By: Kris Mead
“Legacy” is a word that is both overused and hardly
understood. Most people when referring to the word “legacy” immediately have a
connotation with success, heroism, or greatness. This association is flawed in
the same way that people believe they can form their legacy. A legacy is
nothing more than a person’s history, which is nothing more than a story of
their remembrance or, as James Joyce stated in his 1930’s work 1066 and All That, “history is not what
you thought. It is what you remember. All other history defeats itself.” That
is precisely how Urban Meyer’s legacy has been and will be crafted, albeit it
has been written far too prematurely.
The first reason that Meyer’s legacy has been prematurely
and, therefore inaccurately, written is because it hasn’t officially ended yet.
He still has the Rose Bowl to coach. Secondly, although he announced his
retirement from coaching it wouldn’t be surprising to see him jump back into
coaching, as he has done previously. Furthermore, there is much speculation
that his “retirement” wasn’t by choice but rather by persuasion. So his leaving
football entirely seems even more farfetched.
Andrea Adelson of ESPN wrote a piece titled, Why
Urban Meyer’s legacy is about more than his record, in which she
revisited Urban’s coaching history and made sure to address all of his mishaps.
In her final line of her scathing rebuke of Meyer Adelson states, “Meyer could
have been remembered for the championships. But that is simply impossible. His
pristine on-the-field legacy is damaged, and Meyer has only himself to blame
for that.” This line could be the last line of any person’s biography. Take out
“Meyer” insert “Thomas Jefferson”. Take out “championships” and insert any of
the following: “Louisiana Purchase, author of the Declaration, Founding Father,
or President.” This is simply because, outside of Jesus, no historically
relevant person doesn’t have a tainted legacy. Here is another line from
Adelson’s piece which could be invoked in any person’s memoir, “Meyer is a
great coach, yes. He is also a flawed man, and no matter what he wants you to
remember, his legacy is tagged with an asterisk.” The response to this generic
line should be, “Who doesn’t have an asterisk next to their name?” Even Martin
Luther King Jr., a pastor and civil rights leader, was caught on an FBI wire
sleeping with a woman who wasn’t his wife.
I understand the logical fallacy that I am working with – I
am trying to rationalize a person’s mishaps with someone else’s. I am in the
same boat as those people who claim Kareem Hunt should be back in the NFL
because he didn’t hit the woman as hard as Ray Rice punched his wife. However,
there is a difference, and that is I am measuring Meyer’s entire career against
his mishaps.
There is no doubt that Meyer was losing control of his team
at University of Florida towards the end of his tenure in 2010. There is no
doubt that he was more lenient on players than he should have been. However,
Adelson tries to attribute, former Florida Gator football player, Aaron
Hernandez’s murder conviction (2015) with Meyer’s lack of discipline. That is a stretch, albeit Hernandez did have
legal issues at Florida, and eventually Meyer
did not welcome him back on the team for the start of the 2010 season.
Actually, Meyer was going to kick Hernandez off the team sooner due to his
marijuana use, but was convinced not to by Florida quarterback, and outstanding
character person, Tim Tebow. If Adelson is willing to associate Meyer to
Hernandez’s murder conviction, shouldn’t she also be willing to name Bill
Belichick as well? Belichick drafted Hernandez and was his coach the year that
the murder was committed.
However, what set the entire “legacy” question off was the
Zach Smith domestic violence mismanagement. The entire investigation was murky,
raising questions whether Meyer should have fired Smith or reported the
allegations to the correct authorities. It seems fairly certain that Meyer did
report these allegations to his boss, Athletic Director Gene Smith (as Smith
was suspended for mismanaging the crisis). The fact that Zach Smith was not
charged with any crime until 2018, warrants some speculation as to the extent
that it would have been correct for Meyer to fire Smith. The issue that Meyer
runs into is the fact that he refused to acknowledge, during a press conference,
any awareness of domestic violence allegations against Smith in 2015 or that
Meyer’s spouse had received text messages from Courtney Smith, Zach’s wife,
alleging abuse.
It’s quite easy to pronounce Meyer should have fired Smith
as soon as he was aware of the 2015 allegations and the text messages from
Courtney Smith (presumably his wife showed him the text messages and pictures).
Some might even go as far as to say that
Meyer had a “natural duty” to remove Smith from his job. So, in some sense
Meyer’s legacy is being confused with an argument regarding what is justice.
In philosopher Michael Sandel’s book called, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?,
he argues that justice must be weighed with communal bonds over the matter.
Sandel argues that there is some moral legitimacy in communal bonds, which are
not contractual voluntary decisions but rather unavoidable moral obligations
that don’t require individual consent. Of course, people believe that these
communal bonds are nothing more than prejudice towards one’s own kind and that
people who are seeking to do justice should overcome these bonds. Sandel
examines this crisis by looking at General Robert E. Lee’s moral dilemma. Lee,
who was both against the secession and slavery, was asked to lead the Union
Army by President Lincoln. Lee turned down Lincoln’s request and decided to
side with his home state – Virginia. So Sandel questions whether Lee deserves
any credit for his loyalty in terms of moral weight. Is loyalty just an emotional
tug that clouds our moral judgment or is loyalty also a moral fiber? Sandel argues
that loyalty is the latter. “Here’s
why: Unless we take loyalty seriously, as a claim with moral import, we can’t
make sense of Lee’s dilemma as a moral dilemma at all. If loyalty is a
sentiment with no genuine moral weight, then Lee’s predicament is simply a
conflict between morality on the one hand and mere feeling or prejudice on the
other.”
In other
words, as much as people want to punish Meyer’s legacy and reflect on him as a
man who lets wrong doers go (which is exaggerated), most people can
sympathize with Meyer. Actually, many people may even admire the dilemma that
Meyer went through due to “the quality of character their deliberation
reflects.” Yes, Meyer failed to manage the Zach Smith situation well. He also allowed players leniency off the
field. However, like Lee, Meyer had a hard time doing the morally right thing
because he felt some level of loyalty to both his players and his coaches.
Smith, in a lot of respects, was like a brother to Meyer. They both studied in
their younger years under Ohio State football coach, Earl Bruce, who was
Zach’s grandfather, and have been attached ever since. To think that Meyer
could easily break that relationship the moment he received word of Zach’s
alleged behavior is similar to how William Whitey Bulger Jr., the younger brother and successful
politician to, a mob boss, James Whitey Bulger, refused to turn his brother
into the FBI. William was aware of his
brother’s crimes and, his whereabouts, but his communal loyalty towards his
brother made it impossible for him to do the morally right thing in turning his brother into the authorities. William’s lack of cooperation forced
him to resign as the President of the University of Massachusetts. In a lot of
respects William is admired for his
loyalty to his brother, despite it being morally incorrect.
Urban Meyer may not have been the most morally upstanding coach.
However, his legacy may be best understood as a man who should be admired for
his loyalty, even if it caused him to pursue an unjust cause. Sandel might state it best, “To have character is to live in recognition of
one’s (sometime conflicting) encumbrances.”
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