Urban Meyer's goal is to elevate UF from good to great
Dave Curtis
Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 9 2006
GAINESVILLE -- Urban Meyer peeked at his notes and sighed.
He had repeated this message all spring and summer, to diehards and to donors, from Palm Beach to the Panhandle. But one more repeat, he knew, brought him closer to trying to put the words into action.
"I'll close with this," he said, and an audience of close to 500 tuned him in. "If you've listened to me talk or if you've followed our program at all, our goal is very simple. And that is to become a great football team."
Simple, Meyer says, and for most Florida fans, the thought of the Gators returning to greatness is as simple as breathing. But the journey there, which continues during this opening week of preseason practice, is anything but.
In two stretches last season, Meyer glimpsed a great team. On Thanksgiving weekend, when UF blitzed Florida State, and again Jan. 2, as the players and coaches belted out a celebratory chorus of "The Orange and Blue" after an Outback Bowl victory against Iowa, there were signs: accountability and discipline leading up to the games, unselfish play during them, victory at the end.
The mission, then, is to make every week of 2006 like those that finished the '05 season. And it's up to Meyer, praised for his work ethic and winning at Bowling Green and Utah, to pull it off.
"There's a genuineness about Urban and a passion," former Gators defensive end Jack Youngblood said. "As a player, you can sense whether it's real or contrived.
Later, Youngblood said, "We've all seen that Urban is real, that he's the man for this job."
To further define his job, Meyer stacks the nation's teams into four categories.
At the bottom sit the also-rans, teams full of players who wear their teams' gear, eat free meals and show up Saturdays to play.
Next come the good teams, the level where UF spent much of last season. Great athletes fill those rosters, but distractions off the field and lack of commitment on and around it make consistency and championships impossible.
The descriptions also fit the past few seasons for the Gators.
They have won one Southeastern Conference title since winning the national championship in 1996. They haven't reached the SEC Championship Game since 2000. They have lost at least three games in each of the past four seasons, and only finished one of those seasons with a bowl win.
Above good teams on Meyer's chart are great teams, which eliminate mistakes on and off the field, possess the best players and coaches, and play in prime time come the first week of January.
A string of great teams equals a great program, in Meyer's mind the ultimate in college football. Florida was at that realm in the mid-1990s, making a young assistant in the Midwest take notice.
"I became a fan of Florida football watching those guys," Meyer said at a July Gator Club Gathering in Jacksonville. "Before that, I really didn't know much. But those were great teams."
The good-to-great goal is nothing new in college sports, or even around UF's campus. Basketball coach Billy Donovan's national champions earned the "great team" distinction from Meyer this spring. Women's basketball coach Carolyn Peck mandated her staff read Good to Great by Jim Collins, a book that explores how 11 corporations made such a jump. The phrase became a team motto last season, when the Gators beat two top-five teams and reached the NCAA Tournament.
But Meyer's progress toward "great" has taken a more practical and public path. His first steps dealt with personnel, both in the locker room and the football office. Despite a three-loss 2005 season and criticism of his offense, he kept his position coaches and coordinators and gave almost all of them a salary bump. Then, he and his staff signed 27 players for one of the nation's top-ranked recruiting classes; 26 of them showed up for workouts in July (Derrick Robinson elected to play pro baseball).
Just as important, some of the team's problems have disappeared.
Quarterback Josh Portis, whose attitude at times irritated teammates and whose mother irritated the staff, transferred to Maryland. Cornerback Dee Webb, who owned the guns that nearly got four Gators arrested in February, now is a Jacksonville Jaguar. Cornerback Avery Atkins, whose conduct dented the team's chemistry, left the program last month.
In every case, the players seemed unable to communicate with Meyer, a problem he won't tolerate.
"If you're straight with Coach, he's going to be straight with you," former UF cornerback Vernell Brown said. "That's one of the best things about him. He's a guy who wants to know about you, talk to you, help you out."
Meanwhile, Meyer has tried to immerse the new players and the returnees in a winning atmosphere. The coach's "Champions Club," ballyhooed last season as a novel approach to team bonding and motivation, has returned for an encore. Freshman quarterback Tim Tebow sported a T-shirt Sunday that proved his membership. In the past year, the squad has listened to former players talk about Gator glory days, including players from the 1996 team who'll return for the season opener to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their national title. And this year's freshmen received cards showing five championship rings, a reminder that those mid-1990s teams truly featured Florida's best recruiting classes, Internet rankings be damned.
"That doesn't mean anything," freshman linebacker Brandon Spikes said of his class' No. 1 ranking. "We have to go out and win."
That, it seems, is all that's left. But winning, going from good to great and staying there, takes more than just solid preparation.
Greatness takes skill: At too many positions (offensive line and cornerback, for two), Florida appears to lack the caliber of player to play solid football every week and contend for a title.
Greatness takes time: The lack of depth means as many as half of the true freshmen likely will see the field.
Greatness takes luck: The Gators face three teams in the preseason top 10 and three others in the Top 25. And that doesn't include two toughies at the start (Southern Miss, UCF) and a Nov. 11 game with Steve Spurrier and South Carolina. In all, there are eight bowl teams from last season on the schedule.
Greatness, though, is the goal, and the players don't even need to peek at their notes to talk about it.
"We've been doing great, and we've got a chance to do some great things this year," said punter Eric Wilbur, a senior from Trinity Prep. "I've never been excited for a season like I am for this one."
Dave Curtis can be reached at
dcurtis@orlandosentinel.com.
