Why do college football coaches struggle in the NFL? Urban Meyer joins long list
Urban Meyer was trying to change the narrative of college football coaches jumping to the NFL. Instead, he may be the worst to ever do it.
Meyer was fired early Thursday morning by the Jacksonville Jaguars as owner Shad Khan finally had enough of the drama and controversy.
He now joins a long list of college coaches who have made the jump to the NFL.
College HCs jumping to the NFL haven’t fared overly well… https://t.co/UiOrl8NfER
Jim Harbaugh is the only one to have sustained success, while Kliff Kingsbury is on a similar track. But even the great Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban could not bring their legendary college success to the NFL.
So what makes it so difficult to make that jump?
Why do Urban Meyer and other college coaches struggle in the NFL?
Meyer's tenure was a textbook example, and perhaps the most extreme, of why college coaches struggle in the NFL. The college game is all about power and running a program the way one person sees fit.
Friends can be hired and as long as the team is winning, and it's hard to complain.
Meyer failed to realize the NFL is a different business. First came him hiring Chris Doyle as a strength coach, who had a track record of being racist towards players back as a strength and conditioning coach at Iowa.
The hiring made no sense and Doyle resigned soon after.
Next up was letting Tim Tebow get a shot at playing tight end. Tebow had his NFL opportunity but was ultimately unable to make the roster cuts in preseason.
The most recent example of Meyer's descent to being terminated begins with allegations of kicking former Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo. If a college coach kicks a player, that story likely gets buried.
But in the pro ranks, Lambo is going to speak up and potentially even sue the team. Someone like Lambo has already made a substantial amount of money and is not going to allow himself to be bullied by a coach.
Meyer was also previously seen on video with a woman, who was not his wife, dancing close to him in a bar and in another video touching said woman near or on her bottom.
Nick Saban's short tenure with the Miami Dolphins is another great example. He is one of the greatest coaches in college football history, yet his style did not work in his brief stint in the NFL.
His approach of demeaning grown men did not go well for obvious reasons.
.@danorlovsky7 doesn’t mince words when asked about Urban Meyer 😲
“Urban Meyer is a bad dude … and a bad coach! … He inherited a poor culture in Jacksonville and made it WORSE in six months.” https://t.co/MDYbRJP0Ol
College football coaches are able to hand-pick their talent and those at the top, like Saban and Meyer, get the best of the best. But both ran struggling NFL teams and tried to bring their hard-nosed approach to teams that needed more strategic fixes than personality ones.
College coaches are also celebrities in their respective towns. That is part of the job as they spend all year recruiting and using their own egos to land top players.
No one cares about that in the NFL. Bill Belichick barely speaks publicly and he is arguably the best coach in the history of the game.
Meyer and other college coaches before him may have let their egos get in the way, making it feel like they could take on any challenge. Ultimately, college football and the NFL are two different worlds.
Not having any experience at the NFL level has been a bad omen in the past and NFL owners should learn lessons after this latest debacle.
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