Gene Frenette: What will Urban do? -- Tough to gauge future for fired Jaguars' coach
In the aftermath of Urban Meyer’s spectacular failure as a first-time NFL coach — lasting just 13 games with a Jaguars’ franchise that convinced itself the success of a three-time college national championship coach would translate on to the biggest football stage — it may look now like the end of an epic coaching career.
The optics were bad. For so many missteps over his 11-month NFL tenure, Meyer has been cast as shady, disloyal, self-absorbed, disingenuous, a bully, a philanderer and, maybe most damning of all, unaccountable.
And those unflattering traits were exposed under a national spotlight, which could make it difficult for Meyer to scratch any itch he may have in the future to return to the sideline.
It begs this question – will we ever again see the controversial, polarizing, 57-year-old coach leading any football team?
The only consensus at this time is, given Meyer’s sordid exit with the Jaguars, he has no shot at the NFL giving him a second chance. He has gone the Bobby Petrino route and likely burned that bridge for good.
But what is most certainly up for debate is whether the guy that posted a phenomenal .854 win percentage at four college stops – Bowling Green, Utah, Florida and Ohio State – will resurface leading somebody’s FBS program.
People I’ve spoken with in college football circles are pretty unanimous in believing Meyer, after the Jaguars’ coach was captured on the gone-viral video at his Columbus, Ohio bar-restaurant being way too cozy with a woman who wasn’t his wife, would have been fired immediately if he had been employed then as a college head coach at any university.
While the embarrassing video didn’t lead directly to his Jaguars’ dismissal, his inability to regain the team’s trust and respect, as publicly outlined by owner Shad Khan, did factor into the eventual decision to fire him.
Hard road back
So with all the heavy baggage Meyer has accumulated, can his splendid college record offset it enough to convince a big-time program – if he desires to get back in the game at some point – to give him another chance?
“I don’t see him coming back at that Power 5 level,” said Tony Barnhart, an analyst for the SEC Network and known as Mr. College Football. “I could be wrong. My opinion is to come back, he would have to start at a lower level.
“You try a hire like that [with a Power 5 program] and the blowback is going to be substantial. To me, the path [for Meyer] is to coach at a lower level and work his way back up. It’s been such a toxic situation for him in Jacksonville and everybody knows about it. I don’t see a Power 5 program reaching out to him.”
It’s a tough call. The first consideration is how much will Meyer want to coach, especially if the only schools showing any interest have football teams with no chance to compete for a national title.
The career path for Meyer, at least once he established himself at Bowling Green and Utah, shows he wants to be in situations where a team has the resources to be successful. Meyer won two national titles at Florida, resigning for both health-related reasons and the despair of going through an 8-5 season in 2010. He had also taken a temporary leave of absence after the 2009 season, only to return for one more year in Gainesville.
Meyer took the Ohio State post just 11 months after resigning from the Gators. His run in Columbus lasted seven seasons, where he won another national championship and compiled an 83-9 record. But he resigned again, citing health issues. He also went through the controversy of defending an assistant coach who had allegedly abused his wife and got suspended three games by the school.
The expectation was Meyer would stay retired and stick to his job as a Fox network college football commentator. But things changed when Khan offered him the Jaguars’ job. He admittedly took the position because he felt the opportunity to draft quarterback Trevor Lawrence, plus tons of salary cap space and having multiple draft picks, had set up the Jaguars for future success.
But everything unraveled for Meyer almost immediately with one bad judgment after another. His NFL tenure lasted all of 336 days.
The stain from the way things ended with the Jaguars will be tough to erase, which could make any college with a future coaching vacancy think long and hard about pursuing Meyer.
One longtime Power 5 athletic director, who wished to remain anonymous, believes some school desperate to win bad enough will give Meyer another shot if he wants to return to coaching.
“It might take two or three years, but yeah, Meyer will reappear,” he said. “What else is he going to do? He’ll go nuts [not coaching]. Plus, he’s a very persuasive guy. I wouldn’t be able to do it, but somebody else will [hire him].
“There are schools that don’t care at all about morals. Is it a Power 5 [program that will hire Meyer]? Probably so, because somebody will be so desperate to win.”
Image repair
Nobody disputes Meyer may need at least a year before considering a return to coaching. Still, there have been plenty examples of disgraced coaches getting back in the college game, some never even losing their job, after assorted transgressions and bad decisions.
Hugh Freeze was fired by Ole Miss after his program was charged with numerous NCAA violations, but that wasn’t the tipping point. It came in the discovery portion of a lawsuit filed by previous Rebels’ coach Houston Nutt, which uncovered that Freeze used a company-issued cell phone to call an escort service over a lengthy period of his coaching tenure in Oxford.
But only 17 months after being forced to resign, Freeze resurfaced as the head coach at Liberty University. Apparently, the private Evangelical school wanted to win bad enough that they didn’t mind hiring a coach who had beaten Alabama in back-to-back years, despite the baggage of losing his job due to violation of a morals clause in his contract.
In 2011, Bruce Pearl was given a three-year, show-cause NCAA penalty at Tennessee for lying to the college governing body during an investigation into a cookout at his home where he illegally invited a recruit. That got him fired and three years later, before the show-cause penalty expired, Auburn hired him as its head coach and he’s still there.
But the king of comebacks is Petrino. Like Meyer, his NFL tenure lasted only 13 games with the Atlanta Falcons in 2007. Petrino’s team was 3-10 when he left a laminated note by each of his players’ lockers that he was resigning, a move for which he was resoundingly criticized.
Yet Petrino needed just two months to get back into coaching at Arkansas. Four years later, after a successful run with consecutive 10-win seasons, he was fired in disgrace after an April 2012 motorcycle accident where he lied about being alone. He was actually with a female Arkansas employee, whom he hired and was admittedly having an affair.
Twenty months later, Western Kentucky welcomed Petrino back into college football, then he bolted for a second stint at Louisville the following year.
“Never say never”
The point is, coaches fall and they get back up. No matter how hard the descent, if they have a track record of winning – and Meyer certainly does – a comeback is always doable.
“It’s amazing how the passage of time. . . . you think it’s an impossible situation [to get another job], but people rehabilitate themselves,” said Barnhart. “At the end of the day, Meyer is a helluva college football coach when he you look at what he did. You never say never when somebody is that talented as a football coach.”
Dave Hart, who served as athletic director at Florida State, Alabama and Tennessee, admits he doesn’t know Meyer and adds it’s hard to gauge how schools might view him after his quick exit from the Jaguars.
“It’s a tough question to respond to,” said Hart. “So many things go into a coaching search. Everybody is different and has their own set of [hiring] guidelines. I can’t speak to what those look like from school to school.”
There are so many unanswered questions about Meyer. Will he want to coach again? Would his ego allow him to return to a non-Power 5 program? Will the disappointment over how his one coaching failure ended drive him back to the profession or make him stay away?
One thing is certain: where Urban Meyer’s future goes from here is as murky as it’s ever been.
gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Gene Frenette: Tough to gauge future for fired Jaguars' coach Urban Meyer
