Legacy of UM 2008

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sports/ncaafootball/hernandez-among-many-arrested-at-florida-in-the-meyer-years.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



41 arrested from this team.

scott715 wrote:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sports/ncaafootball/hernandez-among-many-arrested-at-florida-in-the-meyer-years.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&



41 arrested from this team.

That's ridiculous, I'd have heart failure too if I had that stuff on my conscience.



I was expecting an article about Michigan though, Meyer coached at UF, no?

Urban Meyer sold his soul for football glory. He chose to never let anyone or anything get in his way of winning. He wasn't about helping young men become real men who could lead good lives. He was about utilizing their talents to win football games. Anything that could be ignored to keep them on the field, was. Anything that happens after they're gone didn't matter because he was no longer helping him win.

Lazy, lame loser reporting.

I'm no fan of Meyer, but this piece does little to support its implicit premise--that 1. run-ins with the police increased under Meyer, 2. he turned a blind eye, and 3. he did it to win. To even get at the first step in that causal chain, they should have indicated what the incidence rate for the FB team was the six years prior to Meyer and the 2 years since. Wouldn't be hard. Even that wouldn't be great data, but it'd be a whole lot better a bunch of meaningless anecdotes.

Did Florida have a lot of their players run in with the law? You bet! But there's a huge selection problem there - those who chose to play SEC football in Florida are not the same type of folks who chose to play other places, even Alabama (and Meyer gets roasted all the time for 'inheriting' players rather than having to live with his recruiting classes). The host of environmental factors not named "Urban Meyer" would also contribute to likelihood of arrest once there.

The closest the NYT comes to addressing this is by asking the local PD for comment on comparing the FB arrest rate with the general student arrest rate (which the PD spokesperson lamely punted). But even at our wholesome Y, I'd wager that rates of police run-ins is higher for the FB team than the rest of the student body.

The only real evidence that is there in the article, weak though it is, is that 41 of 121 players on the 121 roster had an arrest during or after Urban and 16 of the 2-deep players did. (Stupidly, the NYT doesn't even give you the denominator to compare the incidence rate for the two.)

Assuming a 44-man 2-deep on O and D plus 3 on special teams (P,K,R) for a total of 48 you get a 33.8% rate among the entire FB team and a 33.3% for the 2-deep: statistically, no difference .

If Meyer (or anybody else) were really playing dirty and springing his players in order to get some wins on the field, I would have expected that the arrest rate among the 2-deep would have been notably lower, assuming the level of thuggishness was the same for starters and pine-riders. Urban / other enablers would have spent more time getting starters off than kids like Cam Newton who were young and buried on the depth chart.



I'm not saying Meyer's a saint. Mostly I'm just annoyed at how rags like the NYT are lazy in their reporting and write things up in a way that seems irresponsible and misleading. Nothing about the article except the anecdotal comment by the disgruntled CB indicates that the level of arrests was especially high compared to any counterfactual (much less a reasonable counterfactual) or had anything to do with Meyer in particular.



(Incidentally, one possible, relatively easy way to get at this would be to evaluate the probability a student gets arrested in a triple differences setup:

(FB-nonFB during Meyer) - [(FB - nonFB post Meyer) - (FB - nonFB preMeyer)]

Crimson -

As much as I hate to agree with anyone who has the word "crimson" associated with their name, I gotta give it to you. I think your analysis is spot on. With no data to support my next statements, I think Urban was so intensely focused (like most coaches) on game prep that he had to farm out many of his responsibilities to his staff. But ultimately, he is responsible and accountable for their actions. I think Meyer is a man of good character - just as I believe Joe Paterno was. That doesn't excuse either of them for what happened. I just don't think they pulled the trigger even though the gun was registered in their name.

'67 -

I like the gun registration analogy. I think it works.



And rest assured that my Crimson has nothing to do with the :utard:

Rather, it's the mascot of my grad school alma mater, and I refuse to let something as loathed as the U of U usurp that name and dictate how I use it.

CrimsonCoug wrote:
'67 -

I like the gun registration analogy. I think it works.



And rest assured that my Crimson has nothing to do with the :utard:

Rather, it's the mascot of my grad school alma mater, and I refuse to let something as loathed as the U of U usurp that name and dictate how I use it.

I am enlightened. You are forgiven. But there's just something about "the appearance of evil..."

Great post Crimson. In fact, I would dare say that if Meyer is guilty, then most coaches are.

I'm pretty certain hanging the sins of Sampson and Stout (and probably Others) around the neck of Bronco would be very unfair.

SpiffCoug wrote:
Urban Meyer sold his soul for football glory. He chose to never let anyone or anything get in his way of winning. He wasn't about helping young men become real men who could lead good lives. He was about utilizing their talents to win football games. Anything that could be ignored to keep them on the field, was. Anything that happens after they're gone didn't matter because he was no longer helping him win.

Which ironically enough is what many BYU football fans hate most about Bronco is that he is not this way.

1967cougar wrote:
But there's just something about "the appearance of evil..."

The adversary has all manner of counterfits. It's his M.O.

But calling the U of U devil spawn is giving them waaaayyyyy too much credit. In reality, they're just wuss wannabes, which is way worse.



But I agree with Hawk--I get annoyed with criticism of Bronco because he's not a win-at-all-cost kind of coach. One thing this article does do is make me value Mendenhall's "football fifth" philosophy.

CrimsonCoug wrote:

But there's just something about "the appearance of evil..."

The adversary has all manner of counterfits. It's his M.O.

But calling the U of U devil spawn is giving them waaaayyyyy too much credit. In reality, they're just wuss wannabes, which is way worse.



But I agree with Hawk--I get annoyed with criticism of Bronco because he's not a win-at-all-cost kind of coach. One thing this article does do is make me value Mendenhall's "football fifth" philosophy.

I think most BYU fans expect a clean program. Otherwise, why not root for another team that is more of a national powerhouse? Nope, I root for the guys trying to do it the right way. That is one reason why BYU will always be the first team for me, and others a distant second. When BYU was having those troubles back in the Crowton days, that is what really affected my fandom for the team. Now, I am sure Crowton did not know they were going to turn out that way, but the program was not doing enough screening back then. We have still had some bumps since then, but nothing as serious. I would rather not have a program than have one that has those kinds of players on it. I believe the Bretheren were thinking likewise about BYU's football future during the scandals. Frankly, a team full of those players is not worth following.