Is Florida's Arrest Record Making Urban Meyer Not Saintly to Future Employers?

UF stands for "University of Felons," declare the bloggers, as well as many radio talk show pundits. Yes, the arrest record sounds bad, but let's be fair and look at the facts first.

Twenty-four arrests over a four-year period—that's the biggest thing you hear. What few have mentioned is that eight of those cases were dropped. Now that number comes down to only 16 over four years, or four a year. It's sounding better already.

Have you heard anyone mention that Georgia's players have had 30 arrests during that same four-year period? Probably not. They aren't winning as much, and winners are always the target.

What about Tennessee's 21 arrests? Tennessee is the poster child for players in trouble, but these latest issues haven't garnered the same headlines.

The point I'm making is that Florida is not "out of the norm" for this kind of problem. 

Football players as a whole are a lot more apt to get into trouble in the first place for a multitude of reasons. Some guys want to be a big shot and "call out" a football player. Some players let their "celebrity" status cause problems as well. Plus, when a player runs afoul of the law, it always makes headlines.

I follow Alabama football mainly and clearly remember when Nick Saban first arrived. They had some problems too. The great majority of issues at Alabama weren't with the players Nick was picking, but with the holdovers from the Mike Shula era, where discipline was, shall we say, a bit more lax.

The same can be said for Meyer. Of the noted 24 incidents, only six came from players that Meyer had a full year to look over and recruit. The rest were holdovers or recruits from that first year, when he had only days to look over the qualities of each one.

Therefore, you can say that when Meyer has had the time to check not just a recruit's abilities on the field, but also his character away from the game, he's done a pretty good job. That would leave six players for his last three years or two a year.

When you look closely at the story behind the story, teams like Notre Dame, who may one day look at Meyer with a microscope, will see that it's a non-issue.

This tag on Meyer will soon fade away. The worry that Meyer should have is his low graduation rates—but that's another story for another day.