I thought I would go with a more poetic title for this post. It seems appropriate for some reason. I am guessing not many people like the one-and-done rule in college basketball. I say this because a lot of people I speak with don't like the rule. Of course it is actually an NBA rule where the burden and blame gets shifted to college basketball in order to make it look like the NBA gives a shit about the players who eventually enter the league. David Stern is a master spin artist. The poster-coach (not sure that's a word) for the one-and-done rule has become John Calipari and whatever team he is currently coaching. I don't like the one-and-done rule, but I have come to terms with the way John Calipari recruits. He has a recruiting strategy and he uses that strategy to win games.
Whether you think he is a dirty recruiter or not (and if you do think he is dirty then you should also know many other programs are probably dirty as well...like Baylor), he wins basketball games with freshmen at key positions. That isn't always easy. Of course they are talented freshmen, which always helps, but it still doesn't ensure success. Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel doesn't like all of this one-and-done business and he doesn't like the way Calipari wins games. Rather focusing on the positive and celebrating the Florida Gators' Senior Day as an example of an athlete staying in college for four years, he looks at the negative and says Kentucky ruined Florida's Senior Day by having the audacity to defeat the Gators. He's pretty bitter about this it seems. One would believe if Bianchi was concerned with Erving Walker getting attention on Senior Day then he would have written this article about Walker. One would believe wrong.
It was Freshman Day at the University of Florida on Sunday.
Yes, this Kentucky team has a lot of freshmen. Calipari has embraced the one-and-done rule and made it work for him in a way that other programs (Duke in the mid-2000's) were unable to do. I don't like the one-and-done rule, but I've come to terms with how coaches have to use the rule to build their teams and stay competitive. I don't like it, but I have to accept it if I continue to watch college basketball.
Even when it is supposed to be Florida's Senior Day.
I'm not even sure what this means. Should Kentucky not have played their freshmen that day out of deference for the one senior Florida has one the roster? Florida has exactly one senior, so it isn't like this was a freshman versus seniors game or anything of the like. Kentucky is a team that recruits a lot of one-and-done players, but that's living life on a thin line. Calipari has to bring in quality recruiting classes year after year to keep this up, which brings its own kind of pressure. I am not a huge fan of Calipari or Kentucky, but they didn't write the one-and-done rule, they are just playing by that rule. So it was supposed to be Florida's Senior Day and it still was.
Take a look at the Gators roster though. Brad Beal leads the Gators in minutes played. What year is he? A freshman. He also is 2nd on the team in points (as of when Bianchi wrote this article), 1st in rebounds, 1st in steals, 3rd in assists, and 3rd in blocks. Beal is also seriously looking at going to the NBA after this year. So the complaining about the Kentucky one-and-done players seems a bit disingenuous knowing Florida has a probable one-and-done also. Sure, Florida doesn't have three one-and-done players, but they also heavily rely on a freshman (who is a probable one-and-done) for the team's success.
Beal isn't the only young player Florida relies on. Patric Young is a sophomore. He is tied with Beal for the team lead in rebounds, 4th in points, 2nd in blocks, and 4th in minutes played. It isn't like the Gators don't have any young players on their team. They do have more upperclassmen who play a large role on the team than Kentucky does. Kentucky has two seniors, two sophomores, and four freshmen in their 8-man rotation. That is a young team. It is not as if the Kentucky freshmen are the only contributors to the team.
In a idyllic world, this would have been a fitting sendoff for Erving Walker, Florida's inspirational 5-foot-8 senior point guard
Well, it is not an idyllic world and Kentucky doesn't have an obligation to lay down and allow Florida to win the game simply because it is Senior Day. Another fitting send-off would be to have written about Walker, rather than write a half-assed piece simply because you don't like the way Kentucky recruits.
who is a testament to what college basketball once was.
"Back in my day college basketball only featured seniors and the media turned a blind eye to NCAA violations that occurred."
In four years, Walker never missed a game and has become the fourth-leading scorer, second-leading three-point maker and No. 1 assist man in school history.
That is fantastic. Too bad he lost the game against Kentucky on his Senior Day. It sucks, but it happens. No team has the obligation to lay down on the opposing team's Senior Day.
Florida has one player who was at the school for four years and didn't miss a game and Kentucky has one player who was at Kentucky for four years, played in 143 games and is the example, just like Walker, of what coaches want their four year student-athletes to turn into. Darius Miller has accepted his role on the team and progressed his game through the four years at Kentucky. Bianchi wants us to forget this and focus on the horror that is Florida losing at home on Senior Day.
But that nostalgic, idyllic world gave way the real one Sunday when Walker and the Gators were overshadowed once again by Kentucky's high-flying One-and-Doners, whose 74-59 victory was UK's 22nd straight and completed an undefeated 16-0 romp through the SEC.
Any nostalgic, idyllic world of college basketball never existed. It's all in your head and isn't true. It sure is fun to think teams from yesteryear were all clean and had athletes that really gave a shit about their college eduction. Unfortunately, it just isn't true.
This, sadly, is what college basketball has become — a temp agency for rogue UK coach John Calipari's whooping, swooping, alley-ooping rent-a-stars.
How the hell is Calipari "rogue" if he obeys and rules and recruits his team in accordance with those rules? Yes, we all know about violations on teams that Calipari previously coached for, but within the one-and-done rule, Calipari is making it work for him. He isn't rogue.
Especially at Kentucky, where seemingly the only thing that can stop the Childcats is the NBA draft.
This year Kentucky will probably have three freshmen enter the NBA Draft. Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Marcus Teague.
The only reason people get on Calipari's ass is because he wins games with freshmen. If Calipari was a shitty coach who couldn't get the most out of his players, like Rick Barnes (and yes, I realize Calipari gets better recruits than Barnes does. Barnes still stinks with the talent he has), people would not care as much about how many of his players are one-and-done. Over the past two seasons, Calipari has had four players go straight to the NBA and Rick Barnes has had three. It is true Calipari's Kentucky teams often have one-and-done players, but he wins games with these players which I think pisses people off more than anything else.
Freshman center Anthony Davis is the centerpiece of Calipari's current crop of freshmen slambinos and you could certainly see Sunday why he has already been tabbed as the consensus No. 1 pick in the upcoming June draft.
If he is ready to go to the NBA, then what's the problem with him being one-and-done? If Calipari doesn't care for his program to be run this way, why should Mike Bianchi care...other than the fact he doesn't like that Kentucky wins so many games? I hope Bianchi realizes it isn't easy to have the turnover from year-to-year like Calipari has. He has to do more than roll a basketball on the court, drink a soda and eat Cheetos while his team plays. Kentucky plays great defense and defense doesn't come naturally to freshmen and has to be taught.
That may be true, but Calipari has built the nation's most dominant basketball team by becoming the sport's ultimate baby-daddy.
It's rogue of Calipari to work within the one-and-done rule. By the way, Calipari has red-shirted Jon Hood and transfer Ryan Harrow will be able to play next year. So next year's Kentucky team doesn't look to be as nearly freshmen-heavy as this year's team was. There will still be talented freshmen on the team of course.
The way Calipari recruits simply isn't sustainable. He knows he needs a certain amount of guys contributing who aren't freshmen so he can withstand the turnover of the one-and-done players.
after finishing with a 35-3 record and advancing into the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tournament — had five players, including four freshmen, taken in the first round of the NBA draft. Calipari, obviously forgetting the seven national titles the storied Wildcats have in their history, called it "the biggest day in the history of the Kentucky program."
I didn't say I necessarily liked John Calipari and I didn't like this comment. I thought it lacked a certain perspective of Kentucky's basketball history.
Translation: Sending players to the NBA is more important to Calipari than all that other stuff college is supposed to be about.
The cynical translation of his comment can be seen as that. What I believe Calipari intended was to say the Kentucky basketball team had five players drafted into the NBA, so there is talent on the roster, and the program is back from the dead. The acknowledgement by the NBA of the talent on the Kentucky roster was Calipari's proof he was turning the Kentucky basketball program back into the program the fans wanted and into the program Calipari wanted it to be.
You know, stuff like growing up, developing as a person, going to class, getting a degree, blah, blah, blah.
Calipari will have one player graduate this year and three players from the 2010-2011 team graduated. Granted, those players aren't players he has recruited. So only time will tell if he gets guys to stay four years and graduate, but I'm guessing he will have players graduate. Calipari can only help these players grow up, go to class, and develop as long as they are at Kentucky. It isn't like Calipari is taking in players no other programs want. If Cousins didn't go to Kentucky to be a one-and-done, he would have gone to Memphis. Same thing with Wall. He would have gone to Baylor or N.C. State to play for one year. The system is the problem in my opinion. It just so happens Calipari has a few examples of what is wrong with the system on his team every year.
It wasn't so long ago that Billy Donovan had Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Corey Brewer, Tauren Green, and Maureese Speights leave early and not graduate over two consecutive seasons. Again, I will admit those players were juniors and sophomores, but not graduating is not graduating.
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo probably put it best when he told Sports Illustrated recently: "It [Kentucky] is like a factory. Nobody has any ties to the place."
Don't mislead your readers. Let's look at the entire quote, in context, and see what we think about Izzo's quote at that point.
"He doesn't get enough credit for the job they do defensively," Izzo says. "It's hard to get freshmen to play defense. And he's gotta do it with five, six of them [on his roster]."
Izzo says he would happily take a one-and-done player, but he doesn't want a whole team of them,
Wait, Izzo would take a one-and-done player? I must have read that wrong.
Izzo says he would happily take a one-and-done player, but he doesn't want a whole team of them,
I guess not. Also, it doesn't appear Izzo was talking directly about Kentucky with his "factory" comment, but I don't want to let facts get in the way of Bianchi's sour grapes.
nor does he think the likes of Krzyzewski or North Carolina's Roy Williams would either. "I don't think I would enjoy my job that way," he says. "It's like a factory. Nobody has any ties to the place."
There may be a small difference, but Izzo isn't saying "Kentucky is like a factory," he is saying if he had a team of one-and-done players he wouldn't enjoy his job because players wouldn't have ties to the school. So yes, he is talking about Kentucky indirectly, but not directly saying, "Kentucky is a factory."
The difference is in Izzo saying he would not enjoy his job because Michigan State would be like a factory and Izzo directly saying Kentucky is a factory. It's a small difference perhaps, but the difference is in acknowledging what would work for him as a coach and what works for Kentucky. Need proof of this difference? Great, here it is...
Which isn't to say that Izzo—or any other coach—could make such an institutional change, even if he wanted to. "As [basketball] crazy as Kentucky is," says Izzo, "that's probably one of the few places you could do that."
So Izzo's comment doesn't fit as neatly in the context of Bianchi's article as much as he would like for it to.
When I asked him about his reputation as the king of the one-and-doners Sunday, he went on an animated rant about what the NBA and college basketball should do to encourage players to stay for more than one year.
Who would have thought Calipari wouldn't want to discuss the one-and-done rule after his team has completed a perfect conference record? What an unforeseen turn of events!
Among his suggestions: The NCAA should give players a sizable stipend and the NBA should allow players to who stay in college to subtract years from their less-lucrative rookie contract.
I am a fan of two-and-through and otherwise an high school player wants to go straight to the NBA he can. But the player has to stay in college for two years. As long as the NBA takes away the options a college athlete has, John Calipari should build his team as he sees fit, even if I don't personally like it. It is naive to blame the players in the system for the rules that have been set up. The real culprit are those people who limit the options available to high school basketball players and pretend to care about the graduation of student-athletes.
Calipari, though, refuses to apologize for signing the best players in the country even when he must know his program is nothing more than a glorified AAU squad.
Mike Bianchi would not be saying this if he ever watched an AAU game and saw the amount of defense and discipline on the part of the players in those games. If anything Calipari's teams are a D-League team, but not a glorified AAU team.
"What I would tell you is this is not my rule," he says. "I can't stand the rule, but it's the rule so I go out and recruit players who want to play here.
I think this is true. Calipari has found a way to differentiate the Kentucky program from other programs across the country. He differentiates by recruiting more one-and-done players with the idea he can help them play in the NBA. Most college basketball players want to play basketball professionally, this isn't a big secret.
He then added facetiously: "This year, we're doing OK — we're hanging on."
Welcome to college basketball's worst nightmare.
What, you writing a column about the one-and-done rule?
Freshman Day in Gainesville.
The Kentucky Childcats.
This may be Mike Bianchi's worst nightmare, but I'm not sure this is college basketball's worst nightmare to have a team of freshmen players have success during the regular season. Any coach will tell you, and Tom Izzo did tell us, you can't just throw a bunch of talented players on a team and have them win a national title. In fact, John Calipari has never won a national title. So the worst nightmare is a bit overblown.
I know Mike Bianchi likes and respects Erving Walker. He wanted his Senior Day to go smoothly and end with a win for the Florida Gators. If the Gators don't want to lose on Senior Day, don't schedule Kentucky. Plenty of other seniors who are really good guys lost on their Senior Day (Draymond Green) and it doesn't matter if they lost to a team full of freshmen or a team with more upperclassmen. We can be nostalgic about it all we want, but plenty of freshmen have come in and handed a group of seniors their ass on Senior Night. It didn't start this year and it won't stop this year. Whether these freshmen are one-and-done players doesn't matter. It doesn't overshadow a player's Senior Night any more or any less by losing to a group of freshmen. Losing on Senior Night sucks no matter what.
No. 1.
And done.
Yep, just like Brad Beal. In fact, Florida could have possibly had two one-and-done players if Austin Rivers had not de-committed in April 2010. There is no "right" way to build a competitive college basketball team, as long as a coach doesn't break NCAA rules. I'm not sure we can fault coaches who recruit within the rules that have been set up and forced upon college basketball. It doesn't mean we have to like it. If Mike Bianchi really wants to honor Erving Walker and how great he has been for Florida, perhaps he should have spent his column talking about Walker rather than being bitter towards Florida for "overshadowing" Walker's Senior Day.
Showing posts with label florida gators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label florida gators. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
9 comments National Columnists Argue Over What Urban Meyer Should Do With His Life
As I am sure everyone has heard by now, Urban Meyer retired, unretired, and then took a leave of absence from the University of Florida football program all within the past three days. I have no idea why Urban Meyer did what he did. Apparently he thought his medical condition required extended time away from the Florida Gator football program, then decided he would miss the team too much and he didn't need to quit completely. Needless to say national columnists have had a field day with this. Ranging from Jay Mariotti doing his typical "Mariotti criticizing someone for a personal decision" column to Mike Celizic saying if Meyer was selfish by continuing to coach the team and even questioning why the University of Florida granted the leave of absence. It's a bizarre situation, no doubt.
The thing that has annoyed me the most is people have said he "pulled a Favre," and putting this situation in the same category as my least favorite waffler. It's not like Favre's situation at all. It would be like Favre's situation if Meyer retired from coaching and after the University of Florida had hired Dan Mullen to coach the team announced he wanted to come back and coach Florida. If he couldn't then he wanted to be released from his contract. Then Meyer went to the University of Wisconsin, retired after that year and then signed with the University of Alabama to be their head coach. Then, and only then, would the situations be comparable. You can't tell this to Mariotti and Celizic though.
Mariotti is first.
I am trying to understand the fluctuations of the human mind, the magnetic pull of pride and ego,
It sounds like Jay is trying to understand himself a little bit.
Mind explaining, Urban Meyer, what those very bizarre 24 hours were just about?
If there is a worse sportswriter who should be giving recommendations on how to lead their life than Jay Mariotti, I would love to know his/her name. Jay Mariotti gets paid to scream into a camera. He gets paid a lot of money for this. Here's all that is required to have this talent:
1. Find a camera
2. Pick a position on an issue
3. Scream into the camera
Mariotti has also alienated pretty much everyone in the entire world with his terrible sportswriting, and frankly, I think the only people who like him are paid to like him or at least paid to deal with him. Throw in the fact Mariotti's job is to just give his opinion on sports in emphatic fashion while being surrounded by food and drinks at all times and I just find it hard for Mariotti to understand what kind of advice is appropriate for Urban Meyer and his family.
So this is a man who should not be giving advice to Urban Meyer on life decisions in my mind.
All your anguish about slipping in and out of consciousness in the back of an ambulance, your heart heaving in pain and feeling heavier than a barge, your mortality teetering much too early at age 45? All your tears when telling your team Saturday that you were leaving the Florida football program for health reasons, sounding like you'd never return?
All a product of an overly emotional decision based on probably being very scared about his future health and coaching with this medical condition. It all sounds irrational, and it probably is. Meyer probably didn't want to be a "figurehead" coach like Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden and was afraid if he wasn't 100% healthy he couldn't coach like he wanted to. Once he calmed down, he realized he could still coach the Gators and make life changes that will allow him to coach the Gators for 20 more years.
For the record, I don't like Urban Meyer and I hate the Florida Gators. I can be nice and fair to those that deserve it, but overall I wish Urban Meyer would never win another football game at Florida.
for all his decreeing and anger at everyone, I would think that Mariotti would be nicer since God has already put him on warning once before.
when your oldest daughter proclaimed, "I get my daddy back!'' and you suggested the scene with her was a message from God?
She is 18 years old and going to Georgia Tech next year, so it's not like she hanging around the house for the foreseeable future. She is 18 and calls her father "daddy." That's all I have to say about this.
What happened to the breakthrough perspective, the perfectly-in-place priorities that had you propped up like a clear-minded American hero during the holiday season?
It sounds like he changed his mind. He decided he could balance football and his health. It's his life, if he wants to die on the football field and leave his family without a father, this is a personal matter. That's probably not going to happen, but many of the same jerks who thought Meyer quit Florida to pursue other jobs (of which I was one and let's be honest, a lot of people initially thought that), can't now pretend they thought Meyer was really retiring for his family and criticize him for this decision.
Well, Meyer's grand stance for health and family lasted all of one night, until he awakened Sunday morning in the town he and Tim Tebow made famous. That's when he went to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for the Gators' final pre-Sugar Bowl practice in Gainesville, where he gazed at the national championship signs in the Swamp and noticed how lively and energetic the players were.
That reasoning is stupid, I can easily admit that. Still, this is a personal decision for Urban Meyer and I have to be honest a little bit, with his health problems not being life threatening I was wondering why he completely stepped down as head coach of Florida. I thought he should take a leave of absence and get his health under control and make lifestyle changes before he comes back...which is what he ended up doing. I thought retiring from coaching completely was a bit severe.
Coaching football is his life. It's easy to criticize him for this decision and completely not think about this. Meyer has worked for 20 years to get where he currently resides in the college football hierarchy. I am sure he loves his family, but he didn't work hard just to give it up when a health problem becomes a temporary road block. It sounds stupid, but it is true.
I wanted to believe Meyer when he said Saturday night that he was quitting in fear of dropping dead, that years of chest pains and an arachnoid cyst on his brain had forced him to value life as a husband and father over his continued journey atop college football's most accomplished program.
This is a lie. Jay Mariotti wanted Meyer to go coach another team or unretire so he could roast him really good in a column. Jay Mariotti himself had a heart attack. I am sure he made lifestyle changes and got back into sportswriting. Assuming Mariotti has family of some type don't you think at least one family member wondered if he would start taking it easier? Well he didn't and I don't think that makes him selfish, so I feel the same about Urban Meyer. Sure being a sportswriter and a head coach are two completely different things, they each have their own health challenges though. Meyer has to commit himself to lifestyle changes if he wants to improve his health. It was a temporary roadblock. I am a little surprised everyone is overreacting to Meyer's initial overreacting by retiring.
So much for Nicki Meyer, the freshman volleyball player at Georgia Tech, getting her daddy back.
Holy crap, she is going to college. She is not a 7 year old child anymore.
If it's too strong to describe his change of mind as disingenuous -- he is dealing with serious health issues -- I'm confused as to why Meyer didn't think things out before coming out so definitively the previous night, particularly in a piece in the New York Times.
He stupidly made an emotional decision and then regretted it. Something may be in the water down at the University of Florida because Billy Donovan did something similar when he backed out of the Orlando Magic head coaching job a few years ago.
If Meyer had made the decision non-definitively in the beginning the media would have firmly jumped on the "he is blaming his health but is completely trying to jump to a different football program or perhaps the NFL." So Meyer wanted to sound definitive, not knowing he would change his mind.
So how does the fear subside in a matter of hours? How does a life-and-death, self-destructive frame of reference disappear upon watching the Gators practice for 90 minutes? "I think it's very simple: the love that I have for these players,'' Meyer said Sunday. "When I saw them come out there today after our meeting we had last night ... when I sat back and watched them go at it and our coaching staff and the program we built, to not try would not be the right thing to do.
He sees his players as family. In bizarro sports world a coach who sticks around for his players because he gave them his word that he would coach them would be celebrated. I don't understand Meyer thinking of his players as family, but simply because I don't understand doesn't mean Meyer is making the incorrect long term decision for himself.
Upon hearing that, I looked over at Meyer's wife, Shelley, and the couple's three children.
Jay was probably just checking out Urban Meyer's daughter. He can't fool me.
Can the man change, take care of himself? "That's what we're about to find out,'' Shelley Meyer said calmly before she and her daughters, also speaking to the media, were interrupted by Foley and Florida sports-information personnel and whisked from the media center into waiting black SUVs.
I can't imagine Shelley Meyer is very happy with her husband's decision. Guess whose problem that is? Urban Meyer's. We don't need to give our two cents on everything, but that's how sports are nowadays everyone gives their opinion on everything and judges whether the decision was right or not.
And yeah, I do it too.
To Meyer's credit, he understands he'll have to change his style as the ultimate hands-on, do-everything coach. The chest pains tell him that much, along with the story of Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser, who died suddenly after a heart attack. "It's something that started about four years ago. It was chest pains that became rather significant two years ago,'' said Meyer, who never let on publicly about the problems until recently.
To be fair, Skip Prosser was 11 years older than Urban Meyer when he died and his heart attack was considered sudden, which means I am assuming Prosser hadn't gotten a lot of advance warning that his heart could give out. It's not like Prosser had warning and ignored the warning signs. Meyer has warning ahead of time and can make the necessary changes to his lifestyle. It's a little bit different situation.
So, how does a Type A maniac cut back? "That's something I've got to figure out,'' Meyer said. "There's obviously other coaches who have great careers and have done great things for a long time. I'm going to get that fixed ... I've had a 30-year career in nine years. You just can't do that.''
It's important to note that while Urban Meyer has an incredibly stressful job, there are thousands of people in the world who have incredibly stressful jobs and also have heart defects or other medical conditions that don't respond well to stress. My guess is that most of the people who have this problem in the world learn to navigate and manage the risk while not up and quitting their day job. It's a different situation, but few people accuse these everyday people of being selfish for not quitting their stressful jobs.
But I'm disappointed that Urban Meyer, blessed with wealth and success, didn't go out on his own terms in his mid-40s and make a statement for humankind.
That he is going to let a heart condition completely dictate how he lives his life? Has Jay Mariotti thought that perhaps there is a guy in Iowa who five years from now will be diagnosed with a heart condition similar to Urban Meyer's and that person will gain strength in knowing if a guy like Urban Meyer, who has a ton of stress in his life, can live with the heart problem so can he? This person will know it's not the death sentence or the health problem that will ruin his life and everything he does. Isn't that a bold statement in itself as well, even though it's not an immediately obvious or public statement? Isn't learning to manage stress and not let a health condition change what you enjoy in life sending a message as well?
Mike Celizic also has a take, other than "who is Urban Meyer?" and "if he doesn't coach for a team in Boston or New York I don't know who he is."
Celizic's take.
It’s about the team, not the individual, and you know that’s what Urban Meyer preaches because that’s what coaches do.
I think Celizic is a little confused. Urban Meyer decided to do what was best for the Florida team in the long run. So in a bizarre way, he lived up to this standard coaches set. In regards to his family, they will just have to understand this decision I guess. If they know him like most people know their parents/spouse, they will eventually understand.
But now he’s asking everyone — team, school, family — to sacrifice for him because he just realized that he’s more important than all of them.
Nearly everyone is perfectly willing to sacrifice for him because neither the Florida football program or his recruits are sacrificing anything in the long run. This sacrifice really only goes for Meyer's family, which makes this a personal decision he will have to live with making.
At least it doesn’t work both ways for most of us. If we’ve got a personal problem, nobody’s going to tell us to take a month or six months or even a year off while we sort it out and not to worry about money because the company’s going to keep paying us.
I think Mike Celizic is the only person in this situation who has a problem with the "leave of absence" part of Meyer's decision. Doesn't he realize how stupid it would be for the University of Florida to NOT grant Meyer a leave of absence while he deals with a personal medical condition? It's stupid even from a non-football perspective. Of all the times to compare what coaches and players do in sports to real life, this is probably one of the most irrelevant times to do this, when it comes to a coach's physical health.
I can't even fathom how NOT giving Meyer a leave of absence was the right decision in this situation.
It only works both ways if you’re as extraordinarily successful and charismatic as Urban Meyer.
Or work in sports. When an NFL player gets cut, his contract says he still gets paid a certain amount of money. In "the real world" many people when they are fired don't get severance packages. Urban Meyer is greatly valued at the University of Florida and I think everyone understands he has to take a few months off to benefit the school in the long run. This would be like not giving a professor with cancer a leave of absence to go through chemo-therapy. I am not sure a school would decline that leave of absence request either.
Win a couple of national championships, give inspirational talks about values and family and faith, attract the top recruits, inspire the alumni to write big checks to the general fund, and you can do anything you want.
Like take a few months off during the part of the season where the team doesn't play games to take care of a non-life threatening heart condition? That Urban Meyer sure is running all over the University of Florida administration isn't he? If we changed the name "Urban Meyer" to "Mack Brown" why don't I feel like we would get the same reaction from Mike Celizic? I think Celizic is being harsh on the University of Florida for granting the leave of absence because Meyer is a younger coach. At least that's my guess.
If Meyer were my football coach I’d bend so far over backwards for him a platoon of chiropractors couldn’t straighten me out again. I wouldn’t care about what’s right.
It's good Mike Celizic says he would do the same thing and give Meyer time off, but what's not "right" about this? So it would be "right" for the University of Florida to tell Urban Meyer, "either coach full-time with your health condition or retire from coaching football completely to get this heart problem taken care of?" This would be the right thing to do? How is granting Meyer a leave of absence not the right thing to do?
On Saturday, when Meyer quit his job because he feared for his heart and his health, he told The New York Times that when he told his family that he had coached his last, his 18-year-old daughter, Nicki, hugged him and said, “I get my daddy back.”
Here we go again...
That hug, he told the newspaper, he took “as a sign from God that this was the right thing to do.”
Well, then Urban Meyer went to go talk to God's right hand man (Tim Tebow) and changed his mind. It's pretty clear from the immediacy of his decision to take a leave of absence instead of retiring was something he regretted very quickly.
If he changes his mind again, then I will jump all over Meyer.
Just a day later, when he went on the practice field and saw how spirited and upbeat his team was, he realized he couldn’t just quit.
Again, this is stupid reasoning. I can accept this criticism of Meyer as being valid.
But believing what you say and actually following up on it are different things. When your daughter says, “I get my daddy back,” that should be like a slap in the face telling you that you’ve been spending too much time in the office.
SHE IS 18 YEARS OLD AND GOING TO COLLEGE IN A DIFFERENT STATE NEXT YEAR! SHE IS NOT EVEN GOING TO BE HOME WITH THE REST OF HER FAMILY FULL-TIME FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS!
And when you find yourself texting recruits on your cell phone during church services, as Meyer has confessed to doing, then your faith does not come before your job. If it did, you’d leave the phone in the car.
Because Mike Celizic is the Joel Osteen of sportswriters. He is the final judge of whether a person's faith is the primary focus of that person's life. Once a person dies, he/she has to stand judge in front of Mike Celizic who will tally up all the times that person was doing something else when they should have been focused on their own personal faith. We all stand in judgment in front of Mike Celizic at some point.
Yes, all the other things he talks about are important, but nothing is more important than being what he is: a coach.
He's coached for the majority of his life. It essentially does define him at this point. I don't think this is such a bad thing as long as it doesn't negatively affect the rest of his life (which remains to be seen).
He’s got plenty of money to retire now if he wants, and there’s plenty more doing football analysis on TV. So there’s no reason to keep coaching and keep putting his health at risk. If it really were about family, he’d be an ex-coach now and not a coach-in-limbo.
It's his opinion, if he wants to put his health at risk then it's not Mike Celizic who dies or gets severely hurt, it's Urban Meyer and his family. It's his heart and he thinks he can manage the risks. I don't think this is something that should be put to a group vote outside of the Meyer family.
They don’t delegate. They’re consumed by the job in a way that few people can understand or appreciate. They try to control everything.
Urban Meyer said he is definitely going to try and succeed in making lifestyle changes, he said he was taking a leave of absence until he feels like he can come back health-wise. Then we will know for sure if he can make the necessary changes.
Meyer didn’t become perhaps the greatest coach in college football by not sweating the small stuff. He didn’t do it by putting his feet up and putting problems off for another day. He didn’t do it by cutting back on the time he spends with his team. He didn’t do it by accepting defeat.
He’s a great coach and an awfully good man. But this one is still about him and not the team. And that’s not right.
Apparently it's fine to make a selfish decision that is all about him when he is retiring and not trying to coach the team and recruits he had made commitments to, but it's not fine to make a selfish decision when he decides to not retire and uphold all the job-related obligations he currently has? I just want to make sure I have this straight.
As far as Urban Meyer's family goes, if his family really thought he was going to just be able to stay away from coaching then they didn't know him that well. I am sure after years of he and his family knowing that there was some health problems he had and him still not taking a step back from coaching, the mere acknowledgment that he needs to learn to delegate and take time off to deal with his health is a relief to his family. We have to remember they have been aware of Meyer's health problem for a while now. I don't think he is being selfish right now, he is being selfish if he doesn't make the necessary lifestyle changes when he comes back though.
I have no idea why Mike Celizic is against the idea of a leave of absence for Meyer. I still don't get that. I think Urban Meyer has earned the chance to deal with his health problems and have the head coaching job still there for him if/when he wants to come back.
The thing that has annoyed me the most is people have said he "pulled a Favre," and putting this situation in the same category as my least favorite waffler. It's not like Favre's situation at all. It would be like Favre's situation if Meyer retired from coaching and after the University of Florida had hired Dan Mullen to coach the team announced he wanted to come back and coach Florida. If he couldn't then he wanted to be released from his contract. Then Meyer went to the University of Wisconsin, retired after that year and then signed with the University of Alabama to be their head coach. Then, and only then, would the situations be comparable. You can't tell this to Mariotti and Celizic though.
Mariotti is first.
I am trying to understand the fluctuations of the human mind, the magnetic pull of pride and ego,
It sounds like Jay is trying to understand himself a little bit.
Mind explaining, Urban Meyer, what those very bizarre 24 hours were just about?
If there is a worse sportswriter who should be giving recommendations on how to lead their life than Jay Mariotti, I would love to know his/her name. Jay Mariotti gets paid to scream into a camera. He gets paid a lot of money for this. Here's all that is required to have this talent:
1. Find a camera
2. Pick a position on an issue
3. Scream into the camera
Mariotti has also alienated pretty much everyone in the entire world with his terrible sportswriting, and frankly, I think the only people who like him are paid to like him or at least paid to deal with him. Throw in the fact Mariotti's job is to just give his opinion on sports in emphatic fashion while being surrounded by food and drinks at all times and I just find it hard for Mariotti to understand what kind of advice is appropriate for Urban Meyer and his family.
So this is a man who should not be giving advice to Urban Meyer on life decisions in my mind.
All your anguish about slipping in and out of consciousness in the back of an ambulance, your heart heaving in pain and feeling heavier than a barge, your mortality teetering much too early at age 45? All your tears when telling your team Saturday that you were leaving the Florida football program for health reasons, sounding like you'd never return?
All a product of an overly emotional decision based on probably being very scared about his future health and coaching with this medical condition. It all sounds irrational, and it probably is. Meyer probably didn't want to be a "figurehead" coach like Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden and was afraid if he wasn't 100% healthy he couldn't coach like he wanted to. Once he calmed down, he realized he could still coach the Gators and make life changes that will allow him to coach the Gators for 20 more years.
For the record, I don't like Urban Meyer and I hate the Florida Gators. I can be nice and fair to those that deserve it, but overall I wish Urban Meyer would never win another football game at Florida.
for all his decreeing and anger at everyone, I would think that Mariotti would be nicer since God has already put him on warning once before.
when your oldest daughter proclaimed, "I get my daddy back!'' and you suggested the scene with her was a message from God?
She is 18 years old and going to Georgia Tech next year, so it's not like she hanging around the house for the foreseeable future. She is 18 and calls her father "daddy." That's all I have to say about this.
What happened to the breakthrough perspective, the perfectly-in-place priorities that had you propped up like a clear-minded American hero during the holiday season?
It sounds like he changed his mind. He decided he could balance football and his health. It's his life, if he wants to die on the football field and leave his family without a father, this is a personal matter. That's probably not going to happen, but many of the same jerks who thought Meyer quit Florida to pursue other jobs (of which I was one and let's be honest, a lot of people initially thought that), can't now pretend they thought Meyer was really retiring for his family and criticize him for this decision.
Well, Meyer's grand stance for health and family lasted all of one night, until he awakened Sunday morning in the town he and Tim Tebow made famous. That's when he went to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for the Gators' final pre-Sugar Bowl practice in Gainesville, where he gazed at the national championship signs in the Swamp and noticed how lively and energetic the players were.
That reasoning is stupid, I can easily admit that. Still, this is a personal decision for Urban Meyer and I have to be honest a little bit, with his health problems not being life threatening I was wondering why he completely stepped down as head coach of Florida. I thought he should take a leave of absence and get his health under control and make lifestyle changes before he comes back...which is what he ended up doing. I thought retiring from coaching completely was a bit severe.
Coaching football is his life. It's easy to criticize him for this decision and completely not think about this. Meyer has worked for 20 years to get where he currently resides in the college football hierarchy. I am sure he loves his family, but he didn't work hard just to give it up when a health problem becomes a temporary road block. It sounds stupid, but it is true.
I wanted to believe Meyer when he said Saturday night that he was quitting in fear of dropping dead, that years of chest pains and an arachnoid cyst on his brain had forced him to value life as a husband and father over his continued journey atop college football's most accomplished program.
This is a lie. Jay Mariotti wanted Meyer to go coach another team or unretire so he could roast him really good in a column. Jay Mariotti himself had a heart attack. I am sure he made lifestyle changes and got back into sportswriting. Assuming Mariotti has family of some type don't you think at least one family member wondered if he would start taking it easier? Well he didn't and I don't think that makes him selfish, so I feel the same about Urban Meyer. Sure being a sportswriter and a head coach are two completely different things, they each have their own health challenges though. Meyer has to commit himself to lifestyle changes if he wants to improve his health. It was a temporary roadblock. I am a little surprised everyone is overreacting to Meyer's initial overreacting by retiring.
So much for Nicki Meyer, the freshman volleyball player at Georgia Tech, getting her daddy back.
Holy crap, she is going to college. She is not a 7 year old child anymore.
If it's too strong to describe his change of mind as disingenuous -- he is dealing with serious health issues -- I'm confused as to why Meyer didn't think things out before coming out so definitively the previous night, particularly in a piece in the New York Times.
He stupidly made an emotional decision and then regretted it. Something may be in the water down at the University of Florida because Billy Donovan did something similar when he backed out of the Orlando Magic head coaching job a few years ago.
If Meyer had made the decision non-definitively in the beginning the media would have firmly jumped on the "he is blaming his health but is completely trying to jump to a different football program or perhaps the NFL." So Meyer wanted to sound definitive, not knowing he would change his mind.
So how does the fear subside in a matter of hours? How does a life-and-death, self-destructive frame of reference disappear upon watching the Gators practice for 90 minutes? "I think it's very simple: the love that I have for these players,'' Meyer said Sunday. "When I saw them come out there today after our meeting we had last night ... when I sat back and watched them go at it and our coaching staff and the program we built, to not try would not be the right thing to do.
He sees his players as family. In bizarro sports world a coach who sticks around for his players because he gave them his word that he would coach them would be celebrated. I don't understand Meyer thinking of his players as family, but simply because I don't understand doesn't mean Meyer is making the incorrect long term decision for himself.
Upon hearing that, I looked over at Meyer's wife, Shelley, and the couple's three children.
Jay was probably just checking out Urban Meyer's daughter. He can't fool me.
Can the man change, take care of himself? "That's what we're about to find out,'' Shelley Meyer said calmly before she and her daughters, also speaking to the media, were interrupted by Foley and Florida sports-information personnel and whisked from the media center into waiting black SUVs.
I can't imagine Shelley Meyer is very happy with her husband's decision. Guess whose problem that is? Urban Meyer's. We don't need to give our two cents on everything, but that's how sports are nowadays everyone gives their opinion on everything and judges whether the decision was right or not.
And yeah, I do it too.
To Meyer's credit, he understands he'll have to change his style as the ultimate hands-on, do-everything coach. The chest pains tell him that much, along with the story of Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser, who died suddenly after a heart attack. "It's something that started about four years ago. It was chest pains that became rather significant two years ago,'' said Meyer, who never let on publicly about the problems until recently.
To be fair, Skip Prosser was 11 years older than Urban Meyer when he died and his heart attack was considered sudden, which means I am assuming Prosser hadn't gotten a lot of advance warning that his heart could give out. It's not like Prosser had warning and ignored the warning signs. Meyer has warning ahead of time and can make the necessary changes to his lifestyle. It's a little bit different situation.
So, how does a Type A maniac cut back? "That's something I've got to figure out,'' Meyer said. "There's obviously other coaches who have great careers and have done great things for a long time. I'm going to get that fixed ... I've had a 30-year career in nine years. You just can't do that.''
It's important to note that while Urban Meyer has an incredibly stressful job, there are thousands of people in the world who have incredibly stressful jobs and also have heart defects or other medical conditions that don't respond well to stress. My guess is that most of the people who have this problem in the world learn to navigate and manage the risk while not up and quitting their day job. It's a different situation, but few people accuse these everyday people of being selfish for not quitting their stressful jobs.
But I'm disappointed that Urban Meyer, blessed with wealth and success, didn't go out on his own terms in his mid-40s and make a statement for humankind.
That he is going to let a heart condition completely dictate how he lives his life? Has Jay Mariotti thought that perhaps there is a guy in Iowa who five years from now will be diagnosed with a heart condition similar to Urban Meyer's and that person will gain strength in knowing if a guy like Urban Meyer, who has a ton of stress in his life, can live with the heart problem so can he? This person will know it's not the death sentence or the health problem that will ruin his life and everything he does. Isn't that a bold statement in itself as well, even though it's not an immediately obvious or public statement? Isn't learning to manage stress and not let a health condition change what you enjoy in life sending a message as well?
Mike Celizic also has a take, other than "who is Urban Meyer?" and "if he doesn't coach for a team in Boston or New York I don't know who he is."
Celizic's take.
It’s about the team, not the individual, and you know that’s what Urban Meyer preaches because that’s what coaches do.
I think Celizic is a little confused. Urban Meyer decided to do what was best for the Florida team in the long run. So in a bizarre way, he lived up to this standard coaches set. In regards to his family, they will just have to understand this decision I guess. If they know him like most people know their parents/spouse, they will eventually understand.
But now he’s asking everyone — team, school, family — to sacrifice for him because he just realized that he’s more important than all of them.
Nearly everyone is perfectly willing to sacrifice for him because neither the Florida football program or his recruits are sacrificing anything in the long run. This sacrifice really only goes for Meyer's family, which makes this a personal decision he will have to live with making.
At least it doesn’t work both ways for most of us. If we’ve got a personal problem, nobody’s going to tell us to take a month or six months or even a year off while we sort it out and not to worry about money because the company’s going to keep paying us.
I think Mike Celizic is the only person in this situation who has a problem with the "leave of absence" part of Meyer's decision. Doesn't he realize how stupid it would be for the University of Florida to NOT grant Meyer a leave of absence while he deals with a personal medical condition? It's stupid even from a non-football perspective. Of all the times to compare what coaches and players do in sports to real life, this is probably one of the most irrelevant times to do this, when it comes to a coach's physical health.
I can't even fathom how NOT giving Meyer a leave of absence was the right decision in this situation.
It only works both ways if you’re as extraordinarily successful and charismatic as Urban Meyer.
Or work in sports. When an NFL player gets cut, his contract says he still gets paid a certain amount of money. In "the real world" many people when they are fired don't get severance packages. Urban Meyer is greatly valued at the University of Florida and I think everyone understands he has to take a few months off to benefit the school in the long run. This would be like not giving a professor with cancer a leave of absence to go through chemo-therapy. I am not sure a school would decline that leave of absence request either.
Win a couple of national championships, give inspirational talks about values and family and faith, attract the top recruits, inspire the alumni to write big checks to the general fund, and you can do anything you want.
Like take a few months off during the part of the season where the team doesn't play games to take care of a non-life threatening heart condition? That Urban Meyer sure is running all over the University of Florida administration isn't he? If we changed the name "Urban Meyer" to "Mack Brown" why don't I feel like we would get the same reaction from Mike Celizic? I think Celizic is being harsh on the University of Florida for granting the leave of absence because Meyer is a younger coach. At least that's my guess.
If Meyer were my football coach I’d bend so far over backwards for him a platoon of chiropractors couldn’t straighten me out again. I wouldn’t care about what’s right.
It's good Mike Celizic says he would do the same thing and give Meyer time off, but what's not "right" about this? So it would be "right" for the University of Florida to tell Urban Meyer, "either coach full-time with your health condition or retire from coaching football completely to get this heart problem taken care of?" This would be the right thing to do? How is granting Meyer a leave of absence not the right thing to do?
On Saturday, when Meyer quit his job because he feared for his heart and his health, he told The New York Times that when he told his family that he had coached his last, his 18-year-old daughter, Nicki, hugged him and said, “I get my daddy back.”
Here we go again...
That hug, he told the newspaper, he took “as a sign from God that this was the right thing to do.”
Well, then Urban Meyer went to go talk to God's right hand man (Tim Tebow) and changed his mind. It's pretty clear from the immediacy of his decision to take a leave of absence instead of retiring was something he regretted very quickly.
If he changes his mind again, then I will jump all over Meyer.
Just a day later, when he went on the practice field and saw how spirited and upbeat his team was, he realized he couldn’t just quit.
Again, this is stupid reasoning. I can accept this criticism of Meyer as being valid.
But believing what you say and actually following up on it are different things. When your daughter says, “I get my daddy back,” that should be like a slap in the face telling you that you’ve been spending too much time in the office.
SHE IS 18 YEARS OLD AND GOING TO COLLEGE IN A DIFFERENT STATE NEXT YEAR! SHE IS NOT EVEN GOING TO BE HOME WITH THE REST OF HER FAMILY FULL-TIME FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS!
And when you find yourself texting recruits on your cell phone during church services, as Meyer has confessed to doing, then your faith does not come before your job. If it did, you’d leave the phone in the car.
Because Mike Celizic is the Joel Osteen of sportswriters. He is the final judge of whether a person's faith is the primary focus of that person's life. Once a person dies, he/she has to stand judge in front of Mike Celizic who will tally up all the times that person was doing something else when they should have been focused on their own personal faith. We all stand in judgment in front of Mike Celizic at some point.
Yes, all the other things he talks about are important, but nothing is more important than being what he is: a coach.
He's coached for the majority of his life. It essentially does define him at this point. I don't think this is such a bad thing as long as it doesn't negatively affect the rest of his life (which remains to be seen).
He’s got plenty of money to retire now if he wants, and there’s plenty more doing football analysis on TV. So there’s no reason to keep coaching and keep putting his health at risk. If it really were about family, he’d be an ex-coach now and not a coach-in-limbo.
It's his opinion, if he wants to put his health at risk then it's not Mike Celizic who dies or gets severely hurt, it's Urban Meyer and his family. It's his heart and he thinks he can manage the risks. I don't think this is something that should be put to a group vote outside of the Meyer family.
They don’t delegate. They’re consumed by the job in a way that few people can understand or appreciate. They try to control everything.
Urban Meyer said he is definitely going to try and succeed in making lifestyle changes, he said he was taking a leave of absence until he feels like he can come back health-wise. Then we will know for sure if he can make the necessary changes.
Meyer didn’t become perhaps the greatest coach in college football by not sweating the small stuff. He didn’t do it by putting his feet up and putting problems off for another day. He didn’t do it by cutting back on the time he spends with his team. He didn’t do it by accepting defeat.
And he especially didn’t do it by putting his family or anything else ahead of his job and his obsessive need to win and be the best and do right by his players and his employers and his fans.
So it was perfectly fine for Urban Meyer to get where he currently is by ignoring his family and making football first for the past 20 years? Regardless of some of the scares he has had on the sidelines? But now that everyone else in the world is aware of his heart problem and he is taking measures to take care of himself and his health it's not all right to put football first? What has changed except for Meyer's knowledge of his heart problem and the fact he needs to take time off to make lifestyle changes?He’s a great coach and an awfully good man. But this one is still about him and not the team. And that’s not right.
Apparently it's fine to make a selfish decision that is all about him when he is retiring and not trying to coach the team and recruits he had made commitments to, but it's not fine to make a selfish decision when he decides to not retire and uphold all the job-related obligations he currently has? I just want to make sure I have this straight.
As far as Urban Meyer's family goes, if his family really thought he was going to just be able to stay away from coaching then they didn't know him that well. I am sure after years of he and his family knowing that there was some health problems he had and him still not taking a step back from coaching, the mere acknowledgment that he needs to learn to delegate and take time off to deal with his health is a relief to his family. We have to remember they have been aware of Meyer's health problem for a while now. I don't think he is being selfish right now, he is being selfish if he doesn't make the necessary lifestyle changes when he comes back though.
I have no idea why Mike Celizic is against the idea of a leave of absence for Meyer. I still don't get that. I think Urban Meyer has earned the chance to deal with his health problems and have the head coaching job still there for him if/when he wants to come back.
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