Urban Meyer vs. College Football: The Case for College Football's Greatest Coach - Softcover

Axelrod, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629374636 ISBN 13: 9781629374635

Publisher: Triumph Books, 2017

Synopsis

Urban Meyer is collecting national championships, and he's not slowing down. Wherever he goes, greatness immediately follows, and you can always look for his teams to be highly-ranked contenders when bowl season rolls around. But is Meyer the best college football coach of all time? In Urban Meyer vs. College Football, author Ben Axelrod explains exactly what separates Meyer from his peers and compares his accomplishments to some of the all-time legends like Nick Saban, Bear Bryant, and Joe Paterno. From his playing days at University of Cincinnati to his first Buckeyes stint as an assistant under Earle Bruce, to his victories at at the helm of Florida and Ohio State, Meyer has a ferocious, undeniable talent for coaching that may be unparalleled in football history.

About this title

About the Author

Ben Axelrod is a senior writer covering Ohio State at Land of 10, hosts the "Inside the Shoe" podcast and has been covering OSU sports since 2009. He previously covered the team at Bleacher Report, Buckeye Sports Bulletin/Scout.com and Rivals.com. Axelrod is a 2011 graduate of The Ohio State University and this is his first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Urban Meyer vs. College Football

By Ben Axelrod

Triumph Books LLC

Copyright © 2017 Ben Axelrod
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62937-463-5

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
Part I. The Making of Urban Meyer, 
A Kid from Ashtabula, 
Getting Back to the Gridiron, 
Climbing the Coaching Mountain, 
The Florida Years, 
The Reinvention of Urban Meyer, 
Part II. Urban Meyer vs. His Rivals, 
Urban Meyer vs. Bobby Bowden, 
Urban Meyer vs. Bob Stoops, 
Urban Meyer vs. Dabo Swinney, 
Urban Meyer vs. Pete Carroll, 
Urban Meyer vs. Steve Spurrier, 
Urban Meyer vs. Lane Kiffin, 
Urban Meyer vs. Nick Saban, 
Urban Meyer vs. Bret Bielema, 
Urban Meyer vs. Mark Dantonio, 
Urban Meyer vs. Jim Harbaugh, 
Part III. Urban Meyer vs. His Idols, 
Urban Meyer vs. Jim Tressel, 
Urban Meyer vs. Woody Hayes, 
Urban Meyer vs. Bo Schembechler, 
Urban Meyer vs. Joe Paterno, 
Part IV. Urban Meyer: Legacy, 
By the Numbers, 
Coaching Tree, 
Recruiting, Recruiting, Recruiting, 
Players in the Pros, 
The Godfather of the Spread, 
The All–Urban Meyer Team, 
What's Left?, 
Sources, 

CHAPTER 1

A Kid from Ashtabula

Urban Frank Meyer III was born July 10, 1964, in Toldeo, Ohio, to Gisela and Bud Meyer. Bud was a chemical engineer and Gisela was a gourmet cook who had escaped Nazi Germany as a young girl.

When Urban was five years old, his family moved to Ashtabula, a small town on Ohio's northeast border.

"I'm a big fan [of Ashtabula]," Meyer said following his annual youth camp in Geneva, Ohio, just outside of Ashtabula, in 2016. "Everyone knows that. I'm very proud of where I came from.

"I had it really good. I had a great group of coaches, great teachers, great high school. Great friends here that I'm still very close with; I just wish I could come back more."

Urban was a middle child, sandwiched between two sisters. All three of the Meyer children were athletes. In Bud's house, you didn't have a choice.

"Everybody had to do sports," Bud said in Buddy Martin's 2008 biography of Urban, Urban's Way.

"I don't know how you didn't do sports. We're one of those families, tragically, that has absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever. We can't even write a decent poem. None of us plays a musical instrument. I'm not proud of it. But everybody has to do something sports-wise just because that's how you're supposed to do it. I don't know things differently."

Urban's older sister Gigi was a member of the Saint John High School swim team, and Erica played golf and softball. Urban, meanwhile, shined on the gridiron and baseball diamond.

While Urban was a natural athlete, his father made sure his son developed a work ethic. Whenever Urban would strike out looking, Bud famously made his son run home from the game.

On the football field, Meyer starred as both the starting tailback and free safety for the Fighting Heralds. He wore jersey No. 45 in honor of his favor player, Ohio State running back Archie Griffin. Among his friends and teammates growing up was Dean Hood, who would go on to serve as the defensive coordinator at Wake Forest and head coach at Eastern Kentucky.

Rushing for more than 800 yards and defending nine passes, Meyer was named first-team All–Ohio Northern and all-state in his senior season in 1981.

But while football was his first love, baseball was Meyer's best sport.

"He was like a stud when he came in for his junior year," Saint John head coach Bill Schmidt told BuckeyeSports.com in 2011. "Then things started to take off for him. His forte was he had a cannon for an arm, and playing shortstop, that's what you need. He was able to make all the plays, and I would say his signature play was when he would go deep in the hole at short, round it off and make that throw over."

Following a senior season in which the 6'2", 180-pound shortstop showcased a .370 batting average, the Atlanta Braves opted to select Meyer in the 13 round of the 1982 MLB draft. He was picked ahead of future baseball stars Jose Canseco, Bret Saberhagen, and Kenny Rogers.

What followed, however, was an unmemorable two-year stint in Atlanta's minor league system. All of 17 years old, Meyer hit for an unimpressive .170 in his first 20 games with the Gulf Coast League Braves. In 1983, he began with Pulaski in the Appalachian League, before being recalled to the GCL after 15 games.

Meyer's two-season stat line in the Braves' system was meager: 44 games, 20 hits in 138 at-bats and a .182 batting average. A case of tendinitis in his throwing arm brought Meyer's minor league baseball career to an unmemorable end. When he finally received his release papers from the Braves, they were signed by the organization's then–director of player development, Hank Aaron.

"I just wasn't good enough," Meyer told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Michael Carvell in 2014. "I was a really good high school football player. I was doing OK my second year [with the Braves], and then I had an injury to my arm. But I had already probably maximized my ability."

Along the way, Meyer played alongside future major leaguers Fred McGriff, Mark Lemke, and Ron Gant. But although he was unable to join them in the "big show," a part of Meyer's success today is rooted in his failures from more than 25 years ago.

After his first disappointing season in the GCL, Meyer wanted to quit. So much so that he called Bud to inform him of his plans.

Bud, however, had other ideas. He could no longer force his son to run home from practice, but according to Urban's Way, the message Meyer received from his father was quite clear.

"OK, you're seventeen and you're grown. So you're capable of making your own decision. But by the way, you're not welcome back here," Bud told Urban, per the biography. "I'm sure your mother would want to see you at Christmas, but other than that, you're not welcome. There are no quitters in the Meyer family."

With that, Meyer stuck with it, continuing his baseball career until he was literally no longer able to, physically. In many ways, that helped forge the work ethic Meyer is best known for today, whether it be the furthering of his success or making corrections after a rare loss.

"It didn't hurt him," Bud Meyer told the New York Times in 2007. "It gave him a lot of maturity."

When it came to college football, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that Bud Meyer revered hard-nosed coaches like Ohio State's Woody Hayes and Michigan's Bo Schembechler, while Gisela was a Notre Dame fan.

Gisela saw her son serve as an assistant coach for her favorite team before passing away in 2000 following a fight with cancer. After a battle with lung disease, Bud died on November 10, 2011 — 17 days before Urban was announced as Ohio State's head coach.

His memory, however, has lived on within his son's teams. With each freshman class he brings in, Meyer tells his new players the story of how his father refused to allow him to leave the Braves after his first year.

Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that Meyer has shaped his programs in the same way the most influential figure in his life has shaped him.

CHAPTER 2

Getting Back to the Gridiron

With his baseball career having come to an unceremonious end, Meyer did what most 19-year-olds whose dreams had been dashed would do: he went home.

But after a brief stint as an assistant baseball coach at Cleveland State University, Meyer plotted a return to his first love — and in the process, out of Northeast Ohio.

At 20, he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, which had become somewhat of a pipeline program for the Meyer family. Urban's grandfather taught traffic law at UC and Bud had graduated from the school's College of Engineering in 1957. A year before Urban arrived, his older sister, Gigi, graduated with an undergraduate degree and would later work as a vice provost for undergraduate affairs.

Meyer's ceiling on the gridiron wasn't as high as it had been on the baseball diamond, but nevertheless, he plotted a return to the football field. Joining head coach Dave Currey's Bearcats program as a walk-on, Meyer returned to his former position of safety — although his playing time was admittedly limited.

As Cincinnati endured a grueling 2–9 campaign, Meyer tallied two tackles, both of which came in a 48–17 loss to Florida. According to the Bearcats' media guide, he also spent time as a holder on field goals and point-after attempts.

"I probably wasn't a good enough player to go there," Meyer admitted in 2014, a week before his Buckeyes faced off with his alma mater. "It wasn't a great experience. We weren't very good."

Perhaps soured by the taste of losing and spotty playing time, Meyer left the Cincinnati program, although he remained an active member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. At a Derby Days party with the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority in May 1984, he met a fair queen from Ohio's Ross County named Shelley Mather. The two would later date and wed in 1989.

Although his playing career had come to an end, Meyer's coaching career was just getting started. In 1985, he served as a volunteer assistant at Cincinnati prep powerhouse St. Xavier, coaching the defensive backs.

Even more than 30 years ago, Meyer showed signs of becoming the same coach who now intensely stalks the Ohio Stadium sidelines on Saturdays in the fall.

"He was in your face both ways — if you did something right or something wrong," former St. Xavier running back and defensive back Steve Specht told MaxPreprs.com in 2012. "I think true football players gravitate toward that. Kids feed off of it."

Upon graduating from UC, Currey offered Meyer a job as a graduate assistant with the Bearcats, which he nearly accepted. Only a better offer had come just over 100 miles north from Ohio State head coach Earl Bruce.

"I had some opportunities to be a grad assistant at some other schools, but I always wanted to be a Buckeye," Meyer said in an interview with 610 WTVN in 2016. "I wanted to play [at Ohio State] but unfortunately I didn't have enough 'quick twitch' to."

Under Bruce, Meyer served as a grad assistant, working with the Buckeyes tight ends and wide receivers. In his first season in Columbus, he helped oversee the development of one of the all-time greats in Ohio State history in future Pro Football Hall of Fame selection Cris Carter, who caught 69 passes for 1,127 yards and 11 touchdowns as a junior in 1986.

"Urban and I are very good friends. Urban, his first job was coaching wide receivers at Ohio State. He was 22 or 23 at the time, and I had happened to be there," Carter told Fox Sports' Colin Cowherd on his nationally syndicated radio show in 2017. "So he coached me at Ohio State as the wide receivers coach, his first job from the University of Cincinnati as a defensive back, he was hired by Earle Bruce to be the wide receivers coach as a graduate assistant. And that was the year I made first-team All-American. So him and I have been best buddies for a long, long, long time."

Enjoying a 10–3 season, including a first-place finish in Big Ten play, Meyer's Ohio State coaching career was off to a strong start. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, however, it wouldn't last long.

Much like his junior season, Carter's presence also loomed large over the Ohio State program in 1987 — albeit for all the wrong reasons. Just longer than a month before the start of what was supposed to be his senior season, the NCAA ruled Carter ineligible due to his accepting money and signing with an agent.

With that, the Buckeyes went from national title contenders to enduring a 6–4–1 campaign. Six days before they were set to face Michigan in their regular season finale, Bruce was fired, effective following a rivalry game the Buckeyes would go on to win 23–20.

"I can tell you everything," Meyer recalled in 2012. "I can [remember] walking into Coach Bruce's office right here, [the Woody Hayes Athletic Center just opened], and [former OSU athletic director] Rick Bay was leaned up against the wall and looked at me and said, 'Close the door. Are you the last one?' I said, 'Yes, yes, sir.' And I sat down.

"I saw a bunch of coaches with their arms on the table, with their face in their arms, and tears and the whole deal. I was like the last guy to walk in, and [Bay] said that Coach Bruce will no longer be the coach after this game, and I have resigned as athletic director. Like it was right there, right out that door. I have great respect — I knew Mr. Bay very well and have great respect for him. Just an incredible moment in Ohio State history."

Just like that, Meyer was introduced to the realities of big-boy college football, fired by the program he grew up rooting for. Barely even a man, he set forth on a climb up the coaching ranks, catching on as an outside linebackers coach with Jim Heacock's staff at Division I-AA Illinois State.

After two seasons in Normal, Illinois, Meyer rejoined Bruce at Colorado State, where his mentor had become the Rams' head coach. Meyer spent three seasons coaching for Bruce and stayed on for another three years with the Rams after Bruce was fired and replaced with Miami (Florida) defensive coordinator Sonny Lubick.

In Meyer's six seasons in Fort Collins, Colorado State accumulated a 40–31 record. As the wide receivers coach, he oversaw the development of Greg Primus, who left CSU as the school's all-time leader in both receptions (194) and receiving yards (3,263).

As was the case throughout the previous stops of his coaching career, Meyer's trademark intensity was on full display.

"Okay, you take [his intensity] and multiply it by 100, just younger," said Tony Alford, a former Colorado State running back who Meyer hired as his running backs coach at Ohio State in 2015. "He was great. He coached the receivers, but he had some great mentors in Earle. You could tell the guy had a passion and a fire about doing things. Not just doing them, but doing them right and very particular about the finer details of everything that happens."

Meyer's success at Colorado State — both on the field and on the recruiting trail — caught the attention of Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz, who hired him to coach the Fighting Irish wide receivers in 1996.

For the Catholic boy from Ohio who was named after a succession of popes, the chance to coach under the watch of Touchdown Jesus was a dream come true.

"I still remember the day that I was hired and I took a tour," Meyer said in 2015. "It was very cold, but I took a tour throughout the Touchdown Jesus, Fair Catch Corby, all the great statues and all the great traditions on that campus.

"There are two places that were near and dear to my heart in my entire life, and that was Ohio State and Notre Dame."

Despite coaching the receivers on a team that utilized the option offense, Meyer thrived under Holtz and his successor in South Bend, Bob Davie. In five seasons at Notre Dame, Meyer helped develop Malcolm Johnson into a fifth-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers and David Givens into an eventual seventh-round selection for the New England Patriots. In 1999, his receiving corps broke the Fighting Irish single-season record for pass receptions with 192 and total receiving yards with 2,858.

Meyer also began working on a personal basis with a Fighting Irish graduate assistant named Dan Mullen, with the two planting the early seeds of what would eventually become the spread offense. With Notre Dame compiling a 38–22 record over the course of five seasons, Meyer's coaching career appeared to be on an upward trajectory.

His first opportunity as a head coach, however, would arrive far earlier than even he anticipated it would.

CHAPTER 3

Climbing the Coaching Mountain

Nearly a decade prior to the birth of #MACtion, the social media slogan that has helped popularize the unpredictable nature of Mid-American Conference football, Bowling Green State University was in a rut. Under the direction of head coach Gary Blackney, the Falcons had endured six consecutive losing seasons from 1995 to 2000.

Thus, it came of little surprise when Blackney didn't return to BGSU following a 2–9 season at the turn of the new millennium. What was less predictable, however, was that when searching for Blackney's replacement, Falcons athletic director Paul Krebs reached out to a position coach at Notre Dame who couldn't even claim so much as a season as a coordinator to his credit.

"I was asked to interview at Bowling Green by Earle Bruce, who pushed my name very hard; so did Coach Holtz," Meyer recalled during a speech at the annual Lou Holtz/Upper Ohio Valley Hall of Fame banquet in 2013. "I go to interview for the position, not really thinking I want to go to Bowling Green."

Meyer was under the impression that the feeling was mutual.

"I go to interview for the position not thinking I'm going to get it," he said. "I get the phone call, 'We're going to offer you the job.' So I start thinking about it. I loved Notre Dame. My son was born there, he was baptized in the chapel, and I thought, 'Now's not the time. I'm not going to take it.'"

After a conversation with Bruce, which, per Meyer, included some colorful language from the former Ohio State head coach, Meyer turned his attention toward Holtz, his first boss with the Fighting Irish, who had since become a mentor. What followed was a conversation that put into perspective where Meyer stood on the college football coach totem pole.

"Coach, I got offered the job, but I'm not going to take it," Meyer recalled telling Holtz.

"What?" Holtz responded.

"I'm not going to take it," Meyer reiterated.

"Why not?" Holtz inquired.

"I don't believe it's a good job," Meyer relented.

"Of course not," Holtz replied. "If it was a good job, you think they'd be calling you?"

On December 4, 2000, Bowling Green officially introduced Urban Meyer as its 15 head coach in program history.

Taking over a Falcons team coming off a 2–9 campaign, the 36year-old Meyer had his work cut out for himself. Recruiting had predictably fallen off, and the BGSU facilities didn't offer much to showcase. More urgently, he had inherited a roster full of players who had barely ever heard of their new head coach.

It didn't take them long to find out what Meyer was all about.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Urban Meyer vs. College Football by Ben Axelrod. Copyright © 2017 Ben Axelrod. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1629374636
• ISBN 13: 9781629374635
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240