Urban Meyer Leaving Florida, Take 2

We should just go back and recycle my posts from last December, when Urban Meyer resigned as Florida's football coach the first time.

I mean cripes: Just read this.

(And here was my subsequent post that the natural successor was Dan Mullen -- an even stronger case can be made now, after Mullen's 8-win season at Mississippi State, featuring a win over Florida in The Swamp.)

As with last year, I am so grateful that Urban Meyer was Florida's coach. I would argue there has been no better college football coach in the BCS Era.

That said: This past season was a debacle, and much of it was Meyer's responsibility -- more than anything, leaving Steve Addazio in charge of the offense. I did think things would get better.

(I'm not overstating: Florida's 2010 season was the most disappointing season I have ever experienced as a sports fan, because my preseason expectations were so high, compounded by a lunatic notion, each and every week, that THIS was the week things would get better, which only led to even more crushing disappointment.)

I wish Meyer the best. He is young enough and talented enough that I can't possibly see him never coaching elsewhere again. He will replace Brian Kelly when Kelly's poor performance or off-field midjudgments finally catch up to him. Or he will go to Penn State when Joe Paterno retires. Something of that magnitude.

No, he will not go to the NFL -- I wouldn't say the NFL is even more work than college coaching the way the elites like Urban do it, but it is a different kind of work. The brutal workload of college is at least something Meyer knows all too well.

I am rooting for Florida to hire Dan Mullen, someone who feels like a younger, perhaps smarter version of Meyer, who has very close ties to the program and who can win immediately.

But I wish nothing for the best for Urban Meyer.

-- D.S.