"Energy to climb the mountain is awesome but to maintain is fatigue" - When Urban Meyer shared his opinion on leading a legacy team
Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer was present at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Monday to watch as his successor Ryan Day led the Buckeyes to the national championship title for the first time since he did it in 2014. Meyer has distinguished himself as part of a small cadre of coaches to have won the national title with two different teams.
The controversial Meyer finished his college football career with a 187-32 record over stints as coach of Bowling Green, Utah, Florida and Ohio State, winning three national championships with the Gators (2006 & 2008) and the Buckeyes (2014).
During a 2018 interview on "What Drives Winning," Meyer revealed the difficulty of leading a legacy team when he coached the Florida Gators between 2005 and 2010 (5:00).
"I'll never forget, I sat with my father and Earl Bruce, two of my mentors," Urban Meyer said. "And I remember sitting in the locker room after the first national championship and saying, 'Now we're playing with house money, I get to coach for fun and this is gonna be a walk in the park from this point forward' and obviously it's not true.
"To get where we got you know, he wanted to take a deep breath and take a deep breath and take a few months off and I said 'that's okay' knowing that the next day you're on the road recruiting and doing what you gotta do. The energy and thrill to climb the mountain is awesome, to maintain is nothing but fatigue."
How college football losses still haunt Urban Meyer
During a news conference after he was elected to the 2025 College Football Hall of Fame, Urban Meyer revealed that the losses during his coaching career still haunt him.
“I’m a loss guy. I got to try to get off that,” Meyer said. “There’s been some bad losses that I wish I had back. If you lose a game that you can say, ‘You know what, that team was a little better than us.’ But we also had some that you’re like, ‘Dammit, we want that one again.’
“To the point where you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you don’t act like a human being most of your life because you’re so fanatical about making sure everything’s done right,” Meyer said.
Despite his mixed college football career, Urban Meyer was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame on Jan. 15, alongside other legends like retired Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban and will be formally inducted in a ceremony in Las Vegas in December.