Urban Meyer: “Check under the Hood”

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So many of us are excuse makers, that’s just part of who we are and it shouldn’t be that way. When you see a team struggle, the first thing that the fans and the media blame are the players and then they blame the coaches.”

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Never make excuses. When I was a coach, I would never let one of my coaches say, ‘He’s a bad player.’ I would warn him, ‘Say that again and you’ll probably have to leave,” because now you’re just making excuses. Dig deep and find out why.” “Every time that I have had a team struggle, every time, it has fallen into one of three categories; number one, there is some sort of trust issue. The player don’t trust the coach, or the coach doesn’t trust the players, or, often when the players don’t trust each other.” “Number two, it’s called a dysfunctional work environment. Where the expectations are really high, but we don’t work hard. The coach has to be really clear with his team and realize that is going to lead to frustration, anger, disappointment, because we want to win a championship, but I’ve got news guys…we’re not working hard. Your work ethic must exceed or equate your expectations.”

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The third one is “You’ve got a selfish team, man…Football is an unselfish sport. You’ve got to do the nasty; that means as a running back you have to go protect your quarterback, you don’t always get to carry the ball. Sometimes you have to run down and cover the kickoff at 22 miles per hour, throw yourself into someone running the other way at 15 miles per hour. That’s not fun. Why would you do that? Because you love your team and your teammates.” “So when you hear teams like LSU, Penn State, and the Wolverines struggling, stop with the talk about bad players. I get so sick of hearing that. It’s not the players. I don’t think it’s the coaches. But there is something wrong. Lift the hood and find out one of those three things.”

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