Meyer's Bully Act Embarrasses Florida

In the middle of last week, the football-playing Florida Gators kicked off their spring practice. Their schedule called for workouts on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday -- with Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays off -- concluding with the Orange and Blue Spring Game the second Saturday next month.

I don't know what Florida coach Urban Meyer and his charges do on their down days, but I do know how the coach should have spent his on Thursday: issuing a public apology for his actions the day before.

And if Thursday passes without Meyer volunteering an apology, his immediate boss, Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley, or everyone's boss at Florida, university president Bernie Machen, should demand it.





In case you missed the latest YouTube hit, Meyer was filmed on Wednesday not just upbraiding Orlando Sentinel reporter Jeremy Fowler, but threatening Fowler for a story Fowler wrote off Monday's practice quoting returning receiver Deonte Thompson comparing the graduated and celebrated Florida legend Tim Tebow unflatteringly to Tebow's successor, John Brantley.

---

---

"You'll be out of practice -- you understand that? -- if you do that again," Meyer scolded Fowler and pointing his finger in Fowler's face. "I told you five years ago: Don't mess with our players. Don't do it. You did it. You do it one more time and the Orlando Sentinel's not welcome here ever again. Is that clear? It's yes or no."

Meyer started to walk away and then reversed course to fire another salvo.

"If that was my son," Meyer said to Fowler referring to Thompson, "we'd be going at it right now."

Those were fighting words. To say Meyer was out of line is an understatement.

I called the university's media relations department on Thursday to ask if Machen was planning to address the unseemly behavior of the face of the state's flagship school who is paid $4 million a year. A spokeswoman told me she hadn't heard at that time but would check and let me know if something was in the offing. I didn't heard back by the close of business Thursday.

I called the athletic department spokesman Thursday as well and asked the same about the athletic director. Florida's sports information director Steve McClain told me Foley was traveling and hadn't responded to the matter.

If Machen and Foley do nothing, they will be derelict in their duties and prove, once again, how emasculated college administrators have allowed themselves to become when dealing with their revenue-generating million-dollar basketball and football coaches.

We saw it just over a year ago when Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun told a freelance journalist and political activist named Ken Krayeske to "shut up" after Krayeske asked Calhoun in a postgame interview why Calhoun was making $1.6 million at a state school in tough economic times. Calhoun wasn't brought to apologize.

We saw it a couple years ago when Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy turned a press conference into a tirade against a columnist at The Oklahoman who wrote a piece he charged was laced with inaccuracies and was ill-intended. Gundy refused to cite what he said was not factual, refused to apologize to the columnist, a woman, whom he suggested would have written a different piece had she been a parent. Gundy was backed by his university that rewarded him with a new contract.

And of course we saw college bosses at two schools mismanage the anger of Bob Knight.

Those were fighting words. To say Meyer was out of line is an understatement.Most of us who've been in the sports journalism business for any decent amount of time have found ourselves once, twice or more on the receiving end of a coach's, player's or other sport's personalities' displeasure with something we've done. My most memorable moment was with Jimmy Johnson giving me a piece of his mind just about nose-to-nose in the hallway outside of his Cowboys' office. He didn't threaten me. He was just mad at what he saw as an unfair portrayal of him in a column I wrote that day. We moved on.

There was no more excuse for Meyer's behavior this week, however, than there was for any of his over-the-line colleagues before him. Just as it was with them, it will serve only to be another black eye on college athletics if he's allowed to get away with it simply because he wins games, championships and attracts lots of money for Florida's flagship institution for, ostensibly, higher learning. What kind of lesson, after all, will that be?

What apparently so ticked off Meyer was nothing less than factual reporting generated by asking questions and recording answers. It wasn't the product of journalistic stalking or writing unsubstantiated claims.

Florida receiver Deonte Thompson (right) was asked on Monday about what the difference would be between catching passes from Brantley (pictured above right), the new starter, or Tebow, the one who won the Heisman and championships along the way. All Thompson said was what was being said about Tebow all last season and even more since then as Tebow prepares for the NFL: Brantley is more of a prototype quarterback, or "real quarterback," as Thompson said.

Web sites all over picked it up, as did other newspaper reporters in Florida who also heard Thompson's answer, and it got perceived incorrectly as a smear against the Gators' beloved Tebow. Meyer took umbrage against the messenger of his choice. He should have done so privately or at least in a manner more respectful of his stature.

Threatening to keep the reporter's employer from covering his team and suggesting he'd punch him out was a wrongheaded and juvenile reaction that the university, if it is worth its mission statement (which reads in part is "... to further state, national and international achievements in support of human values ... ") should be embarrassed about.

If Meyer, Foley and Machen don't realize as much, maybe they can learn something from one of the young men they were supposed to be teaching for the future.

"I don't think Deonte meant anything by that," the fellow told a Boy Scouts of America gathering Thursday at the Palm Beach County (Fla.) Convention Center. "He was just stating facts."

The speaker may not have been a "real quarterback," but he was a real adult: Tim Tebow.