If you’re a college football fan, you surely didn’t miss the breathless coverage of the mixed messages sent this weekend by Urban Meyer, the head coach at the University of Florida. Meyer, recently voted the “coach of the decade”, announced Saturday he was stepping down from the position in order to focus on his health and his family; on Sunday, he changed his tune, noting that he was taking only a “leave of absence”, and expected to be back on the sidelines for the two-time national champions soon. The paper of record summarized the most wrenching aspect of the story:
One of the most poignant moments of the Urban Meyer resignation-unresignation as Florida coach came Christmas Day.
After weeks of soul searching, prompted by a trip to a hospital, he told his family that night that he would be leaving his job, Meyer said to The New York Times.
Meyer said that upon hearing the news, his 18-year-old daughter hugged him and said, “I get my daddy back.”
A day later, Meyer was gone again. Not completely gone. He announced Sunday that after a day away to think about things, he had decided to stay put. He is merely taking a leave of absence.
Jeremy Foley, Florida’s athletic director, made it clear — to fans and to recruits — that order had been restored in Gator Nation. “He is the head coach taking a leave of absence,” Foley said.
In 24 hours, we went from the perfect holiday story to a tale about the relentless pull of the coaching profession. The king leaves his throne for his family and then decides — or is convinced — that the throne was not so bad after all and announces that for a time he will be the power behind the throne.
What do we make of this bizarre drama?
The bit about Meyer’s daughter is heartbreaking, isn’t it?
Football coaches occupy a particularly significant niche in the American psyche: as archetypes, if not always in reality, they are the most hyper-masculine of older men. (Meyer is a youthful 45.) In a culture where the young warrior and the youthful athlete are those with the greatest masculine cachet, gruff generals and taciturn football coaches have the unique privilege of claiming unimpeachable toughness even as they soften and age. The demands of both war and coaching tend to be all-consuming, involving long separation from family — and as we all know, the classic masculine archetype is of the man who chooses a world away from women and domesticity. Think of Hector pushing away Andromache before he goes out to die at Achilles’ hand; think of Gary Cooper in “High Noon”, turning away from new bride Grace Kelly to take on a desperado who threatens his town; heck, think of three-quarters of the movies you’ve ever seen. And think of Urban Meyer, torn between his daughter’s tearful longing for her daddy and his own sense of responsibility, not to his family or to his team, but to a masculine ideal of work and sacrifice that has torn apart Western families for millenia.
And it’s hard not to think of Yeats:
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
Urban Meyer wants, like so many Americans, to imagine that he can have both the perfection of the life and the work; he seems, judging from his mixed messages this weekend, to long to “be there” for his daughter and still be the relentlessly driven coach of the most successful college football team of the past half-decade. Like so many ambitious men, he tells himself “If I just work harder, or pray harder, or learn a new technique, then I can manage to ‘do it all’”. The Greeks knew hubris when they saw it, and the modern manifestation of hubris is the belief so common to so many men that they can live their lives in compartments, keeping everyone happy and winning praise from all. Meyer’s hubris isn’t that different from Tiger’s: both the philandering golfer and the workaholic football coach believed that they could lead double lives with impunity. Tiger’s deception is the more obvious, but Meyer’s — rooted in the tragically mistaken belief that one can serve two masters, ambition and family — is no less destructive to those who love and rely upon him.
I rejoiced when I heard the news on Saturday that Meyer was stepping down: a man putting his health and his relationships ahead of his career, how refreshing! As the father of a daughter, I thought of Meyer’s girls weeping with relief that they were getting their “Dad back”, and I teared up a bit myself. And then came Sunday’s “vanity”, and I thought of his daughters again — and all the rest of us who are the collateral damage of the heroic ideal.
Hope he gets his health issues straightened out and returns to coaching. Meyer is good!
This is great advice. Can you please forward your thoughts to Barack? Sasha and Malia need a better childhood and a father as well.
Some people have to work. There aren’t enough childless folks to carry the burden so that us parents can sit at home.
And at 18, Meyer’s daughter should be looking forward to the start of her own independent life, not whinging that she wants her daddy to be there for her.
Whose is the greater need–a child for a daddy or players for a coach?
Would it be different if the players made their living at the game? How about if not just a sports team but a whole nation needs a leader?
How does the situation of a father who tries to do it all stack up with a mother who tries to do it all?
Is martyrdom a variant of hubris?
Could some variant of the old extended family be made to work or at least help?
What are the limits on what jobs a person with kids ought to take on?
Why aren’t there more people everywhere taking care of the kids?
How much of one’s health issues are caused or worsened by this?
Hugo, Thanks for your blogging through the years, and hope you continue.
For this piece: you’re mistaken that Meyer’s attitudes and actions constitute hubris. That he is actually taking a leave of absence at 45 is abundant evidence he actually has his head screwed on pretty straight. You left out the part of the story where his players broke down and cried when he told them he was leaving. That was a great pull for him as well. Players have testified that football teams become families more than other sports because of the especially brutal and demanding nature of the activities. Football resembles war more than any other American sport, and as we have learned these agonizing past 10 years, warfare brings men together. Meyer took on the responsibility of father to hundreds of young men through the years, many of whom, I expect, did not have strong father figures growing up. On the macro level, college football is a moneymaking superforce that shamefully exploits its workers. But on the micro level, the relationships created in these teams can stay with the players forever. It is not as simple as you make it sound, and in any case, though I agree that Meyer somewhat resembles Hector, Hector was not hubristic. He knew what he was doing, and he knew he was doomed. Hubris is that kind of pride that is unaware of its destructiveness. Let’s reserve that word for people like Dick Cheney.
Oh, Anecdotal, would that we had time to debate Hector further — the hubris of Achilles is so spectacular that it often blinds the reader to the more subtle, but equally devastating presentation of that quality by the Trojan prince.
No question, Meyer did good as a coach — but the reality of how we construct the head coaching position is that it isn’t a regular, 40 hour per week job. It’s a job that regularly requires 18 hour days and endless time away from family.
Hubris includes the belief that one is indispensable, and that one’s talents are so special and so unique that they justify shirking family responsibilities.
The history of American manhood is littered with heroes who were magnificent servants of the greater good — and lousy husbands and fathers. We can do better.
I’m sure we can do better, Hugo - you can always move resources from one area to another, and get better outcomes in the area that got reinforced. What will the cost of doing better be, in the area that you take away time and energy from?
America can probably make it without this one high-end football coach. Can it make it without dedicated doctors, professors, business people, farmers, scientists, truck drivers?