Fox Sports analyst Urban Meyer has several claims to fame as a multiple-time national championship coach in college football. But his most meaningful as coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes is his 7-0 record against arch rival Michigan.<\/p>\n
When Meyer talks about the Wolverines, the Buckeyes, and the rivalry, people automatically listen. And that\u2019s what makes his recent comments about the current state of the Michigan program so astonishing.<\/p>\n
Through his time at Ohio State, Meyer was singularly focused on Michigan because of the respect he had for the program and the importance of the rivalry. But even though the Wolverines found more success on the football field in recent years, winning a national championship and turning around their fortunes against the Buckeyes, the drama around the program has reached insane levels.<\/p>\n
Jim Harbaugh\u2019s national championship victory was clouded by a show-cause penalty for recruiting violations. There was the Connor Stalions sign stealing fiasco<\/a>. And then most recently, the shocking fall and arrest of Sherrone Moore<\/a>. But that isn\u2019t all. Multiple assistant coaches have been fired for appalling reasons. Former offensive coordinator Matt Weiss is facing identity theft charges<\/a> for hacking into the university to steal private videos of student athletes. The Falcons recently fired assistant LaTroy Lewis for a sexual assault investigation<\/a> from his time in Ann Arbor.<\/p>\n And in an appearance with two of his former Ohio State players in Cardale Jones and Chris \u201cBeanie\u201d Wells on their podcast, The Script<\/a>, Urban Meyer twisted the knife in his former rivals by saying the most damaging thing he could \u2013 that he has lost respect for the Michigan program.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve said this many times, and I know Cardale knows this because I\u2019ve said it to our players. Name another person who respects that school more than I do,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m including probably some people that have gone there. That\u2019s how much I respect that school. That\u2019s why we work so hard to beat them. I know their history. I was friends with Bo Schembechler. I was friends with Lloyd Carr, Gary Moeller. I know those great players. When someone says they have great players, I snap all over people and say, what are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so the the respect I have for that school academically, the school as a football program, I\u2019ll tell you, it\u2019s taken a little bit of a hit though. What\u2019s gone on the last four or five years, I lost a little respect, Cardale. I know this is going to make some headlines, but the nonsense that has gone on up there, that\u2019s not the Wolverine team or program that I mean, when I started hearing about all the violations and then the the most recent stuff, they hired the right guy to get them back.\u201d<\/p>\n That right guy is former Utah coach Kyle Whittingham, who is now leading the Michigan program in the hopes of cleaning it up. The two are very close as Whittingham served as Meyer\u2019s defensive coordinator during his own time in Utah as the head coach of the Utes. Whittingham has also spoken about their tight bond as former colleagues and longtime friends<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, given the state of the rivalry, Michigan fans will be eager to comment on Urban Meyer\u2019s glass house with the record of his programs. There was the staggering number of arrests<\/a> during his time at Florida and the presence of one Aaron Hernandez. He then left Ohio State in disgrace after mishandling domestic abuse allegations<\/a> against assistant coach Zach Smith. And the less said about his disastrous Jacksonville Jaguars tenure and his infamous night out<\/a> in Columbus, the better.<\/p>\n But now that the rivalry has turned the page and it\u2019s the era of Ryan Day and Kyle Whittingham, hopefully the focus can remain what happens on the field between the two programs and not so much what happens off of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fox Sports analyst Urban Meyer has several claims to fame as a multiple-time national championship coach in college…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":812770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,37146,7800,1317,1315,1316,4733,8807,62,330194,67,132,41330,68],"class_list":["post-812769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-jim-harbaugh","tag-michigan-wolverines","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-sherrone-moore","tag-sports","tag-the-script-podcast","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-urban-meyer","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116613970516156833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}