Urban Meyer Seems to Be in a Helping Mood These Days
By Jason McIntyre
Now, some backstory: Byrne is a popular athletic director. He’s young, genial, and his father is a longtime AD (Texas A&M, Nebraska). How did Byrne coax Meyer in for an interview? Well, Byrne used to be at Mississippi State where he hired … Dan Mullen to be the Bulldogs’ head coach. Guess where Dan Mullen was before that? Florida. With … Urban Meyer.
So before any Arizona fans go thinking Urban Meyer was in play for the Wildcats, this seems to be a case of two guys just helping each other out.
Do I think this Byrne/Meyer news leaking out – if you’ve followed Thamel’s reporting, it’s obvious he’s friendly with Meyer – is beneficial to both parties? Absolutely. Byrne is trying to replace Mike Stoops. Arizona is a good, but not a great job opening, and with schools like UCLA, Ohio State, North Carolina and Penn State all (likely) looking for a coach, Arizona would have to wait for some dominoes to fall before getting their man.
When Arizona booted Stoops, all signs pointed to the Wildcats going for a hot shot coordinator (Alabama’s Kirby Smart? Oklahoma’s Brent Venables?) or upstart mid-major (Houston’s Kevin Sumlin? Southern Mississippi’s Larry Fedora?) but unable to reel in a big fish (Chris Petersen, Urban Meyer). If Byrne can hit another home run (Mullen got the Bulldogs to a New Year’s Day bowl last season), he could be setting himself up for a big-time job in a few years. Securing a meeting with Meyer is a huge PR coup.
Meyer, of course, could use a safe “interview” pop, too. The leak officially puts out the word that he’s in play for a job, even though it had been rumored since the day he quit. It might as well have been a smoke signal to UCLA, Penn State or anyone else that wants to make a play for Meyer: It’s mid-November … you’ve got 7-8 weeks to decide what you want to offer me. It makes Meyer’s exquisitely-worded denials in recent weeks all the more laughable.
According to a source, Meyer is in a helping mood these days – he recently helped the University of Cincinnati hire its new athletic director, Whit Babcock. You can see why Meyer want to help the Bearcats – he played football at Cincinnati and his sister, Gigi Escoe, works at the school.