IMO Gators' Urban Meyer is 2 hip 2 B square
Mike Bianchi
SPORTS COMMENTARY
June 22, 2008
GAINESVILLE
His authorized biography is about to hit Amazon.com.
Another best-selling author who chronicles global business leaders wants to write a chapter in his next book about what makes him tick.
TV producers have approached him about doing a reality TV show.
ESPN showed up in town a couple of months ago for his spring football game and provided four hours of televised coverage.
Bill Belichick likes to talk strategy with him.
And, yes, Adam Sandler sent him a congratulatory bottle of wine not long ago.
"I guess that's pretty cool, huh?" Urban Meyer says and laughs.
Cool doesn't begin to describe it.
Urban Meyer is the coolest rockin' daddy in intercollegiate sports. He's the hippest, hottest rock star in college football. He's Hannah Montana with a cockeyed headset. He's Lil Wayne with a big playbook. He's the Pussycat Dolls with an offense that purrs like a kitten.
"He's white-hot right now," says longtime sports writer Buddy Martin, who just finished the soon-to-be-released biography called Urban's Way.
"He's at the peak of his powers," says Chris Fowler, ESPN college football analyst and host of the network's ultra-popular GameDay. "Urban is as dialed in to what makes young people tick as anybody I've ever seen."
If you want to know why Urban Meyer is rich like butter to today's hip-hop generation, then just take a look at today's newly redesigned Orlando Sentinel. It's visual. It's colorful. It's bold and bodacious. It's just cooler than the traditional newspaper.
And that's Urban Meyer. He's just cooler because he has purposely redesigned the traditional college coach. He is reinventing the image of the rumpled, old, outdated football fogy and turning him into a more modern, attractive version that looks phat and fresh on his state-of-the-art Web site CoachUrbanMeyer.com.
In this cat-quick, double-click world we live in, Meyer is all over imaging and presentation. If you Google college football coach, his name should be the first one to pop up. He is, after all, Coach YouTube.
When the Gators open their new $30 million football offices later this summer, the entrance will be filled with huge high-def TVs running endless video loops of Florida's national championships and Southeastern Conference titles. When a recruit walks into his office, all he sees is video and photographs of green grass, full stadiums and pretty girls.
"That's what's appealing to young people," Meyer says. "We spend an inordinate amount of time on presentation. Video is the No. 1 way to do that because that's what recruits respond to. Nowadays it's all about music and video."
Most everything he does or is asked to do by the media is about luring recruits. He will attend the ESPYs next month because he knows recruits will think it's cool to see him chillin' with Justin Timberlake. When Fox Network asked him to be an analyst during the pregame and halftime shows at the BCS National Championship Game, he visualized how many national recruits would be watching the LSU-Ohio State game. The same with ESPN when the network approached him about bringing its GameDay crew to Gainesville in April for four hours of coverage of the Orange and Blue spring scrimmage.
True story: Before televised coverage of the Masters began on that Saturday afternoon in April, hundreds of sports writers sat in the Augusta National media center and watched ESPN's wall-to-wall coverage of UF's spring scrimmage/Tim Tebow Lovefest. It may be the first time in history that a golf writer from the New York Post was introduced to the concept of Mr. TwoBits.
With 60,000 fans flocking to Florida Field and millions watching nationwide, the four hours of ESPN coverage turned into a four-hour recruiting video for the University of Florida. Just like Meyer planned.
"If I'm asked to do something like that, the answer is 'No' unless it can help recruiting," Meyer says. "Let's face it, spring games stink. They're awful. But we decided if we're going to do it, let's put on a show.
"It turned out to be a positive. Now, don't get me wrong, if ESPN had shown some of our rivals playing in their spring game with 12,000 people in the stands, that wouldn't have been a positive; that would have been a negative.
Ah, was that a gratuitous shot at Florida State -- the institution Meyer refers to condescendingly as "that school out west." Or maybe it was meant for Miami, that school down south. And is it just coincidence that both schools have gone younger and cooler in an attempt to keep pace with the Urbanator?
Last year, the 'Canes hired Randy Shannon to replace the older, balder Larry Coker. The Seminoles, too, are in transition, evidenced by their recent naming of Jimbo Fisher as their coach-in-waiting to eventually replace the aging icon Bobby Bowden.
Old-school is out.
New-age is in.
And you want to know what's strange? Meyer is the ultimate dichotomy. He is actually more of the former, but we think of him as more of the latter.
He's actually a conservative football coach from the cold, gray Rustbelt who grew up idolizing Woody Hayes. Now he's in the warm, blue Sun Belt where he has become the next Steve Spurrier. He's a very private man with a very public persona. He likes his own space, but he scouts MySpace.
He's actually more close-to-the-vest than he is seat-of-the-pants. His image is offensive genius, but he won his only national title with a team specializing in defense and field position. His reputation is space age -- a million miles and a thrust of flames. His roots are stone age -- 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
He's Fergalicious by stature, but he's Margaritaville by nature.
Hip? For crying out loud, his favorite musician is Jimmy Buffet, who hasn't been relevant since the Cheeseburger in Paradise Tour of 30 years ago. And when he met Adam Sandler not long ago, his first response was, "Wait a minute, that's the guy from Saturday Night Live." He had absolutely no idea Sandler made movies and hadn't been on SNL for more than a decade.
That's why best-selling motivational author Alan Deutschman, who has chronicled CEOs such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and Google's Sergey Brin, is considering a chapter about Meyer in his next book. He's intrigued about how Meyer, a psychology major in college, has connected and inspired players from such divergent backgrounds.
"Even though he might have come from a more conservative, homogenized background, he has been able to bridge the gap and speak the language that kids understand," Deutschman says. "He has connected with them and got people from diverse backgrounds to buy in. Doesn't matter what business you're in, if you want to be a leader and influence the marketplace, you have to get people to believe in you."
It should be noted that Deutschman's last book was called Change or Die -- a truism many American businesses, including the newspaper industry, are just coming to realize. It's an edict Meyer learned long ago.
"It's 2008, you have to stay in tune to what's going on," he says, "but at the core, I'm still an old-school traditionalist. That's who I am."
As Hannah Montana sings, he's the "best of both worlds."
He may be the techno-pop, bee-bop, hip-hop coach who likes crunk on MTV.
But, deep down, Urban Meyer still likes that old time rock and roll.
Mike Bianchi's Open Mike blog can be read at OrlandoSentinel.com/openmike, and he can be reached at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com.