OTish: Expose on Meyer's time at Florida. Sparknotes: He's shady.
Read it and enjoy.
Feel like Ohio might have bitten off more than they can chew.
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“Over the last two years he was there,” one former player said, “the players had taken complete control of the team.”
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“I told them I wasn’t leaving, and if they tried to force me to leave, I was going to tell everyone everything."
The next day, Thomas says he was given a medical hardship letter by position coach Chuck Heater stating Thomas had an injury that would prohibit him from playing football. The medical hardship scholarship doesn’t count against the NCAA limit of 85, and allows the affected player to stay on academic scholarship." (later became star all-conference player over 2 seasons at a D-II program)
During offseason conditioning before the 2007 season, the team was running stadium steps and at one point, Harvin, according to sources, sat down and refused to run. When confronted by strength and conditioning coaches, Harvin—who failed to return calls and texts to his cell phone to comment on this story—said, “This (expletive) ends now.” “The next day,” a former player said, “we were playing basketball as conditioning.”
Anyway, the article isn't exactly groundbreaking, just more confirmation of what many of us were thinking.
but the player qoutes and direct evidence are nice to know.
or in ROTC here. Whew they're ...fun!
I'd rather run stadium steps at the Big House than the Swamp. Ben Hill Griffin stadium's steps are very steep. I couldn't even imagine running up them.
and they get steep REAL quick...trust me on this one...one of my teammates worked at Rick's and enjoyed a patty's day full of green beer...one of the senior members decided the 18th of March was a great morning to run the big house. The subsequent flow of green 'beer' was astounding. And I'm not really sure he felt any worse than the rest of us when we were done. Ran those steps regularly and they are no joke.
That's brutal... I played a sport at M but we only had to run Crisler
How long ago did you play? If this was anytime within the last 5ish years, we may know each other.
They call it "running stadiums" down in the Swamp. It's not too bad for the first 33, but progressively get worse and they get pretty steep. But it's not as far around as the Big House.
a whole lot of "duh" - hardly an expose in my book. I'm sure it'll keep the local yahoo's yapping for hours on The Fan here in cbus today, though.
The best part is Urban ripping on the Florida locker room that he created. The guy has no shame.
Ohio fans will argue against this story, but down deep they know he's dirty and will live with it for the wins.
The problem is the issue of how long it will take. He may be shady, but the dude will win until this stuff catches him again.
Luke Zimmermann @lukezim I really hope Urban Meyer doesn't character issue his way to 2 national titles in 3 years in Columbus. That would be a nightmare.
Although I derive just as much joy as anyone else by reading articles like this, you really do have to take them with a grain of salt. Of course anyone who felt slighted by Meyer about anything will be more than happy to discuss his shortcomings as perceived by them. Sure, the track record isn't very good and there was probably some major issues with the team, but there's no guarantee it's going to happen again. Meyer could be gone in 5 years, leaving another terrible situation behind, but I'm certainly not planning on it.
- He told a player that he wasnt in the plans due to majorish injury and that he should quit the team or whater.
- Player refuses.
- Player gets medical wavier stating that he can no longer play football ever
- Player starts and excels at another program.
Thats lying.
I agree wholeheartedly with this view of things. Schadenfreude - yes. Definite confirmation that Meyer is all things evil/immoral - not so much.
rest. My money is on history repeating itself.
Me too... moral flexibility and a rabid win-at-all costs fan-base are a recipe for a repeat
A lot of them still think Tressel did nothing wrong. That's all you need to know to see what the future holds.
as my friend that is a die hard buckeye said two weeks ago,"osu will be in worse shape when meyer leaves then they were in last year." he knows what meyer is all about and hates him.
wreaks of snake...I'm sick and I'll never wear the colors of another university again...oh well yeah that, scarlet and grey, yeah...not to mention his recruiting tactics with Dunn...and above all else, he's Urban Liar...Ohio is hardly a place where the inmates can afford to run the assylum at this juncture and it will either expose the NCAA for the fraud they really are or force the hand of death to the football program down there...I'd REALLY hate to be wrong on this one and I'm feeling good that I won't...he MIGHT be worse than Tressel when it all boils down.
"According to sources, Wisconsin accused Meyer and his staff of using former Ohio State NFL players to call high school recruits. Wisconsin also accused Meyer and his staff of bumping into offensive lineman Kyle Dodson, who was committed to the Badgers but eventually flipped and signed with the Buckeyes. The practice of “bumping” occurs when coaches accidentally “bump” into players during recruiting dead periods."
That's a bit more than the "they're whiners because they had some recruits snake-oiled." That's just flat out cheating.
Hell when Dillon Baxter decommitted from USC for that short period of time, he stated right on the U.S. Army broadcast that he was getting phone calls from Urban Meyer. Recruiting is on a dead period before that game, so he shouldn't have been getting calls from anyone.
The Ohio fan base are being hugely hypocritical in regards to Urban. Anyone who remembers their fanbase during the Shariff Floyd recruitment would understand.
Meh. If this was what happened, Barry Alvarez would have reported it. Instead, he told Bret to go to his room and be quite.
I think there were some things that Urban did that Bielema thought were cheating, but were more SEC style "loose interpretation" of the rules.
Things like "bumping", and jersey's with a players number (but not name). Both are legal, but close to not being legal. They're basically things that everyone (us included) do.
Both the alleged phone calls and bumping are NCAA violations.
Phone calls are. "Bumping" is just an "accidental" meeting and is very vague. It's basically going to meet a player's coach (which is legal), and then having a player come in say hi while the head coach is talking to the HS coach. It's really pretty silly stuff.
The article is wrong. "Bumping" is not illegal, and used (abused?) by a bunch of coaches.
Hard to take this article seriously when the author conveniently forgets to even mention that the AD of Wisconsin released a statement saying that Bielema was mistaken and there were no recruiting violations, and that Delany released a similar statement after meeting with both sides.
was thinking NASCAR.
It's full of stars.
Lots of good stuff here. Have an upvote.
Not earth shattering, a lot of coaches out there are excellent coaches and shitty people who can win (see Petrino, Bobby)
Good to see some details come out though.
I found this pretty weak overall. Could you go to any program in the country and find a few disgruntled guys and spin a story like this? Probably.
Until you get the other side you have no idea what to make of it. That Harvin story is a perfect example. Harvin suffers from Migraines. Was he struggling because of the migraines during the conditioning? Is that why he sat down and stopped? After a hard run would it have been plausible for the S&C to follow that up the next day with a light fun basketball day as part of a normal schedule. Jounalism seems to have taken a step back. Give me the 360 view of the story not a splashy headline.
This article has all the feel of a Freep masterpiece. Was it a broken locker room or losing Tebow and not having talent ready to produce that cost this team victories? We've all seen what happens when you go from having 4 or 5 high NFL picks to having 1 dlineman and a punter get invited to the combine.
100% agree with this. I especially loved the "former players" lines that kept getting repeated. This isn't a thing until it's a thing - if that ever happens.
I just loved reading this but the whole time I smelled FREEP too. Pretty weak and I hate the fact there was basically one disgruntled source in the entire article and everyone else was anonymous.
While I agree with you, in defense of the article:
During offseason conditioning before the 2007 season, the team was running stadium steps and at one point, Harvin, according to sources, sat down and refused to run. When confronted by strength and conditioning coaches, Harvin—who failed to return calls and texts to his cell phone to comment on this story—said, “This (expletive) ends now."
He had a chance to address his side of the story, but he chose not to. Not that he really needs to defend his behavior, since he's already a, established NFL star. The article does make him look bad though.
I was just using that as an example, but you make a good point that the writer did make an attempt. Just using logic let's piece this together.
A. Writer suggests that Harvin was entitled and didn't stopped doing conditioning.
B. Harvin is one of the most explosive players in the country.
I may be wrong but I would say that it would be more likely that Harvin did conditioning and listened to Meyer and that helped him become a #1 NFL draft pick than it is to believe that Harvin was excused from doing conditioning and showed Meyer no repect and Meyer just looked the other way and gave Harvin a positive reccomendation to his friends in the NFL.
9 times out of 10 that's the right move. Even if its a complete untruth and Harvin denies it, since the authors don't have definitive evidence other than their interviews, it would be reported as he said/he said and left at that. Especially since this article definitely reads like the authors had an agenda, so they could just bury Harvin's response.
This is assuming its not true. If there's at least some half-truth to it, if he did anything but deny it there would be almost nothing he could say that wouldn't be decontextualized and likely misconstrued.
Do I think Harvin and Tebow (and other great players) were coddled to an extent? They probably were. Were there entitlement issues? Definitely. Was anything in that article different than what 75% of the coaches in America do? No.
What I see in the article is one former player quoted. The "other" players for all I know are 1 or 2 other disgruntled players. Also, I wouldn't call it an expose showing anything really shady. It is the same grumblings we've been hearing for years about Meyer from sports writers. Nothing new.
What I want to know is this: Would Michigan fans not trade the RichRod tenure for Meyer's tenure at Florida?
No, we wouldn't.
While the years with RichRod were excruciating, the vast majority of the fanbase would be sickened by a culture of bad behavior. There's no way that every player is going to be perfect all the time, but Michigan fans want a coach who is not only going to control the players, but act as a role model for them as well, and be an excellent, positive face for the program.
If you read this board regularly, that is crystal clear. People consistently call out his character and demeanor as the things that make him a "Michigan Man." It may be corny and not in keeping with what's going on in the rest of college football, but I believe that's what makes us seem "arrogant" to the rest of the world. It is what it is.
I totally respect you for having this viewpoint, WendyK. But I know a few dozen Michigan fans and when we've had this discussion in the past, only a couple shared your view.
Or vice versa? Because I'd be hard pressed to say I know "dozens" of Ohio fans.
There is a reason why Meyer was never even given a thought by UM during our coaching search and i think you know why.
And it's probably similar to why Les Miles was never hired. I'm not saying Michigan is the only D-1 school out there that has standards, but they are definitely a big part of our culture. And no, not all OSU fans are douchebags. But if you think about it, it comes from the top. Gordon Gee and Gene Smith hardly displayed authentic contrition during Tresselgate. You could tell they were playing their cards, trying to see what they could get away with. They foster that kind of culture.
1) Hoke isn't like 75% of the coaches in the country
2) M fans would trade the RR era for anyone (aside from major NCAA infractions, of course) that won more games than lost. This is a sad fact.
But for different reasons.
I wouldn't want Meyer's tenure at Florida, because we had a couple of chances at that, and turned it down. It would have been Les Miles tenure at Michigan. which I was against. Wins are nice, but not if they're an embarrassment to your school.
Now admitted 75% of major college programs are probably like yours, in that they have no shame (you know, as long as they're winning), but Michigan is different. Ohio State at least used to pretend to be, rather than publically embrace it. I guess John Cooper does that to you. Luckily, I can say that lack of success during Rich's tenure didn't do that to us.
Disagree with you here. Besides the Scout board idiots, as soon as something shady happened most Buckeye fans would be upset. The 90% of the fanbase that is rational wants to win, but does not want to be the SEC either.
For over a decade. And in a great many cases, participating in it.
You claim to not know 12 OSU fans, yet you like to make generalizations on the fan base.
People read too much into this stuff. It's just a damn game. Not some represenation of good and evil.
I'll take a couple of titles please, even if it means a couple of kids smoke pot (guess what, they do it now) and some kids get preferential treatment (guess what, that happens in the real world too).