Nico Perrino

Football

When I saw late last week on ESPN’s bottom line the breaking news announcing Urban Meyer’s resignation as head football coach at U of F for health reasons, I wasn’t much surprised- and I was even less surprised when he went back on the resignation.
 
 Growing up in a football family where your fall afternoons and entire weekends are consumed by games and practices it’s easy to see how it can wear a man and a family down. My brother and I both started playing football at a very young age, and my dad had coached all throughout our childhood. I have vivid memories from when I was younger of my mom complaining about how she had nothing to do while we were practicing and my dad was coaching, and it became commonplace for her to joke around about how she didn’t have a husband in the fall.
 
As my dad rose up through the coaching ranks with us as we got older -finally ending up at the high school varsity level- he became increasingly scarce around the house. Coaches meetings, practices, games, early morning lifts; all of these coaching commitments amounted to more time at the school with the team than with his family. And with me moving out of the state to go to college, my mom had an even smaller pool of family to spend time with while my dad and brother were off doing their thing during the football season.
 
With my brother going off to college next year and my sister being in high school and at the age where she no longer thinks it’s cool to spend time at home, my mom forced my dad to quit coaching. Although he was only a high school assistant coach –and did it as a hobby instead of a job (he volunteered)- with all the time he spent attending to his coaching responsibilities, my mom didn’t want to be home all alone; empty-nesting by herself.
 
The often hidden part of football is the time commitment that coaches actually take to prepare for the season and each week’s games.  My dad played high school, college, and professional football, and has seen the amount of time that coaches spend on the field or in their offices and away from their families. He’s always told me that a coach has got to love the game to do what they do, because it’s an incredible sacrifice, and it only gets worse as you move up the coaching ladder.
 
The sacrifice is not only one carried by the coach, but one also carried by the coach and his family. When I was discussing with my dad the possibility that Urban Meyer would go to Notre Dame last month the first thing that came out of his mouth was, “no way.” And he didn’t say “no way” for the reasons you, and I, and ESPN might say “no way”, but he said “no way” because of how the move would impact his family- something you don’t hear discussed on any other forum or media outlet.  In a Chicago Tribune article today Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said that during the season he is usually in the office every morning at 6:50am and often times does not leave until 11pm. That gives him nearly zero time to spend with his family. Now why would Urban Meyer’s wife be at all interested in leaving sunny Florida for barren South Bend? If you’re the wife of a head college football coach and never get to see your husband during the fall, why would you want to spend that alone time in a place like South Bend instead of Florida? Although Urban Meyer did say ND was his dream job, do you really believe his wife will let him take that job, which essentially means that she is going to have to stay alone inside all fall instead of alone outside in the sun? Not a chance.
 
It’s the hidden side of sports. Talk of how a coaching change might impact the families of those coaches who are being considered for the jobs nearly never comes up when analysts are breaking down whether or not a coach will accept a job, but I can guarantee you that the family has way more to do with the decisions than the public is let on to believe.
 
There are things coaches do do, however, to try to alleviate the strain coaching places on the families. In the same Tribune article Fitzgerald said he mandates that all coaches leave work at 5pm on Thursdays for what he calls “date night” so that they have time to go home and spend time with their families. Fitzgerald also takes 2 vacations to Naples, FL each year with his family, one after national signing day in February, and one two-week vacation in July. But even with these initiatives, the sacrifices coaches and families make can take an incredible toll on those affected.
 
I’ve experienced it first hand with my dad (granted, on a smaller scale), and I have no doubt that the long hours away from his family, and nearly unbearable burden Urban Meyer bears at Florida has contributed to his poor health and the decision at the young age of 45 to take a leave of absence.
 
Yet Meyer is the lucky one: He has a very secure job at Florida; one that doesn’t show coaching changes on the horizon. Some coaches aren’t so lucky. Some coaches every couple of years pack up their families and move across the country to accept a new job. The strain this puts a coach is enormous and often overlooked, yet it no doubt puts greater strain on already stressed out coaching families. The constant threat of job loss and subsequent moving amidst the prospect of a poor season must be a hefty weight for coaching families to bear.
 
This is why Urban Meyer’s resignation did not surprise me. I’m actually more surprised that this doesn’t happen more often in schools all across the country. But like I said, when he went back on his resignation I was even less surprised because as my dad has always said, “you’ve got to love the sport” and Urban Meyer, and most other college football coaches, do indeed, “love the sport.”