Multiple sources told Sporting News that Meyer—who won two national championships in six years at Florida and cemented his legacy as one of the game’s greatest coaches—told the Diggs family that he wouldn’t let his son go to Florida because of significant character issues in the locker room.
Character issues that we now know were fueled by a culture Meyer created. Character issues that gutted what was four years earlier the most powerful program in college football.
It was Meyer who declared the Florida program “broken” at the end of his last regular season game in Gainesville in November of 2010. But why was it broken?
“Over the last two years he was there,” one former player said, “the players had taken complete control of the team.”
Only now, through interviews with multiple sources during a three-month Sporting News investigation, do we see just how damaged the infrastructure really was and how much repair work second-year coach Will Muschamp has had to undertake in replacing Meyer—who has moved on to Ohio State less than a year after resigning from Florida for health reasons.
Matt Hayes of The Sporting News had an interesting piece online Monday about how Florida got to where it was last season, basically saying Urban Meyer coddled his most talented players. “Over the last two years he was there,” one former player told The Sporting News, “the players had taken complete control of the team.” We saw signs of this and have heard stories, but Hayes was able to get them confirmed through sources. (The story about Percy Harvin attacking receivers coach Billy Gonzales and not being punished is deplorable. From everything I've been told, Harvin was the most coddled athlete in the history of Florida football). Hayes' story paints a picture of a program that is “broken” and we all know that's what Meyer told Will Muschamp when Muschamp took the job. I know Muschamp felt he inherited a mess when he took over and it has taken him a year to get it headed back in the right direction. All you need to know about players' sense of entitlement was the meeting between Muschamp and Janoris Jenkins after multiple arrests and failed drug tests by the cornerback. When Muschamp told Jenkins he would have to be suspended, Jenkins replied, “Do you know who you're talking to?” And that was the end of his career at UF.
64 is ridiculous...at that point you start getting 6-6 teams in there who have no business competing for a NC.
No doubt.
I'd be all for re-creating the FCS's 20 team format, which includes an 8 team play-in round. It would definitely make more sense to do that in the FBS than in the FCS...then again perceived pushover Stony Brook did win their play-in game and then almost pulled off an upset at the #1 seed and eventual champion, Sam Houston State.
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“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent. If we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death, our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” - Stanley Kubrick
The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.
Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely?
Because we certainly don't need computers in this day and age.
