Urban Meyer won two national championships at Florida. He went 65-15 in six seasons, produced a Heisman Trophy winner in Tim Tebow, and turned the Gators into the team everyone else in the SEC wanted to knock off. But there was another part of the job that Meyer remembers very differently from his time at Ohio State.
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“The media in Ohio is much different than the media in Florida,” Urban Meyer said on September 9 on The Stampede. “In Florida, you got Florida State, Miami, and Florida. And two-thirds of them want to beat you to death. They’re called, I think, beat writers or something. Where Ohio, it’s Ohio.
“You know, they’re almost fans. And to this day, I’m extremely close with the Ohio State media, the Ohio media, whereas Florida, I mean, it was brutal.”
Meyer arrived in Gainesville in 2005 and immediately walked into a state where Florida State and Miami were not just other programs. They were rivals with their own enormous followings. Florida also had Georgia and Tennessee waiting in the SEC, while South Carolina had Steve Spurrier, the former Gators coach, on its sideline. Then Meyer started winning.
Florida went 13-1 in 2006 and beat Ohio State 41-14 for the national championship. Two years later, the Gators won another title. By 2009, Florida entered the season No. 1 and finished the regular season 12-0 before losing the SEC Championship Game to Alabama. Success did not make the coverage disappear. It raised the stakes, as Meyer said in his September 9 interview.
Every loss became a story. Every player problem became a question about Meyer’s program. And there were plenty of player problems to cover. Meyer’s six years at Florida included dozens of arrests involving Gators players. The incidents ranged from alcohol-related offenses to much more serious allegations. Many cases were later dismissed, but the volume itself became a recurring issue for Meyer and Florida. The pressure became especially uncomfortable in 2010.
Receiver Chris Rainey was arrested after sending a threatening text message to his former girlfriend. Meyer publicly acknowledged that the situation had gone too far, saying the program had to look at what it could improve. Then there was Meyer’s relationship with reporters.
In March 2010, he confronted Orlando Sentinel reporter Jeremy Fowler after practice. Meyer called Fowler a “bad guy” and warned him that he would be removed from practice if he repeated the behavior that had angered the coach. In all, his Florida run was enormously successful, but it was not exactly peaceful.
ESPN’s later examination of the program found former players describing favoritism inside the team. A Sporting News investigation published after Meyer left also reported allegations that star players received preferential treatment, including different standards for workouts and discipline. Meyer denied knowing about the alleged “Circle of Trust.”
The timing of his departure added another layer. Meyer first announced his retirement after the 2009 season, citing his health and family. He returned less than two weeks later. In December 2010, after Florida finished 7-5, he announced again that he was leaving. Interestingly, his OSU departure wasn’t without controversy either.
The first issue was already waiting for him when he arrived. Ohio State was coming off the tattoo scandal that had forced Tressel out. The NCAA had hit the program with a one-year bowl ban, scholarship reductions, and probation. Meyer’s first Buckeye team went 12-0 but could not play in the postseason because of those sanctions. Years later, Meyer still had a problem with how the media covered that era.
In 2025, he said he had held a grudge against Sports Illustrated for 14 years over its reporting on the scandal. Meyer argued that the violations had given Ohio State “zero competitive advantage” and felt the penalties were excessive. The bigger controversy came in 2018.
Ohio State put Urban Meyer on leave in 2018. Reports had raised questions about what he knew about domestic-abuse allegations against Zach Smith, one of his assistant coaches. Smith later lost his job. An investigation commissioned by the university found that Meyer had not handled the allegations properly. It also found that some of his statements about the situation were inaccurate, but investigators stopped short of saying he had intentionally lied.
The university then suspended Meyer for the first three games of the 2018 season. He returned to the sideline, but the controversy remained around the program. In December, Meyer said he would step down after the Rose Bowl. He pointed to health issues as the reason for his decision. The Smith case, however, had already become a major part of how people viewed the final stretch of Meyer’s Ohio State career.