‘Urban Liar’ Crowd Pivots Hard To New Position That Meyer Is The Epitome Of Honesty

Urban Meyer has "no desire" to return to the college football coaching ranks.

He said as much Monday at the Knoxville Quarterback Club, a nonprofit celebrating college and high school football in the eastern portion of Tennessee.

Here are more of Meyer's comments from his speaking engagement, per The Tennessean:

The question that prompted Meyer's answer did not specify a particular job opening. Meyer has been rumored as a possible candidate for the Michigan State vacancy following Mel Tucker's firing amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

'I am good,' Meyer said. 'I never really took a day off. People, when I say that, they scratch their head. I am like I never took a day off. I had some health stuff go on. I became addicted to sleeping pills. I was just a maniac worker. ... So no. No desire.'

Meyer said in the first year following his ouster in Jacksonville that he would wake up and 'want to go coach a team.' That desire no longer exists. He craves the freedom to travel with his wife, Shelley, and see their four grandchildren.

The nature of  talent acquisition' both in building a coaching staff and recruiting a roster via high school and the portal are among the reasons Meyer said he would not get back into coaching.

'It has never been harder I am telling you right now,' Meyer said. 'Every coach, every player has an agent. Think about that. Remember those days? Maybe a coordinator every once in a while had an agent. There is nothing wrong with agents. They’re great.

'But when I am the head coach having to deal with a high school player that (says) meet with my agent first. I am going I want to meet with your family because you are talking about recruiting and other stuff.'

Hard to argue with his logic. Coaching in college football is only getting more and more competitive and involved. This was a sport with virtually no offseason even before the advent of NIL and the transfer portal. Now, there really is no break, even during so-called recruiting dead periods, because coaches essentially have to re-recruit their entire roster just to keep their current players.

Coaching in college football is definitely becoming a young man's game. Regardless, I picked up on a fascinating phenomenon that's been occurring in the wake of Meyer's comments.

Ever since the first rumors started about a month ago linking Meyer and Michigan State, a large segment of the college football universe has been adamant that his "checkered" past disqualifies him as a candidate here and ought to be treated as radioactive by MSU.

"This guy is a total scumbag — the complete opposite of what Michigan State needs right now," they've said.

"Character, morality, and integrity matter, and Meyer has none of those," others have declared.

"Urban Meyer? More like Urban Liar, amirite?" Twitter's uninitiated stand-up comics have quipped.

If you're an MSU supporter and you can't abide by the idea of Meyer taking over in East Lansing, that's your call. I personally think you're seriously misguided if you believe: A) character and/or integrity exist at all in today's over-commercialized, multibillion-dollar college football industry, if either ever existed here in the first place, and/or; B) MSU's first, last, and only consideration when hiring its next coach should be anything other than winning. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

As for media types who have decried a potential MSU-Meyer union, they made up their minds a while ago about the narrative they'll manufacture and promote once the Spartans formally introduce their next coach. Spoiler alert: It's gonna be an all-hands-on-deck negative publicity campaign.

Don't forget Michigan fans, who represent a plurality of all the voices weighing in on Meyer's candidacy at MSU. They, of course, are resorting to every contrived and trite insult you've ever heard on this matter, and you can find them in the comments and replies on every article, Facebook post, and tweet about this story. You can't blame 'em. It's only natural to root against good things happening to your rival. I mean, would you want your personal boogeyman to land right back at your doorstep? U-M is scared.

What gets me about the response from these three aforementioned demos to Meyer's latest comments is that now, after a month of branding Meyer as one of if not the most dishonest, reprehensible character in all of college football, they say the guy, whom they've accused of a pathological inability to tell the truth, should be taken at his word.

For those of you keeping score at home, here's where we are: Self-loathing Spartans, the transparently agenda-driven Detroit media, and pissing-their-pants-out-of-fear-and-Urban-induced-PTSD Michigan fans say Meyer is not to be trusted when there are credible reports of mutual interest between him and MSU; but he's as genuine as they come when talking about his disinterest in coaching again.

In other words, when the news doesn't align with their narrative, it's fake; but when it suits their preferred version of reality, it's authentic. Got that?

I don't know if Meyer is earnestly interested in coaching again, nor do I know whether he's seriously considering the Michigan State job. What I do know is that this wouldn't be the first time a coach denied kicking the tires on a school's vacancy only to be introduced as that school's new coach literally five days later.

Hell, it wouldn't even be the first time Meyer himself has done that!