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Urban Meyer Situation Gets Worse the More We Learn

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You’ve obviously seen the videos and/or photos by now of Urban Meyer, appearing intoxicated, and grinding on a very young woman in an Ohio bar (icymi linked here). That youngster is not his wife, and for that’s what makes this incident so scandalous for Meyer, given all the “family values” and “we do things the right way” bs that he consistently espouses.

Same goes for all the “moral majority” types who are defending him. But Urban Grinder engaging in some flirtatious twerking action is one thing, the fact that he’s entirely lost his locker room is quite another.

For now he still has his job as Jacksonville Jaguars Head Coach, and the team’s owner, Shad Khan, has given him a public vote of confidence.

But how long before that becomes the “dreaded vote of confidence?” His bar escapades are one thing, but from a football perspective, the fact that he skipped the team flight after the last loss is far worse.

Urban Meyer is apparently, flaking/ghosting his own team some times and that has eroded any last semblance of respect that the Jags had for him. Read this thread by NFL reporter/pundit Mike Silver, as it lays it all out there:

The worse thing you can to do your team, when you are their supposed leader, is bail out on them. It’s a sign of weakness, and this situation is pretty much destroying any chance Jacksonville had at salvaging their 2021 season.

Scandal is something that has followed Urban Meyer everywhere that he has gone. You’ll recall how he apparently covered for/seemingly looked the other way while one of his coaches was beating his own wife while both at Ohio State.

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Rolling Stone once reported that he may have covered up some  of Aaron Hernandez’s transgressions when they were at Florida together.

At every stop of his coaching career Utah, Florida, Ohio State etc.  there is a very long list of players who have gotten arrested under his watch.

So he’s used to finding himself in public firestorms, and he always gets out of it. He “fails upwards” so to speak because he consistently wins, but this time it’s different.

He’s losing, the team is 0-4 and looking lifeless, partially due to the rash of terrible football related decisions that Meyer has made to supplement all the mistakes he’s made off the field.

Take a look at this chart:

Tim Tebow? Really? Are you effing kidding me- bringing back Tim Tebow? Yes, expectations were low for Urban Meyer when he took this job, and most of us knew this was a huge risk/reward kind of deal.

“Do they still believe he’s the right guy to develop Trevor Lawrence?” asked NFL writer Judy Battista on Paramount+.

“If things don’t quiet down, if there are more incidents, then you’re really forcing ownership’s hands. They’ve put so much responsibility on Urban Meyer to rebuild that franchise, to change the culture of the franchise. They’re really going to face a tough decision then.”

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“But if Trevor Lawrence is coming along and is ascending and they start to win some games, and the off-the-field stuff quiets down, he might survive it.”

Most football observers and pundits were skeptical at best about how this Urban Meyer experiment might work out. However, no one expected it to be this catastrophic.

Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune.

He co-hosts the After Extra Time podcast. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.