College football

'Even as a kid he was a coach'

Urban Meyer has been in control since high school, and Gators fans hope his lifelong pursuit of excellence extends to wins at Florida. And soon.

By ANTONYA ENGLISH
Published August 14, 2005

	[Times photo: James Borchuck]
	Urban Meyer captained his high school team in Ohio and, after a stint playing baseball, quickly developed into a top football coach.

GAINESVILLE - Long before Urban Meyer became one of the most sought-after college football coaches in America, he was teaching and coaching high school teammates on the sidelines in Ashtabula, Ohio.

At 17, it wasn't something he set out to do. He didn't draw a salary or have a title.

It just came naturally.

Which is why you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in his small hometown, about 1,000 miles from Gainesville, who is surprised that Meyer is now leading one of the nation's premier football programs.

He seemingly has prepared for this role all his life.

"Even as a kid he was a coach," said Albina Larson, Meyer's 12th-grade physics teacher at Saint John Catholic High School. "That may be a hard thing to understand, but even as a student he used to get other kids to believe in themselves. He would talk to the younger guys and he would say, "You can do this if you really want to' and he would encourage them. I was cheerleading adviser at the time, and I can remember him encouraging the other guys on the sidelines, pointing out to them when they did it right. ... It was amazing to see someone that young have the big picture and to see him draw that out of someone younger than himself." Meyer, 41, was a two-sport athlete who excelled at football and baseball. As a senior he played wing back and safety, but defense was clearly his forte, said James Mackey, his former running backs coach. He was captain of the defense and relayed all the defensive signals from the coach. Meyer helped lead the team to the second round of the playoffs in 1982.

"He was a perfectionist," said Mackey, now the football coach at Saints John and Paul Catholic High School, the new name of Meyer's high school, who spoke from the field house where Meyer practiced.

"He did exactly what he was supposed to do, and he made sure everybody else on defense did exactly what they were supposed to do. He was a pretty intense football player. And he was very competitive."

His competitive nature made him the ultimate "leader by example" said his former coach, Ken Petrochello.

"You could not keep him out of ballgames," said Petrochello, who still lives in Ashtabula. "Injury or not, he was going to play. He had that mind-set that unless something was broken, he was going to play. Where other athletes, because of a bum knee or a bad shoulder, it would keep them out, nothing was going to keep him out of playing."

Spend five minutes talking with anyone about Meyer and inevitably the words "driven" and "competitive" come up. He always wanted to be the best, but never at someone else's expense.

"I don't think it was that he wanted to outdo people, it was more that he competed against himself," Larson said. "It was one of those things where he always wanted to do better the next day, and he drove himself hard. And the nice thing about him is that he helped other people to do that."

It's one of the things that stands out with those who have worked with him and for him.

"He's a guy that always worked hard, and I think that's why he's been successful being a head coach," said Florida co-defensive coordinator Charlie Strong, who was an assistant with Meyer at Notre Dame. "He's a big-time competitor. Just watch his practices: Everything we do is competition; it's always competing. But what happens when you compete is that there is always a winner and a loser, and that's good because when you do that you challenge people."

Failure was never an option in the Meyer household. The middle child and only son of Urban II (known as Bud) and Gisele, he and his siblings were challenged to achieve from early on. Bud is a chemical engineer who holds degrees in engineering and classical languages from the University of Cincinnati. He taught his children trigonometry principles before they entered school. Gisele, who died of breast cancer in 2000, was a trained chef and the one who would sneak deserts to her children after they'd been punished by Bud. Meyer has said they were the perfect balance.

"We had a good family life," Bud Meyer said.

Bud admits his intensity may have rubbed off on his son, not that that's a bad thing, he says. Meyer takes losses hard - sometimes he can't eat or sleep.

"I'm the one who causes him to hate to lose," Bud said. "But his mother is the one who causes him to have responsibility. I hate to lose, but he hates it more. I'm an engineer. When we lose the plant doesn't work, and that's bad. But when you lose in an athletic competition, especially something as significant as the game of football, because you only play 10 of those a year - or 11 or 12 sometimes - it's much worse."

His upbringing has been instrumental in his philosophy on life: Discipline and hard work are the keys to success.

In Meyer's world there is no gray area. There is right, and there is wrong. If a player can't figure out the difference, he won't survive long.

"We have a core set of values in our program, and if they break a core value there's a good chance you are not playing football at Florida," Meyer said. "I think it's like they say, you're either a players' coach or a disciplinarian, but I'm not quite sure of the definition of those things. We expect our guys to live right and go to class or they don't play."

It's ironic that Meyer's life now revolves around football, because he comes from a long line of baseball players. Bud Meyer said the first Urban was a brother-in-law to two professional baseball players. Two of Bud's uncles also played in the minor leagues.

And it was Urban's sport, too. When he graduated from high school he was drafted in the 13th round by the Atlanta Braves and headed to Bradenton. He was homesick and he struggled. Two years and an arm injury later, Meyer quit and enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, where he was a walk-on defensive back.

He graduated with a degree in psychology in '86 and became a graduate assistant at Ohio State, where he later earned a master's in sports administration.

Early on, Meyer's intensity nearly derailed his career. At Ohio State and later as receivers coach at Colorado State, Meyer worked under Earle Bruce. High strung and competitive by nature, he took on Bruce's old-school style of coaching: the manic, work-them-into-ground approach. By his own definition, he was "nuts." One player at Colorado State quit because Meyer rode him so hard.

After Bruce was fired and Sonny Lubick took over at Colorado State, Meyer took a cue from Lubick and realized he needed to change his ways. His style now mirrors the best of both.

"They are high-character, ethical, do-right guys," Meyer said. "Their approach is a little different. Sonny Lubick is one of the best people I've ever been around as far as treatment (of players) in his own way. Sonny would never let a player walk by without grabbing him and pulling him off and talking to him - about his family, about school and about how he's doing - and we try to do the same things here. ... Earle Bruce led the whole impression of responsibility. I was receivers coach (for Bruce) for five years and I remember in my wallet I had the name of every kid, who he was dating, his GPA, his major and when he was going to graduate from college. And his mom and dad's cell-phone number if they had one. If he asked me who so-and-so was dating, I had to know that.

"That's why we're so involved. I saw it work, and I believe in that and I learned that from Coach Bruce." By the time he arrived in South Bend in 1996, he was becoming the Urban Meyer who would prompt a bidding war for his services eight years later.

"The thing that stands out is he was always a differencemaker," said Bob Davie, now an analyst with ESPN and a former Notre Dame coach who had Meyer on his staff. "You have nine guys on a coaching staff, and maybe if you're fortunate you have two or three members of that staff that truly make a difference. And immediately he was that kind of coach, whether it was in recruiting, on the field or just adding personality around the office. So I knew he was a differencemaker."

His rise to the ranks of a $2-million salary five years into his head-coaching tenure? That's something altogether different.

"There's no one out there, including Urban, who could say he's not surprised with how fast this has happened and to the pinnacle he has reached as quickly," Davie added. "No one can say, "Hey, I knew all along this would happen,' because in this profession there are a lot of great football coaches now. I knew he was an extremely talented guy, but you have to be surprised at the meteoric rise that he's had."

The cornerstone of Meyer's success is his other "team" - wife Shelley and children, Nicole, Gigi and Nathan.

Shelley and Urban were students at Cincinnati when they met at a Sigma Chi Derby social during her freshman year. She has been a key player in his career choices. It was Shelley who told him he should take the Utah job (leaving Bowling Green after two years). It was Shelley who told him one evening last fall that schools were going to start coming after him and the family needed to get ready to make some serious decisions about its next move.

When UF athletic director Jeremy Foley flew to Salt Lake City to interview Meyer, he expected to meet with the coach first, then possibly his wife.

Shelley sat in on every conversation.

"We're a team, this whole family," she said. "Everything that affects him, affects us. He's always been very good about involving us, making sure our feelings are taken into consideration. What I've seen in coaching is that families are really close. Our husbands are away so much and they work so hard and such long hours, not to say that other people don't. But coaching is a fraternity, and it's a community. Their time with their kids and wives is so special because sometimes it's rare. Wives and husbands are such a team. And that's how it's been for us."

Meyer has said his greatest passions are his family and coaching, in that order. When he's not working, he's spending time with Nicole, who is in her first year of high school, seventh-grader Gigi and first-grader Nate.

"He loves that," Shelley said. "He just wants to be with his kids, throw the ball, talk to them, find out what's going on. And just do nothing. I'm not really a do-nothing kind of person, because I get to be around home all the time. So when we get him home we want to go do something. But for him, that's perfect. He just likes to kick back."

Shelley is a psychiatric nurse and former high school athlete who teaches cycling and aerobics and is ultra competitive. The sports gene has been passed to their children.

"I tell people, we tried ballet, we tried clarinet, piano and gymnastics, and none of it worked," she says, laughing. "Urban's dying for a piano player in the family, but we always go back to athletics. So that's just the route we're going now. We love going to the kids' games, and they're doing really well at it. I've got two girls playing club volleyball and Gigi is our tomboy, she plays basketball and baseball. And Nate is just starting, so we're going to be at athletic events a long time."

For all his success (a 39-8 record in four seasons), expectations have never been greater for Meyer. After leading Utah to a 12-0 season and Fiesta Bowl berth, Meyer is expected by fans to breathe life into the Florida program.

Translation: They want to win. Now.

"Everybody respects what he did at Bowling Green and Utah," linebacker Earl Everett said. "I think it makes everybody confident he will do it here too."

Confidence.

It's something Meyer exuded from the moment he stepped on the podium to take the Florida job and has continued as he has spoken to fans across the state this spring and summer. He walks into a room and immediately you sense it. During the first week of fall practice, the players said their confidence level has never been higher - all because they feed off of Meyer.

"Bob Stoops has the same thing; Urban hasn't been beaten down," Davie said. "He hasn't lost many games, so he has a right to walk in and feel good about himself. And you really can't hide that. I talked to him just about one month ago, and I said one thing: "Do not lose that aggressiveness. Don't worry about screwing this job up. Just do what you've done and be totally aggressive and let it rip.' That's something you can't fake. He's had a tremendous amount of success and he hasn't been beaten down. There's a certain arrogance that comes with that, and it's positive."

Now all he has to do is what he's been preparing for all these years: coach and win.

[Last modified August 14, 2005, 00:54:16]