Urban Meyer's Message Resonates With Tar Heels
CHAPEL HILL – With North Carolina’s first spring football game of Mack Brown’s second run still a week away and most of the sports world focused on the Final Four, which doesn’t involve UNC, this has still been a big weekend for Carolina football.
First, UNC’s high school coaches’ clinic has been ongoing, drawing more than 300 coaches, which is certainly a significant figure. And one of the reasons they turned out in such a high numbers was to see former Florida and Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer, who is spending the weekend in Chapel Hill.
In addition to his time working in the clinic, Meyer has been around the current Tar Heels, which included an hour-long motivational speech Friday and his presence at Saturday morning’s practice. As for his message, it’s certainly resonating.
“It was all about brotherhood, that’s all it was about,” rising sophomore defensive back DeAndre Hollins said, following Saturday’s practice at the new indoor facility.
“He said a lot more than that, but that’s the main message: Play for the person in front of you, put somebody in front of you and play for that person. Put your brothers first, put your mom first, put your team first.”
Senior offensive lineman Charlie Heck doubled down on Hollins’ description of what Meyer emphasized.
“It was super cool being able to hear from another legendary coach,” Heck said. “His message was creating a team that will put others in front of yourselves and playing for your brother.”
In 17 seasons as a head coach at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida and Ohio State, Meyer went 187-32 winning two national championships with the Gators and one with the Buckeyes. He also led Utah to a top five finish in 2004. Twelve of Meyer’s teams won at least 10 games and his worst season was 8-5 at Florida in 2010.
Meyer, 54, retired from Ohio State following this past season and agreed a while ago to visit Chapel Hill for this weekend. For the players, seeing their new coach as a contemporary of Meyer’s is significant.
“They’ve both been to the top, the pinnacle of success with being a coach (and) they know what it’s like,” Heck said. “So, hearing that from him really sticks with you.”
Wide receiver Rontavius Groves didn’t even need to hear Meyer speak before getting the right vibe from him.
“You could see the passion in his face before he even talked, and when he talked it was just like you feel it,” Groves said. “You feel like he’d been there, done that. It was great to have a guy come in with such power to talk to us and motivate us.”
Like the others, Groves emphasized Meyer’s message about brotherhood and offered an example that isn’t seen by media’s or fans’ eyes.
“We’ve been having 5:30 ams since we got back from (spring) break, it’s been hard for a lot of guys to get up – they’re not used to it,” Groves explained. “And you’ve got another brother who feels the same way you feel telling you ‘let’s go, let’s go, I’m hurt, too, we’re going to get it together.’ That’s real brotherhood right there.”
Meyer reinforced the importance of being there for each other, a needed message for a program that won five games over the previous two seasons and has seen its share of attrition over the last six months, including bringing in an entirely new coaching staff that has set a very high standard in the program.
The dog days of spring, if you will, got a jolt in Chapel Hill this weekend, and the Tar Heels have embraced every bit of it.