good. It reminded me of something Gerry Faust, the legendary coach at Ohio high school powerhouse Cincinnati Moeller told me as he was in the process of winning five state championships, and taking fire from every direction. “I never got criticized this much when I was losing,” Faust said, “but they love to take shots at you when you win.”
Urban Meyer: "I believe I will not coach again. I'm certain."
— Kyle Rowland (@KyleRowland) December 4, 2018
After Meyer left the Florida job following a health scare and was working for ESPN, we met in the luncheon area at Ohio Stadium a couple of hours before a game he would be working as a commentator. He wanted to know how my kids were doing, where they were in school, and if we still attended St. Aloysius in Bowling Green, where our kids had gone to school during the Meyers’ two years in town. He recounted his many blessings, talked about fishing in Florida, and never mentioned football.
After he took over as the head coach at Ohio State, we visited his home in Columbus for a late spring cookout, and although it was another mansion-esque place in a gated community, he was the same as those days in BG. The conversation was about kids, kids, kids, fishing in Lake Erie, and nothing about his offense, a top recruit from Texas, or a likely preseason top-two ranking.
The coaches who’ve led #OhioState football through the years read like a best-seller ‘How To Coach Football’ book — and we're here to rank them: https://t.co/K537WhBocd pic.twitter.com/zDNStO5gTM
— Toledo Sports (@toledosports) December 4, 2018
While the media melee that surrounded former Ohio State assistant coach Zach Smith and his “made for the Dr. Phil show” marital conflict dominated the news cycle, we realized you never read much about the Urban and Shelley Meyer fund for Cancer Research donating $2 million to endow a chair at the OSU Medical Center, or the Meyers helping to raise $3 million for cancer research with a spring cruise. Bad news is always good news, for some.
There are things I’m sure he would do differently, but not those that helped so many people, often behind the scenes, away from the spotlight. His name and personal appearance made the 2015 “Urban for Autism” event in Perrysburg a huge success. This past summer, he took a full day to help the Falcon football team raise money with a golf outing at Catawba Island Club.
“He’s probably the most successful college football coach of this era, but there are so many things people don’t know about Urban the man, the father, or Urban the friend,” Dunn said this past week. “The impression he had on so many young men, and people he’s met — there’s no way to measure it.”
Meyer will leave the coaching ranks one evening about three weeks from now, just as the fading sunlight bounces around Arroyo Seco in Pasadena and paints the San Gabriel Mountains outside the Rose Bowl in purple pastels. The coach inside might not be happy this is the end of the run, but the man I know, the husband, the father, and now the grandfather — he will accept it, and despite the radical change it will make in his life, it won’t change the person.
First Published December 8, 2018, 2:15 p.m.
