The Sporting News has published a detailed expose on the Urban Meyer regime in Florida that Gator fans and Buckeye fans may want to shield their eyes from. According to the very detailed report Meyer coddled stars, overlooked failed drug tests, and cared little for his injured players if it opened up a roster spot for a recruit.
Meyer eventually left the program citing health reasons and the need to be with his family. This was all before he took a pretty lucrative job calling college football games on ESPN and eventually hooking up with Ohio State after they cut ties with Jim Tressell in the midst of Tattoo Gate.
Yet some of the most interesting aspects coming out of this report include current NFL players like Percy Harvin, Aaron Hernandez and Brandon Spikes seemingly running the show in Florida.
Here are a few excerpts from the report…
During offseason conditioning before the 2007 season, the team was running stadium steps and at one point, Harvin, according to sources, sat down and refused to run. When confronted by strength and conditioning coaches, Harvin—who failed to return calls and texts to his cell phone to comment on this story—said, “This (expletive) ends now.”
“The next day,” a former player said, “we were playing basketball as conditioning.”
In the season opener against Hawaii, Meyer said a few elite players [Percy Harvin, Brandon Spikes, Aaron Hernandez] would miss the game with injuries. According to multiple sources, the three players—all critical factors in Florida’s rise under Meyer—failed drug tests for marijuana and were sitting out as part of standard university punishment.
[Janoris] Jenkins failed a drug test at Florida under Meyer and was arrested for his part in a bar fight. He was later arrested twice for possession of marijuana within the first few months Muschamp was on the job.
…When he was dismissed from the team by Muschamp, Jenkins told the Orlando Sentinel: “If (Meyer) was still the coach at Florida, I’d still be there.”
With all that said, it’s also probably important to note that in Meyer’s six season with the Gators 30 players were arrested while players like Harvin, Hernandez and lineman Maurice Hurt had their draft stocks fall due to failed drug tests. Which subsequently were swept under the rug.
With all this coming out now about Meyer it makes you wonder as to whether or not Ohio State did their homework on Meyer’s past. It’s going to very interesting to see what develops in Columbus considering Ohio State is coming off some very serious NCAA violations.
Ref: Sporing News
