Welcome back to Midnight Audible, a newsletter that summarizes a stupid sports thing that has happened, or is happening.
I’ve been trying to find the correct (read: stupidest) moment to write another newsletter, dear reader. There’s certainly been plenty I’ve missed in the time that I started a new full-time job and haven’t written anything other than professional emails. The combination of orienting myself in a new role and feeling unsure of what ridiculous sports-adjacent topic I could try to bring to you left me, admittedly, a bit unmoored.
And, as if in a vision — nay, a fever dream! — along came Urban Meyer.
For those only tangentially aware, Urban Meyer is, without argument, one of the most prominent football coaches in the country. Known best for his work at the college level, Meyer amassed three college football national championships with Florida and Ohio State, among numerous conference and division championships and coaching awards. He has also worked in media as an analyst and commentator for both ESPN and Fox Sports. After a brief coaching retirement in 2019, Meyer assumed the role of head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
So naturally, when you’re at a bar owned by Urban Meyer, and you see Urban Meyer at said bar that he owns, getting grinded up on, you’re probably going to notice.
Hell, you’re probably going to take a video.
And yeah, you’re gonna put it on the internet.
I’m now going to do my best to try explaining the Urban Meyer Situation to you. It is very much still unfolding. By the time I send this, he might retire again; it’s unclear. However, I’m going to try my damnedest to give the best overview of one of the funniest, if not most embarrassing, potential downfalls of a man’s coaching career I have ever seen.
So What Did He Do, Again?
Over the weekend, after his team’s loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, Meyer declined to return to Florida with the team, opting instead to stay in Ohio. This is odd for a coach, especially one of a team that’s 0-4 and probably needs to build morale with a team that likely doesn’t respect him, but hey, whatever.
In a significant part of his long weekend in Ohio, he checks on his restaurant venture, aptly named Urban Meyer’s Pint House, to maybe catch a game or two, meet some fans, have some of those aforementioned pints. Dressed in his salmon Ohio State quarter-zip (Jesus Christ, he really made all of this so easy), he’s seen at the bar, in God’s honest daylight, with a much younger woman, who is not his wife, grinding up on him.
The first video, posted by @freak_leader on a burner called “Uh Oh Urban,” was taken down, but because it’s the internet, the video has resurfaced. Additionally, a second video reveals that he also had his hand nestled in an, uh, precarious location, as the woman was dancing on him.1
But Was It Actually Him?
Yes. There are several photos of him at the restaurant with other guests happy to see the “Dublin Dad” out and about.
Additionally, a different woman (also not his wife!) posted a selfie on her Instagram story with a visibly buzzed Meyer, captioning it, “WHO IS THIS HE KEEPS FLIRTING WITH ME” [sic]. I have to assume she’s just kidding around, considering there are allegedly pictures of him all over the restaurant, but by the glazed-over, horny grandpa look in his eyes, he was not kidding about trying to score.
So What? It Was After Hours. Who Cares?
The Jacksonville Jaguars.
In addition to how absolutely weird it is to have your head coach abandon your winless team in favor of a weekend on the town in [checks notes] Dublin, Ohio, Meyer’s behavior has, allegedly, ruined his already-limited credibility in the locker room. According to Michael Silver, Urban Meyer canceled the Jags’ full team meeting the Monday after the backlash began and initially only apologized to position groups, who, being millennials and Gen Z’ers with Internet on their phones, laughed at him after he left the room.
Jaguars owner Shad Khan also released a statement:
I have addressed this matter with Urban. Specifics of our conversation will be held in confidence. What I will say is his conduct last weekend is inexcusable. I appreciate Urban’s remorse, which I believe is sincere. Now, he must regain our trust and respect. That will require a personal commitment from Urban to everyone who supports, represents or plays for our team. I am confident he will deliver.
Meyer has since said a slew of things (including, but not limited to, blaming these younger women for “luring” him to dance), had some early-morning team meeting on Wednesday to address the, uh, situation, and from the team’s perspective, that appears to be that. But, when your boss’s boss’s PR team has to release a statement dancing around your infidelity like the woman at the bar was dancing around you? Probably bad!
And when I allude to Meyer’s limited locker room credibility, mind you, he used to be a college coach. For guys in their late teens and early twenties who are largely unpaid for their labor, Meyer’s platitudes and leadership style may have worked (more on that later). For grown men with agents, accountants, and endorsement deals… not so much. Plus, earlier in the season, among other things, Meyer hired a strength and conditioning coach who was let go from a previous gig due to, among other things, racism, and had to apologize for that “distraction,” too.
Suffice it to say things aren’t going well!
What About His Wife?
She knew!
Over the weekend, Urban’s wife Shelley tweeted that, while Urban was out living his Rumours era, she was babysitting their grandchildren, with the hashtag “#BuddyDeservedANightOut.”
Not to editorialize (absolutely to editorialize), but at least the tweet where she basically admitted to knowing her husband was out with women that look like she did 30 years ago is funny. The other reason she’s well-known on Twitter is because she’s a vaccine skeptic and COVID-truther.
Shelley has since claimed to quit Twitter due to online hate since her husband’s gallivant. In a Notes App apology for something she doesn’t really need to apologize for (see above COVID tweet that she, a registered nurse who taught at OSU, should apologize for instead), she said, among other things:
We all make mistakes - we are all sinners. If you think you aren’t? Then cast the first stone.
Why Does Any of This Matter?
In the grand scheme of the universe, it probably doesn’t. We are tiny specks of space dust whose lives matter little in the infinite fabric of time.
With that said, Urban Meyer wedging a hand in a woman’s crack is wild news, but in truth, his big weekend out is simply a drop in the bucket for a career of morality grifting. This is a man who was set to teach a class on leadership at the same institution where he gave safe harbor to a violent domestic abuser on his staff and lied about what he knew. Prior to this, the remnants of the deeply broken culture he created at Florida, essentially, set the entire football program and its players back years. And as mentioned above, Meyer hired a strength coach identified as one of the most prominent racists among a coaching staff hostile to Black players (Kirk Ferentz sucks, but that’s for another day). And, while I usually do not speculate on people’s health and should believe, in good faith, that he did retire twice for personal reasons, he left two teams conveniently after scandal, only to return to the game when he sniffed out an opportunity to pull another heist.
This matters because we can finally stop pretending that winning games in football is equivalent to a winning culture built upon one man’s character. Plenty of scandalized coaches get second chances (duh, they’re usually mediocre old white dudes with intimate football knowledge). But Meyer has always gotten additional chances without the same degree of scrutiny, because it’s Urban Meyer, and well, fuck, he’s really good.
After being handed the keys to a team where player dynamics are different and success isn’t guaranteed, though, the illusion is gone. He can’t play any more tricks on us to make it seem like he’s a morally stout man surrounded by amorality and bad luck. Even if he “personal reasons” his way out of the Jaguars gig, I’m not even sure if any major college program would take him on as a coach to restore his legacy, now that we see him for what he really is: that sketchy older dude at the bar who hits on women half his age.
(Also, if the rest of us learn anything, please do not try to slip the shocker through a pair of jeans. You’re going to give someone a wedgie.)
If you enjoyed this in some way, here are three other things I recommend reading/listening to:
“The Urban Meyer Episode” from my friends at The Tuck Rule owns. It’s a great summary of Urban Meyer’s tumultuous coaching history and a little speculation into whether or not Urban Meyer knows what being poly means.
Ace of The Bucket Problem (to which you should subscribe) paid for Bill DiFilippo and Patrick Mayhorn to eat at Urban’s restaurant. You’ll be shocked to find out that that’s a weird grift, too.
@freak_leader, who I mentioned earlier as the source of the grinding vid, offers an Ohioan’s take on Urban Meyer.
I don’t know what to call this, because I honestly don’t have a frame of reference for trying to finger somebody through a pair of jeans.