View From Bennett Avenue

The news from Gainesville regarding Urban Meyer's retirement yesterday was stunning. He had built an empire of sorts there and seemed to be ready to compete for SEC titles and national championships for years to come.

Now, he had been hospitalized after the recent SEC championship game, but that seemed to be a warning sign for him personally and it was not made out to be a big deal at the time. The college football world had more to focus on that week with the craziness at the end of the Big 12 title game and with the then upcoming Heisman vote. Meyer is a young man, with great ambitions as a football coach. If he was not going to pursue the Notre Dame job, which he had recently labelled his "dream job," then it seemed that he would be patrolling the sidelines at Florida for many more successful seasons.

Hopefully he is making this decision for all of the right reasons--that he does want to spend more time with his family and wants to do so for a long time and in better health. To be successful at college coaching is incredibly taxing and it would have been hard to imagine that Meyer could have remained so driven for another 20-30 years.

I must admit that as someone who respects Meyer as a coach but does not like some of his ways--the numerous player arrests, the fights with other coaches, the "poaching" of other teams' recruits, the current allegations of playing favorites among players, etc--I was looking forward to his coaching effort next season when he had to replace one of the most valuable players in college football history in Tim Tebow and break in a new D coordinator and coach a squad with a host of first-time starters. Next season would have been a great challenge to Meyer, but perhaps the thought of that was too much to take for someone who has grown used to double-digit wins each year.

The person who came to mind for me almost immediately when I heard the news about Meyer was Frank Leahy. They are both about the same age when they left a demanding coaching job and each had similar levels of success. Leahy won 107 games in 13 seasons at both Boston College and Notre Dame. Meyer has won 95 games in nine seasons at three stops. Leahy won four national titles; Meyer two, but he could have tied the Hall of Famer in a few years. Both coaches cited health reasons when departing, although Leahy would later say that he felt unwanted by a Notre Dame administration that then felt that football was getting too big. Leahy would never return to a college football sideline. Let's see what happens to the talented and driven Meyer.

By the way, I like Kentucky and the points tonight against Clemson.