Urban Meyer wants Tom Herman and Will Muschamp to grow up and take some responsibility for their failures.
Herman's coaching stock skyrocketed as Ohio State quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator from 2012-14. He leveraged that successful three-year run into the heading coaching job at Houston in 2015, where two good years led to him to Texas. His career in Austin got off to a rough start when they yielded 51 points in a Week 1 loss to Maryland, after which he reminded everyone it's going to take time.
“I told our guys to never get used to this feeling," he said in a postgame press conference, "but that if we all thought that we were going to come in here and, in nine months, sprinkle some fairy dust on this team and think that we’ve arrived, than we’re wrong."
Those comments didn't sit well with his former boss Urban Meyer.
"C'mon man. I don't know where that came from," Meyer told CBS Sports. "It's like a new generation of excuse. [Herman] said, 'I can't rub pixie dust on this thing.' He got a dose of reality. Maryland just scored 51 points on you."
Meyer has twice taken over high-profile programs, doing so at Florida in 2005 and Ohio State in 2012, the latter of which occurred when Jim Tressel left behind a program riddled with NCAA sanctions. Instead of complaining about a shortage of pixie (or fairy) dust, Meyer went 12-0 in 2012 with a team that had nothing to play for — at least in terms of the postseason.
He also criticized his replacement at Florida, Will Muschamp, who after being fired in 2014, told CBS Sports that, "[We] changed the culture of the program that was labeled by the previous head coach [Meyer] as 'broken.' [Meyer] said it. I didn't."
"That's like, when I got here, everybody wanted me to say Jim Tressel left the cupboard bare," Meyer said. "If I heard any assistant coach [say that], they'd be gone. You're done. Those are your players.
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"I hear TV guys [say], 'Wait until they get their own players in there.' They're our players. What do you mean 'their players?' The minute you sign a contract, they're your players. You didn't choose me, I chose you. You're mine, absolutely. I love you, and I'm going to kick the shit out of you, and we're going to do it right . . . [Blaming players] drives me insane."
Neither Herman nor Muschamp — who's now in his second year as head coach at South Carolina after one year as Auburn defensive coordinator — have responded to Meyer's comments.
