The Florida Gators Should Allow (Or Urge) Urban Meyer To Leave

Full disclosure: I am not a Florida Gators fan. I am a University of Georgia fan in exile, waiting for the day that the University of Georgia fires Mark Richt and sends him back to the ACC where he belongs so UGA can move forward by hiring the man who was actually responsible for Richt's early success: Brian Van Gorder. Of course, this has to happen rather soon, before an NFL team or some other major university hires Van Gorder. Now the more games that Georgia loses to its major rivals, the more quickly Richt's inevitable firing occurs, so go Auburn, Georgia Tech, Florida and (ugh, it pains me to say it!) even Tennessee!

Count me among UGA fans who DO NOT go back to the time when everyone thinks that Richt is this great coach just because he was beating up on Tommy Tuberville, Chan Gailey, Ron Zook, and "retired on the job" Philip Fulmer! On the last one, I admit that I cannot stand Lane Kiffin, but I have to admit that now that MOST Georgia fans have basically given up and accepted coming in second to Florida, nothing will get Richt out of Athens than more blowouts to "Legacy Lane" and the Tennessee Volunteers like the one this season, as painful as they are to endure.

So while I am not a Gators fan, I still have a real interest in the Gators' being good enough to get Mark Richt fired so that the Bulldogs can hire Brian Van Gorder before Texas A&M or the Jacksonville Jaguars get him first. And I really don't think that Urban Meyer is that guy anymore.

No, it isn't because Tim Tebow is leaving. Tebow is a great player, but not the best QB this decade (Vince Young and Matt Leinart were better), the best Florida QB of the past 15 years (Danny Wuerrfel was), the most important Gator on offense (Percy Harvin was), or even the starting QB for the 2006 title team (Chris Leak did, and had 3000 total yards to Tebow's 850 and even there with most of Tebow's yards coming as a short yardage specialist and in garbage time) so quit pretending as if Tebow isn't anything more than just another great college player who can be replaced with good recruiting just as other great players have been.

Instead, it is because of questions about Meyer himself:

A. Do the Gators really need the endless drama that this fellow has a talent for stirring up? From stringing Notre Dame along with sham negotiations (knowing that he never intended to take the job) to causing the endless "Meyer is going to Notre Dame to take his dream job!" nonsense (which Meyer alone caused and could have ended at any time but never really did, only Notre Dame ended it—for now—by hiring Chip Kelly, and if Kelly leaves or doesn't work out it will only start up again) to the off-the-field problems (remember, Gator fans, how Steve Spurrier worked so hard to clean up the scandal-ridden Gators' act and image?) to the ridiculous feuds with Mark Richt, Lane Kiffin and even Shane Matthews of all people?

Even his abrupt resignation and then his change of heart (which happened because a bunch of players who, er, will be leaving for the NFL almost in boatloads after the Sugar Bowl!) happened with a flair for the (MELO)dramatic. Now Gators fans can obviously put up with this when the team is 13-1, but it isn't nearly as much fun when the team is 9-4. Wouldn't it be better were the team to hire one of the MANY excellent coaches out there that would allow the story to be about the Gators instead of about Urban Meyer?

B. His health and his judgment about it. First, the judgment part. Meyer states that he has been ignoring his medical problems for years. And were the Gators' playing for the national title instead of a Sugar Bowl that no one really cares that much about, and further if the Gators were returning practically everybody next season instead of losing so many key players and needing at least a season to reload, would Meyer still be ignoring them? And are Meyer's health issues something that can merely be addressed with rest, or does this arachnoid cyst that gets aggravated with stress need to be removed (assuming that it can be removed)?

And how much rest is Meyer going to get anyway? Will Meyer be on the golf course, or will he be intently following the goings on of a program that is still considered to be HIS, and if Meyer decides to call the "interim coach" to talk to him about strategy, player discipline, recruiting, or the assistant coaches, does Steve Addazio dare not pick up the phone and talk to who everybody knows is THE REAL COACH of the Florida Gators for whom Addazio is merely keeping the seat warm?

C. And how is this Addazio situation going to work? What if Addazio has a great season next year and another school hires him? Or what if Addazio totally bombs? In either case, who replaces him if Meyer isn't ready to come back in 2010 either because of his own evaluation or because the doctors won't let him? And in the meantime, who is going to be Addazio's offensive coordinator? Who is going to be the Gators' defensive coordinator? Will they be guys that Addazio wants, or guys that Meyer wants? And when Meyer comes back, does Addazio's offensive coordinator have to leave so that Addazio can get his old offensive coordinator job back? And again, if Addazio leaves but Meyer isn't ready to come back, what happens to the staff?

D. This staff question is bigger than a lot of people realize, because a lot of Meyer's success was as much due to Meyer's working with Jeremy Foley to put together what amounted to an all-star staff comprised of some of the best guys from Meyer's past jobs (Notre Dame, Bowling Green, Utah) and some SEC guys. Now, a lot of those guys are gone, including but not limited to former defensive coordinator Greg Mattison to the NFL (where he is a coordinator and future head coach), former offensive coordinator Dan Mullen (to Mississippi State), former defensive coordinator, top recruiter and assistant head coach Charlie Strong (to Louisville).

There are already grumblings that Addazio was not as good at offensive coordinator as was Mullen, and on the defensive side the Gators have gone from two of the best in the business—and excellent recruiters too—in Mattison and Strong as co-coordinators in 2006 to having no one currently. If the Gators are going to get back to the top of the SEC, they need to fill those staff openings with top candidates, but:

1. Who is going to make and evaluate the hires and

2. Who is going to take the job with the Meyer situation in limbo?

E. The big one: whether Urban Meyer is a guy who can succeed at Florida and in the SEC for the long term (especially without assistants as good as Mullen, Mattison and Strong ... it can fairly be said, for instance, that recruiting and defense played a larger role in Florida's two national titles than Meyer's offensive scheme, which incidentally Mullen tweaked from what Meyer was running at Bowling Green and Utah to fit the unique talents of Harvin and Tebow) or whether he was something of a quick-fix. Look at Meyer's history.

Two years at Bowling Green, and the MAC isn't a particularly hard conference to win games quickly if you are a quality coach and especially if you are at one of the MAC programs in Ohio or Michigan. Then, two years at Utah where he benefited from some very talented players that his predecessor Ron McBride recruited but could not coach. Next, five years at Florida where he benefited from—again—great talent that his predecessor recruited but could not coach, an outstanding coaching staff, and an offense that few in the SEC knew how to defend.

Add it up, and Meyer has never had to truly build or maintain a program. At Bowling Green and Utah he won with other guys' players and was out of town before either his own started playing or his opponents had time to catch up to what he is doing. At Florida, this was his first experience playing primarily with his own recruits against opponents who largely knew what he was going to do, and the results were terrible. Florida produced no running game from their tailbacks, couldn't throw the ball downfield when they needed to, allowed Tim Tebow to get battered, and needed the benefit of both a great defense and the softest schedule of the Meyer era until they were finally exposed in a major way by Alabama.

I don't care what anybody says, Meyer's inability to produce any running game this season other than 3 yard plunges by Tebow and the occasional big play by any one of several very talented and underutilized tailbacks either out of a regular formation, out of the shotgun or even with the option was astounding and a real problem. Even Steve Spurrier, who despises the running game and whose fun-n-gun was a forerunner of the spread offense, was able to run the ball when he had to with Errict Rhett, Earnest Graham and Fred Taylor. And in the first 2-4 years, Meyer did have the "we haven't gotten the players that we need for our system in yet" or even "we have Tebow and Harvin for our running game."

But in year five (meaning Meyer is into his second four year recruiting cycle) with Harvin gone to the NFL, and after the Gators spent the entire offseason both working on running the football out of the I-formation AND trying to find a replacement for Harvin's role in running the football and this is the result? It was one thing when Meyer talks about how he doesn't want or need feature tailbacks and brags that he has never had a 1000 yard rusher from the RB position, but it is another when Meyer needs to run the ball, has an entire offseason and regular season to work on a running game and still can't do it despite all those four and five star players at RB and on the OL.

But as bad as the inability to run the ball this season was, the regression of the passing game was worse, especially when the passing game was needed more with the inability to run the ball. Instead, the Gators struggled with the deep passing game and passing in critical situations all season long, forcing them to rely more and more on field goals and scores produced or set up by the defense. Gator fans often blamed the wide receivers, but if after five years of recruiting the Gators had mediocre WRs despite all the great WRs the sunshine state produces, whose fault is that but the offensive coaches? And why didn't the Gators even try things like getting players from other positions involved in the passing game like so many teams have done with their RBs, backup QBs and even DBs?

The reason: there was nothing wrong with the Gators' WRs. Like the RBs, they were simply underutilized. Take David Nelson...this 6'5" 220 lb. WR with 4.5 speed and great leaping ability really came on at the end of last season, but the next time the Gators play "throw it up and let him go get it against the 5'9" 185 lb. CBs" with Nelson this season will be the first. He is just one of several Gators WRs and TEs that will get long looks in the NFL and a few of them will stick. A college team shouldn't need guys with the talent to start in the NFL as rookies like Louis Murphy and Percy Harvin in order to have an effective downfield passing game.Tennessee and LSU won national titles in 1998, 2003 and 2007 and Auburn went 13-0 in 2004 without WRs that were anywhere near as good as Murphy and Harvin, and further Florida did the same in 1996.

A bigger problem: Florida's offense in general. It really seems as if SEC defenses have figured it out. Lane Kiffin was the first to say so after holding the Gators to 23 points in the swamp. Meyer got away with blaming the offensive struggles on the flu, but the team was healthy for the SEC title game when Nick Saban stated that they knew what the Gators were going to run and how to stop it, and the Gators either couldn't adjust or refused to try. However, Kiffin got off because people blame:

A. the defense (never mind how an offense that doesn't move the ball and gets shut out in the second half keeps a defense on the field),

B. offensive coordinator Addazio (as if it isn't Meyer's offense, plus these same people were trashing Dan Mullen last season and predicting that the Gators would be better off without him) and

C. the receivers (these same people defended Meyer when Shane Matthews correctly stated that the WRs were extremely talented and underutilized...and when considering how Spurrier got a lot more out of 5'7" guys like Jack Jackson, Reidel Anthony and Jacquez Green—who may have only been 5'6"!—it is hard to say that Matthews didn't have a point).

Now this is not to say that Urban Meyer can't retool his offense like lots of guys have, like Tom Osborne and Mack Brown did for instance. (Brown in particular has gone through so many offenses at Tulane, North Carolina and Texas that the only thing more incredible is the fact that he has won only two conference titles in all that time.) And yes, I do concede that he has earned the right to try. But does he have to try while rebuilding his staff and battling health problems? And do so in the most competitive SEC in conference history?

And not just the SEC, mind you. A lot of Meyer's success has been due to FSU and Miami being very mediocre during Meyer's tenure, and yes Gators compete with the former on the field and both in recruiting. The Hurricanes, who went 9-3 (and were very close to 12-1) with a young team and have their third good recruiting class in a row coming in, are on their way back. FSU, if nothing else, has finally seen Bobby Bowden retire.

And imagine if USF ever gets untracked! That could happen as soon as that program figures out that Jim Leavitt has taken them as far as he can. The Gators really dodged a bullet when USF decided to keep Leavitt on instead of firing him and hiring Mullen, Addazio or Strong. Yet they can still get rid of him at any time and hire Tommy Tuberville.

So this really is a critical time in the Florida Gators' football program. Florida needed to move forward with either the next big thing like Skip Holtz of East Carolina or perhaps—and preferably—a proven guy like Kirk Ferentz of Iowa. Instead, they have to cross their fingers and hope that Addazio succeeds with a very difficult situation next year, that Meyer actually does come back in 2011, and that his health issues are resolved, and that he is willing and able to modify an offense that SEC defenses have caught up with when he returns.

Of course, if Florida has to hire another guy in a few years, people like that will still be available, as well as guys who now currently aren't like TCU's Gary Patterson and Stanford's Jim Harbaugh (who just signed contract extensions), and if Charlie Strong and/or Dan Mullen succeed at their programs then they are strong candidates as well. Still, this deal is a lot better for Urban Meyer than anybody else, and claiming otherwise is ridiculous.

Yes, the idea that Florida owes it to Meyer because of his great success there is a valid one. But look at it another way: Meyer has greatly benefited from coaching Florida as well. Florida paid him a lot of money for one thing.

Another, Florida gave him the ability to recruit some of the best talent in the country and hire some of the best assistants as well...advantages that he would have never had at Utah, Notre Dame, Michigan State, etc. And Meyer has also had the benefits of working with both a university president and an athletics director who are excellent college football guys that have supported him 100 percent, in contrast with being undermined by the opposite as has happened to a lot of good coaches in bad situations.

So, there are other coaches who would do very well for themselves at Florida. Look at Ron Zook, for instance: the fellow had three winning seasons at Florida but only went 21-39 (including three seasons where he lost nine or more games!) at what really should be one of the better programs in the Big 10 in Illinois.

Meanwhile, there aren't many places where Meyer would have accomplished so much so quickly. Florida gave Meyer one of the best stages imaginable for showcasing his ability, and as a result Meyer can get whatever available job he wants after taking time off.

So, while Meyer has given Florida a lot, Florida has given Meyer as much or more and doesn't owe him anything. It would have been in Florida's best interests to part ways with Meyer and move on to another coach rather than to spend the next few years in uncertainty.