Even as we are in what is traditionally the slowest of the slow news cycles in the world of college football, you can always count on something happening somewhere in the SEC to break the monotony.
Even if it's just the rehashing of a rumor that's been around for quite a few years.
The latest example?
Here's the third sentence in the article, written by Paul Finebaum, that appears just underneath the above headline: "Urban Meyer is probably leaving Florida after the season to go to Notre Dame."
(Click HERE for all of the hilarious cattiness that ensues...)
There's nothing quite like an Alabama writer digging up a longstanding rumor about a Florida head coach two weeks before the start of the SEC meetings. Gee, ya think the tenor of those meetings has shifted from the Gators being near-unanimous preseason selections to repeat as national champions to "so, Coach Meyer, about these persistent Notre Dame rumors..."
At this moment, you can just hear both Meyer and head coach Lane Kiffin seething, Kiffin for nothing more than the fact that the spotlight he so craves for himself and his program has likely made a quick turn to the south.
For those who are unaware, it's been a widely-held belief that Notre Dame was, is and will always be Meyer's dream job -- even as he turned down the job in 2004, instead choosing to leave Utah for Florida.
Hell, Meyer himself acknowledged as much during an interview in December of last year.
"Our staff has given our life to Florida football for four years," Meyer said following Florida's first bowl practice. "We plan on giving our life to Florida football for a long, long time. You start hearing, 'Well coach, I thought you said (Notre Dame was) your dream job.' I grew up in the North and that was my dream job. Probably always will, but that has nothing to do with this."
In mid-May of this year, South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier told a radio host, unprompted incidentally, that "they still got that rumor going down there, Paul, that if [Meyer] has one more big year, he might be the Notre Dame coach."
And just who was the host of the radio show that was, until now, the latest Irish blast surrounding Meyer? Paul Finebaum, of course. (Do trees down south have any forks in them?)
Suffice to say, this latest round of Urban-to-ND talk will come up once, twice, 100 times during the course of the meetings.
Look at the bright side, though, Urban. It might take the focus off the 24 arrests during your time in Gainesville. So you have that going for you, which is nice.
