If you missed it from our Monday one-liners, Matt Hayes of The Sporting News just torched Ohio State coach Urban Meyer in an investigative report that accuses Meyer of giving preferential treatment to players, turning a blind eye to an out-of-control drug problem and allowing a “Circle of Trust” straight out of “Meet the Parents” -- all during Meyer’s tenure at Florida.
Suffice to say, it’s all rather unflattering.
Speaking on a teleconference today, Meyer was asked about Hayes’ report, to which he gave the following responses:“My family and I love Florida, we still do and we always will. I’m not sure where a three-month investigation show up. I’m extremely proud of what our players and coaches accomplished. We were hired to graduate players and we did that. We were a top three every year in the SEC in graduation and APR. We’re hired to win games, we did that and followed the rules and we did that and recruit great classes and we finished in the top five every year.”
“So, I’m not sure other than he said preferential treatment from the players. That’s probably a correct statement. We did do that. We do that here. We did it at Bowling Green and Utah. If you go to class, if you are a warrior, you do thing the right way off and on the field and you are completely committed to helping us win, you are going to get treated really good. You’re going to get nice gear, you are going to get to move off campus if you like. You are going to get treated really good. Guys that don’t go real hard and aren’t committed, yeah, it’s real difficult. So, you can’t please everyone and I know the interviewed a guy that really didn’t play for us.
“So, I am not real sure of the intent other than extremely proud of what we did and throwing great players under the bus like that … I don’t get the intent. I’ll fight for those guys. Those guys did a lot of great things for the University of Florida. To sit there and call them out four and five years later, I’m not sure what the intent is and I will fight for those guys.
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“There are things like Circle of Trust that … once again, I don’t know the intent. That didn’t happen and a bunch of former players called me and a bunch of former coaches … we have five coaches off that staff that are now head coaches … and I talked to most of them and they are like, ‘What is this?’
“And then anytime you mention the NCAA, I’m going to say this real clear, there is no violation that we had as far as that whole conversation. I’m not sure why that keeps coming up. So, if you would bold that for me and underline it, that there is not an NCAA violation. There is not one turned in and there’s a pretty good track record there with compliance with the NCAA. So, those are just disappointing and once again, not sure of the intent.”
I have zero clue about how Meyer runs his football program, and frankly I don’t care as long as he’s not breaking NCAA rules or hiring his mistress quid pro quo while giving her $20,000. Investigations like the one with Meyer only serve as invitations to the readers who want to see how the sausage is made.
(Hat tip: Orlando Sentinel)