Urban Meyer, of I-want-the-fastest-team-in-America genius idea fame (and something about national championships or something), received a bit of not nice treatment from the Sporting News today, as he was labeled the man who “broke Florida football.” While I’ve never been a fan of Meyer, I do think the headline to that piece is a bit much since it’s impossible to break something that was repeatedly crushed by the meaty paws of Ron Zook.
I think a more Jackie Sherrill-ish themed headline about building a program, then lighting the torch and using it to set everything on fire would have been more appropriate. Not that Florida football is wrecked to the level of a Jackie Sherrill destruction, but 6-6 at Florida in a weak SEC East is at least pointed in that direction.
In the article, the biggest complaint by sources, who are mostly former players (some identified and some unidentified), is that Meyer played favorites with his elite players, creating what was known as the “Circle of Trust.” If a player was in the Circle, he could get away with just about anything, like attacking a position coach (BUT PERCY IS SO FAST HE MUST PLAY). If not, he was not afforded such leniency.
Naturally, this led to resentment and divisions within the team. It was not, as Houston Nutt spent the better part of 2008 talking about, a team with one heartbeat.
It was, however, a team led by a coach who was getting dangerously close to this Houston Nutt nonsensical idea:
Whenever circles start getting involved in a football program, particularly circles with different “bad” levels that are synonyms of the first “bad” level, or a Circle of Excellence that is actually called a Circle of Champions even though Champions is nowhere on any of the circles, things never go well. For Florida, that meant 15-11 overall and 7-9 in the SEC over two seasons. For Ole Miss, it meant 2-10 overall, 0-8 in the SEC, being outscored 292-93 in conference play, and not scoring more than 13 points in a conference game six times in a single season.
So, you know, TOUGH SHIT, Florida. Here’s what our coach had to say about that bit of lunacy above:
“Started back in January. As soon as they got back we made what we call a circle of champions. That’s a circle of excellence. And what that means is we want everybody to do it the right way.”
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