My Urban Meyer Story

Background: Urban Meyer is a college football coach, a particularly successful football coach.  He had his first division one job at my alma mater.  He is currently in the news because he took a coaching job at The Ohio State University after less than a year after leaving Florida because of some (stupid player behavior/NCAA violations/hoodlums on his team) health problems.

The Story:  Little known NGS fact - I worked for the athletic department at my undergrad institution as an academic tutor. I was a highly coveted tutor, not only because I'm awesome, but also because I had a lot of mathematical knowledge and could tutor A LOT of different types of math classes, the discipline with the most tutor requests.  If an athlete missed an appointment, it was a big damn deal because it meant someone else who could possibly have had that time slot was missing out.


So my last semester working this job, there was a new football coach. The woman who had been my supervisor left her position and no one had taken over her job, so no one was keeping the student athletes accountable about missing tutoring sessions.  I had a football player who missed three appointments in a row.  Since no one in the academic progress office seemed to care, I emailed the new football coach, Urban Meyer, directly.  But I want to be clear - he wasn't THE Urban Meyer at the time - he was just some untested football coach.


Urban Meyer emailed me back, telling me he would take action. And I don't know exactly what he said to that student athlete, but the player showed up for the next appointment, all apologies and maybe with some candy to bribe me.  When I was introduced to Meyer later on in the semester, he remembered my email and told me "you can coach any of my boys anytime you want."  He cared about his players, their academic progress, and the BG community. 


I hope he does well at OSU, despite the fact that it's a school I despise. I have a great respect for the man despite all the controversy and strangeness that has swirled around him recently.  Do good work, Mr. Meyer.  But more importantly, be well, Mr. Meyer.