Urban Meyer Bullies Reporter (Video)
Urban Meyer may need a little more time to unwind because his display on the practice field in Gainesville on Wednesday was disgraceful.
A Florida receiver was asked questions earlier this week about the differences that will exist with John Brantley now under center instead of Tim Tebow. Gator receiver Deonte Thompson made the mistake of referring to Brantley as a "real quarterback" during one of his answers. Orlando Sentinel beat writer Jeremy Fowler interpreted this to mean that Thompson was excited about a more traditional drop back quarterback taking the reins in Gainesville and wrote a story about it.
All of this then came to a head after practice Wednesday when Meyer went up to Fowler and threatened to ban his paper from covering practice, threatened physical harm, and called the reporter a "bad guy."
“You’ll be out of practice. You understand that? If you do that again. I told you five years ago, don’t mess with our players. Don’t do it. You did it. You do it one more time and the Orlando Sentinel’s not welcome here ever again. Is that clear?
"It's clear but..."
"It’s yes or no!”
"Urban, c'mon don't make any threats. That's fine, I'll play by rules."
"What's that?"
"I'll play by rules but all I was doing was quoting the guy. I don't think I was the only one."
"You're a bad guy."
"Thanks, Urban. Appreciate that."
"You're a bad guy."
"Appreciate that."
"Maybe when you get a chance call his family and all that and help him out. The kid's never been in trouble one time. He's a great student, great kid and you're going to do that? If that was my son we'd be going at it right now... Be very careful."
The transcript was cobbled together from various print and video sources. It's not clear what Meyer said prior to the initial threat of "you'll be out of practice." One can't know for sure, as of this writing, if Meyer clearly spelled out what he was upset about. Was it that the quote was used at all? Was it because Meyer thought it was taken out of context? This would be helpful considering that no where in Fowler's blog post or follow up does anything appear to be taken "out of context."
I've read on message boards that because the writer excluded a quote where Thompson calls Tebow a "living legend," that then means the rest of the quotes are out of context. That assertion is false. Fowler's article doesn't question Deonte Thompson's appreciation for Tebow as a person or leader. It questions whether Thompson might have more opportunities to catch passes with a new quarterback. This distinction is vitally important. I'd underline "vitally" a thousand times if I could.
That takes us back to the confrontation itself which is an utter disgrace. If Meyer were to have acted like a professional in this matter, he would have taken the reporter aside for a discussion. He was clearly much more interested in making a scene.
Threatening to prevent a media member from doing his job because you don't like an article he wrote tends to trample over notions such as "freedom of the press." This is not an area Meyer should contemplate exploring unless he'd like this story to take on an even bigger life than it already has.
Meyer's threat of physical harm is not only hysterically false bravado, but a comment worthy of public condemnation by athletics director Jeremy Foley or someone even higher up the food chain at the University of Florida.
When you strip away all of the noise and chest puffing from this scene, what you'll find is a head football coach embarrassed for a player whose unfortunate choice of words resulted in national media coverage. These things happen.
The smart approach is to allow the player to offer the proper clarification and move forward. Urban Meyer did not take the smart approach.
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