What's Wrong with Urban Meyer?

Urban Meyer makes the term "killer instinct" look like group therapy. Someone must have taken away his lolly when he was two. Or maybe he didn't get a chance to ride the new bike on his block. Whatever his problem is he should see a shrink, and stop taking it out on everyone else in the Southeast Conference.

What? Wasn't it good enough that his Gators were completely dominating Steve Spurrier's South Carolina Gamecocks last Saturday, leading 42-6 in the fourth quarter? No, I guess not. It wasn't good enough for Meyer until he had Spurrier and the Gamecocks completely humiliated. By having his Heisman QB, Tim Tebow, still in the game passing, and Percy Harvin still in slashing, he was rubbing dirt in the opposition's face. Not to mention risking injuries to his stars.

Was Meyer looking for style points? Whoever said humiliation was a style to be admired? Was Meyer afraid the BCS wouldn't remember that he his team laid 50 humiliating points on LSU and 49 on Georgia, and just for the fun of it he had his team score 63 against Kentucky, which had the nerve to score five of its own points. Several of those final TDs in the Kentucky game came late with Tebow still out there.

What's he proving? Does he think we hadn't noticed that his team is worthy of playing for the BCS championship? Maybe he figures that the rest of us will assume Florida's better than Texas (which is fighting the Gators for a possible spot in the finals) because Texas only won 35-7. He must think that Texas coach Mack Brown is a sucker for not running it up on Kansas. Some might even call Brown a gentleman, but Brown, too, should be admonished for having his quarterback, Colt McCoy, still playing in the fourth quarter.

You'd think Spurrier was some horrible human being the way Meyer's team stripped Spurrier's of any dignity that remained. 56-6. Wasn't 42-6 enough? The Sunday morning headlines screamed that Florida had handed Spurrier, a great coach, his worst defeat ever. It's exactly what Meyer was looking for. But Spurrier's greatness happened while coaching Florida. Maybe that was what Meyer was after--to leave no doubt about who was Florida's greatest coach.

Now let's talk about the Georgia game for a second. Okay, maybe Georgia did over-do it last year when the whole team ran on the field to celebrate its first score. This year's final score of 49-10 should have been revenge enough. The final score spoke for itself. But no, Meyer had to call two timeouts in the final seconds to rub it in Georgia's face some more and humiliate its coaching staff.

Maybe Meyer's doing all this because he's mad at himself for not having his team prepared when it lost 31-30 to Mississippi. But for some reason he didn't, and they lost. AT HOME! Which is no reason to humiliate every other team on the schedule.

Meyer is the type of guy that when he's got you on the ground and you're begging for mercy, he steps on your throat and smiles. Meyer has said he doesn't like to talk to the opposing coach before a game because he thinks it's phoney. Maybe it's because he's gutless; afraid to share a kind word with someone he intends to destroy and humiliate.

One day Urban Meyer's teams will not be so good. They might even be just a little above average like Spurrier's. When that day comes every coach in the Southeast Conference will return the favor. But they'll probably do it with a lot more class. It would be hard not to.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that has rewarded Meyer and his team for their blowout, humiliating victories by voting them higher in the polls. So when we ask, what's wrong with Urban Meyer, the answer might be: what's wrong with us.




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