Musing on #Urban Meyer. #Gators #OSU

Musing on #Urban Meyer. #Gators #OSU

Number six.

I saw a good friend out at a restaurant the other night.

“I can’t believe you haven’t blogged about Urban Meyer,” she remarked.

Hmm. This was coming from a kindred spirit. Another lifelong Gator fan living 22 miles due south of Athens, Georgia.

Therefore, I shall blog about Urban Meyer.

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Doug Dickey, Charlie Pell, Galen Hall, Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook, Urban Meyer and Will Muschamp.

Urban Meyer is number six in the line of University of Florida head football coaches since I have been rooting for the Gators.

He brought the Gators two national championships and two SEC championships. Three consecutive ten game win seasons.

Meyer is a great college football coach and was great for the University of Florida.

That’s it.

I figure it’s like being a member of a denominational church — ministers come and go, but your church and your church family is what matters.

What about winning Jamie? Doesn’t that matter?

Of course. But last season, I sat at Florida Field (that’s what us old timers still think of it as) and watched Florida, an Urban Meyer-coached Florida, get humiliated by a Steve Spurrier-coached South Carolina 36 -14.

With my nephews before that 2010 game. The game where the Gators played the worst I had seen them in 20 years.

Just like a Muschamp-coached team got humiliated by FSU last weekend.

There is no magic formula. Sometimes the hard work and breaks fall your way and you win a championship. The vast years in a lifetime, you don’t.

This is not like when Spurrier left.  That was First-Wife-left-for-a-younger-hipper-model scorned. Why the difference?

Spurrier taught my beloved Wait-Till-Next-Year Gators how to win. And they won big like never before. He made Gator football exciting.

When they won that first national championship in 1996, I read a quote from a lifelong Gator saying he was going to take the sports page headlines down to the cemetery and read them to all the Gators who had passed on before that monumental day.

How dare he leave? I felt the stab of betrayal when Spurrier left.

Because I loved him so.

There I admit it. I still love that scowling, visor-wearing ball coach.

Urban was great. And I wish him all the best.

Spurrier said he didn’t like recruiting because (I’m paraphrasing here) “I don’t want to have to beg anyone to come play ball at the University of Florida.”

I feel the same way about coaches. If you’re done coaching the Gators,

See ya later.

No hard feelings.

Well, except for the number four.

The one who broke my heart.