The TWO Stooges… Urban Meyer & Brandon Spikes

In Meyer’s defense, much more depraved, disgusting and unjustifiable things happen on football fields from high school to the NFL every week. I’ve heard stories that range from hair pulling to attempts to break fingers to squeezing testicles (yes, really), so a linebacker going all Moe from Three Stooges on a running back in a pile really isn’t the end of the world. Anyone who thinks this is even in the top 10 of worst things that have happened during a big-time football game this year is hopelessly unaware of what football is all about. What’s brought so much attention to this case is the omnipresence of the Internet and the expansive number of cameras on football games now.

Back in the day, this sort of thing would happen and no one would have any idea. If someone did happen to catch it live, it might grow into a myth or a debate down the road, but there would never be the kind of irrefutable evidence that exists today.

I understand why Meyer only suspended Spikes for a half. Like most coaches and most players, Meyer knows the kinds of things that go on during games. Spikes had actually gotten poked in the eye by a Georgia player earlier in the game and Spikes wasn’t even called for a penalty on the play. The announcers didn’t even say anything about it.

Unfortunately for Meyer and Spikes, in today’s world you have to give out discipline based on perception and not reality. In reality, what Brandon Spikes did isn’t worth more than a one half suspension. In public perception, however, Spikes should be given at least a one-game suspension, and maybe even two. When it starts to look like your players are undisciplined thugs and you’re willing to turn a blind eye to any kind of behavior if it means the team can keep on winning, it makes you look bad and it makes the program look bad.

There have been mounting comparisons of the Gators, under Meyer’s tenure, to the old Miami Hurricanes under Larry Coker and not about their play on the field. One such comment comes from an Orlando Sentinel blog that lists the “arrest*” of 24 players throughout the past five years. Half of the arrests are for juvenile offences that just about every college student has been guilty of – truly degenerate acts like throwing paper cups or not moving out of the way of a police car, for instance – and the other half of the offending parties who committed real crimes were suspended indefinitely and/or removed from the program.

Make no mistake, Urban Meyer is a classy coach who has taken the high road – the zero tolerance road – with any player who had off-the-field issues and his record speaks to that. That’s what makes this latest instance so troubling.

A big part of being a coach at a big-time college football program is managing the perception of yourself and your football program. Urban Meyer didn’t do a very good job of that on Monday.