I didn’t read anything he said as a “defense” of Meyer (I’ve not read the whole thread); he’s just saying that he doesn’t believe he lost the locker room, which is an open question.
It’s entirely possible that you’re both correct: Meyer’s behavior off the field didn’t cost him the locker room, but shuffling team meetings around and weak ‘apologies’, might have.
And lots of NFL players are skeptical that a college coach’s shit works in the pros anyway, so there has probably been that lack of credibility from the beginning
I hadn’t read it as I was posting. Still, it doesn’t really change anything that I said.
This is the line that sticks out:
One player told me, ‘He has zero credibility in that stadium. He had very little to begin with.
That last part is what it’s all about. He has no credibility, burned that a long time ago, this incident did next to nothing to move the needle. The players were laughing because a) they know he’s lying his ass off b) they think it’s legitimately hilarious that their coach gets caught out doing shit that 20 year olds get caught doing c) the entire situation is absurd.
You’ll never convince me that NFL players give a flying fuck about someone being a horny bastard. Him cancelling the meeting because of the news reporting and not just brushing it off is 100x more problematic than the actual event. Do you think Belicheck would spend 10 seconds thinking about what the media was saying before a team meeting? If anything he’d turn it into us vs. them and/or play it off as him just being one of the guys, hey…it’s happened to the best of us, and then deflecting it at one of the team’s biggest partiers.
Maybe, he’s from Ohio and the game was in Cincy. I think people would give him a pass on flying back Monday. Players do that all the time. Cancelling meetings Tuesday is a different ballgame.
Possibly for a player, but a coach (in particular, the head coach) can, and probably should, be held to a higher standard. Especially for a young team, which isn’t doing well, having their head coach (who apparently may not have had the respect of his team anyway) choose to not fly home with them after a loss could be seen as a bit of an abandonment of his role.
If there hadn’t also been the scene with the dancing woman, and the ensuing distraction from his responsibilities, it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it’s also not a particularly good look for the coach of a struggling team.
From Slate, somewhat tongue-in-cheek but not really:
Are you suggesting that Urban Meyer is going to “resign” this week, announcing that he regrets becoming a “distraction” to his team and needs to focus on his family relationships, and that he is then going to be hired in early December as the next head coach at USC?
I’m not “suggesting” it—I know with a serene, cosmic assurance that it is exactly what will happen, because it is an outcome that is as certain as the law of gravity.
If it were a huge deal and way out of the norm, I would have expected to hear some reporting/criticism from the Jags beat writers Sunday evening/Monday morning. No one said a thing until the video broke. Maybe I missed it, because let’s face it, who reads Jacksonville beat writers?
Maybe inside the building it was an issue, but it feels like some retroactive grievance that people are using to justify their over-the-top reactions to the video.
I think the issue is, Meyer’s a college coach and he’s 0-4. It’s the losing that’s the issue – and the possibility he could end up at USC, who would not give a toss about this latest scandal.
I think his contract also had a clause that if he gets fired for cause such as moral turpitude, that Khan wouldn’t be on the hook for the 50 million or so that Meyer would otherwise be owed. My guess is that Khan is laying the groundwork for using this as an excuse to fire him for poor on the field results while saving himself that money.
Maybe. But my first thought after seeing the video and seeing some of the response was that he coaches a team in fucking Jacksonville. What’s the standard of moral turpitude there? You can probably get grinded on in line at the DMV.
Similar video for MetLife stadium, except in this one both the Giants and Jets had home games in the same weekend. I think it was Giants on Sunday and then Jets Monday night.
The difference is interesting - SoFi they remove the logos from the turf and repaint them, MetLife, they just pull up the endzone turf & lay new. I guess that’s why MetLife doesn’t change the 50 yd logo.
