Today’s Edition: Will Urban Meyer Coach Again?
Urban Meyer has now officially retired from coaching for the second time in his career, but there is a stark contrast between his retirement following the 2010 season at Florida and the one he just celebrated Tuesday night at the Rose Bowl.
In 2010, Meyer was pained and in pain, and stepped away from the University of Florida for the sake of his health and sanity. He was miserable and those around him hated to see him that way.
Meyer wasn’t able to leave Florida on his own terms, and he isn’t necessarily able to leave Ohio State on his own terms either, but he is much more content with the terms this time around.
When he left Florida, Meyer was physically spent and emotionally exhausted. Watching him since his announcement, however, and he is anything but.
No, his retirement may not have happened at the time he would have preferred, but Meyer’s attitude and actions over the last month are one of a man who has gotten rid of a great deal of stress.
Not every stress is bad stress, but when you get rid of it, you can still feel the weight of it being lifted from your shoulders. Seeing Meyer since his retirement announcement, it would appear that he no longer has any of that weight. Individual adult counselling like this can often help people recognize those burdens earlier and develop healthier ways of managing them before they become overwhelming.
That is not to say that he didn’t care how the Rose Bowl turned out, because that isn’t the case at all. Through all of this, Meyer’s one desire is for his players to have the very best of everything. His stepping away is proof of that because he is concerned that he won’t be able to give them his best moving forward.
His headaches are manageable when he’s not on the football field and it would seem that he has finally accepted that maybe the football field is no longer the place for him to be.
So will he coach again?
Whenever I am asked this question, I answer with another question — have medical doctors figured out how to keep Meyer from having severe headaches?
If yes, then sure, I could see him coaching again. We know to never say never, after all. So if he did get healthy, we know that opportunity would certainly arise, and Meyer would eventually have a decision to make.
If medical science doesn’t have a breakthrough, however, then I don’t think he will ever coach again. That is also what he and his wife Shelley believe as well.
In 2010, Urban Meyer didn’t think he would coach again, and yet he did. In 2018, whether or not Meyer coaches again, he left the field as somebody who was soaking in every last drop of the Rose Bowl. And he was doing it for a reason.
Meyer looked perfectly content riding off into the sunset.
Now comes the real test for him, however. Can he stay happy and busy with whatever Ohio State has in store for him in the athletic department?
I don’t know if he can, but even so, I don’t expect Meyer back in the head coaching ranks any time soon.