Ban College Sports for Five Years, Save America: Urban Meyer's Black Problem

PK NOTE: Big article postponed until tomorrow. 

Without Tim Tebow and Riley Cooper at the University of Florida form 2006-2009, the predominately white university would have been represented by an overwhelming sea of Blackness of the football field. Indeed, in 2010 Urban Meyer cobbled together a completely Black recruiting class of athletes who would not be allowed to step foot on a college campus (if admission was predicated upon their high school transcripts)  were they not wearing Nike cleats.

Urban Meyer: Love for Black athletes only matched by toleration of their lawlessness

Without athletics, where would we find positive examples of Black males in America?

Seriously. Where?

Now, Sporting News has published a devastating expose of life at the new Thug U, and the type of Black culture Urban Meyer allowed to exist. From Champs to Chomped: How Urban Meyer Broke Florida Football by Matt Hayes could be about any Southeastern Conference (SEC), Big 12, Big 10, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big East, or Pac-12 school:

The uproar and controversy of Urban Meyer’s stunning recruiting coup at Ohio State settled in and Stefon Diggs, still on the Buckeyes' wish list, was debating his future.

Diggs, the second-highest rated wide receiver in the country, had narrowed his list of potential schools to Maryland, Florida and Ohio State. For more than a week following National Signing Day on Feb. 1, and before Diggs eventually signed with Maryland, Meyer relentlessly pursued Diggs.

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.

Meyer denies allegations that he cast Florida and its players in a dark light when he spoke to the Diggs family, and said, “I love Florida; I’ll always be a Gator. My motives were pure as gold when I left. We left Florida because I was dealing with health issues that I’ve since learned how to control.”

— At Ohio State, Meyer's ability to control players will be watched

But multiple former players and others close to the program say the timing of his departure was also tied to the roster he left behind. Remember it was Meyer who hinted the program that won 13 games in 2006, 2008 and 2009—and lost only 10 games from 2005-09—was flawed beyond the unsuspecting eye.

Now those issues have surfaced for all to see. Left in the wake of Meyer’s resignation were problems that can destroy a coaching career: drug use among players, a philosophy of preferential treatment for certain players, a sense of entitlement among all players and roster management by scholarship manipulation.

The coach who holds himself above the seedy underbelly of the game, who as an ESPN television analyst in 2011 publicly berated the ills of college football, left a program mired in the very things he has criticized.

“The program,” former Florida safety Bryan Thomas said, “was out of control.”

Ironically, Florida’s downfall began at the height of Meyer’s success—the 2008 national championship season. Three seasons of enabling and pandering to elite players—what Meyer’s players called his “Circle of Trust”—began to tear away at what he’d put together.

“I’ve never heard of Circle of Trust before in my life,” Meyer said.

Former players, though, contend it was the foundation of Florida’s culture under Meyer. In the season opener against Hawaii, Meyer said a few elite players (including wideout Percy Harvin, linebacker Brandon Spikes and tight end Aaron Hernandez) would miss the game with injuries. According to multiple sources, the three players—all critical factors in Florida’s rise under Meyer—failed drug tests for marijuana and were sitting out as part of standard university punishment.

By publicly stating the three were injured and not being disciplined, former players say, Meyer was creating a divide between the haves and have-nots on the team.

The University of Florida football program - whose predominately Black team directed racial slurs at white Ohio State players in the 2012 Gator Bowl - is out of control because of its Black players.

Sporting News doesn't mention that the mentality in Gainesville, Florida is a reflection of the overwhelming Black team that Urban Meyer put together. The same problem exists in Athens, Georgia, where Marc Richt has recruited every thug athlete in Georgia to play for the Bulldogs; Auburn has the same problem, as does the University of Tennessee. 

These Black players do not belong at a Historical Black College or University (HBCU), never mind an SEC school. It's embarrassing, yet primarily white residents of these states heap adoration, admiration, and God-like status upon these Black young men -- who are the sons of the Black people they have no desire living near.

It's funny: SEC and ACC alumni, students, and fans have no problem making fun of rival schools Black thug athletes, but get incredible defensive when you dare criticize their beloved Black thug athletes.

So how do you fix the problem? Simple.

Ban on collegiate athletics for five years. Throw at all the corrupt coaches who have climbed their way to the top of athletics by relying on primarily thug athletes (this goes for college basketball too) to survive. Ban them from the game for life -- starting with every member of the Bowden family.

Funny: Urban Meyer is now the coach of Ohio State, a football program whose white players were racially targeted for mocking by his former Black team - that he recruited - in the 2012 Gator Bowl.

It's time to finish The Opiate of America: College Football in Black and White so I can wash my hands of this disgusting sport forever.

The days of yelling Roll Tide; Go Dawgs, Sic' em; Woooo, Pig Sooey!; War Eagle; or some other inane chant before the kick-off of a football game played by athletes who have no business representing these universities is over.

At least for me. 

Ban college sports for five years, save lacrosse, rowing, baseball and wrestling. Non-revenue sports get the ax too. Sorry ladies.

At the very least, get rid of athletic based college scholarships.