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Flowergate: Urban Meyer's floral bouquets for football players would not be a good fit for Notre Dame Football
Feb 13, 2009
On senior day in Gainesville, under the doe-eyed gaze of Florida Head Coach Urban Meyer, quasi-pastel orange- and blue-clad Florida football players trotting onto the grid-iron were handed ... bouqets of flowers. Some were injured, in street clothes and jerseys, some hugging Meyer while still holding their flowers. Others were in full pads, some with their flowers and their football helmet in the same hand. One could be seen charging forward aggressivley with head down, perhaps in old-style football running form, albeit with bouquet of flowers in hand.
Amidst the late-season non-stories about coaching transition speculation at Notre Dame -- never actually even claiming to have a basis in fact -- the name Urban Meyer popped up.
Urban Meyer himself was caught, at a later point, saying that Notre Dame was still his dream job, but saying that, incredibly, it was the matter of his children that prompted him to stay put. In other words, he apparently wants his children to get Florida degrees rathen the Notre Dame degrees, and to go to high school in Florida rather than northern Indiana.
For a few years now, the myth has been sustained in some quarters that Notre Dame wanted Meyer, whose coaching experience consisted largely of a few years at Utah, a few years at Bowling Green, and a stint as a Notre Dame assistant, over Notre Dame Head Coach Charlie Weis, who had four Super Bowl rings and several decades of coaching experience at the NFL, college, and high school levels.
The University of Notre Dame has indicated that they never even made an offer to Meyer.
Flowergate, the spectacle of football players in full pads being handed bouqets on a football field as if they were female opera singers, helps contribute to the notion that Meyer does not really fit the Notre Dame tradition.
[click here ... for a webpage featuring photographic evidence of Florida men with the aggrieving flower bouquets
to see more, click here and browse multiple photos across multiple gallery pages
The first few photos appear to be of injured players not in full pads, some hugging Meyer with flowers in hand. Later pages also feature the jaw-dropping spectacle of players in full pads with flowers, some with flowers and helmet in the same hand.]
In addition to the fact that, after waiting for years to get a cutting-edge NFL offense at Notre Dame, it would represent back-sliding to reintroduce whatever form of option offense Meyer is running, the notion of football players with flower bouquets just doesn't fit Father Sorin's university, or the House that Rockne Built.
To be fair, even as Utah was de facto nation champion, Florida was still named mythical national champion in a few polls, one of which was contractually obligated to do so. But it would not be unrealistic to say that Florida's unofficial "title" in some of the polls is more than undone by the flower fiasco.
To put is simply -- nothing's worth the flowers.
And Florida's floral reputation just does not fit what a real football player should be looking for. Why would any real recruit want to end up in that kind of un-football environment? Why would a parent want their young man wrapped into that kind of thinking?
Now, this year's bouquets did look a little smaller than the previous year's. So perhaps after a multi-loss Florida team got pummeled by a mediocre Michigan team in last year's bowl game, somebody decided to scale back at least the magnitude of the Florida Flower Power.
Not long ago, of all people, Meyer had his name float into news coverage relating to Notre Dame football. To be fair, during the Bob Davie era, and part of the Lou Holtz era, Meyer was once a Notre Dame assistant.
And he has gained heightened prominence by, in spite a loss to Ole Miss, backing his way into a bowl game that had a contract with one of the unofficial polls to have the winner of that bowl named that poll's mythical "national champion."
But between the flowers and the goofy taunting before last year's bowl game with Michigan (Florida players pranced up and down like they were on pogo sticks), it probably is the case that, without changes, Meyer would not really fit the tradition at Notre Dame.
True, Notre Dame has seen its own share of post-modern curiosities in its football program in recent years. There are, for example, reports of yoga. And there was a report of at least one perfectly healthy young man going to a psychologist, a so-called "sports psychologist."
Perhaps even more curious than the yoga, after going 0-5 last year, and securing a single win against an ailing UCLA team, the head coach himself reportedly visited a "sports psychologist" to preempt the prospect of some fanciful, left-wing jargon dubbed "relief syndrome." Apparently at 1-5 the big concern was that the team might rest on its laurels. And apparently pseudo-intellectuals have some tender-sounding jargon for that, to legitimize talking about it and paying a therapist.
To put that in perspective, consider what happened when Knute Rockne thought his worst-performing team was theoretically in danger of ending up with a losing record.
Rockne challenged them to go out and beat the toughest team in the land. He did so reminiscing about the greatest all-around player to ever play the game ... on his death-bed ... telling "Rock" to have the team "go out and win one for the ol' Gipper."
In constrast ... last year at 1-5, the choice was to go to a "sports psychologist" to reflect about "relief syndrome."
Perhaps the playing surface for football will no longer be known as "turf" or "the grid-iron." Maybe someone, perhaps in the so-called Ivy League Athletic Conference, will do a study to help build awareness about player self-esteem, and suggest that the name of the playing surface should now be more welcoming and comforting, like "fulfillment meadow."
The last thing Notre Dame is ready for is flower bouquets for football players, pastel-clad or otherwise, or football players hopping up and down like prancing pogo sticks. Nobody needs the Fighting Irish to become the Flowery Irish, or the next Florida Flower Children.
But let's gather some more perspective.
The first time Notre Dame won a consensus national championship in football, they started solidifying their run with a win in the Bronx over then-national juggernaut Army. Their performance under a blue-gray October sky prompted a New York sportswriter to compare the Notre Dame backfield to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse -- war, famine, pestilence, and death.
Earlier that same year, the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan took over the state of Indiana, and held a big Klan rally in downtown South Bend. The then-all-male Notre Dame student body went downtown, roughed up the Klan, and stole their robes. The next day, the student body prepared to march on Klan headquarters. The Priest who was the president of the university had Rockne come out with him to help address the students, to convince them to go back to campus, and stop beating up the Klan.
Now, nobody wants to see students have a rumble with extremist groups.
But still, soak up a little perspective.
When the Notre Dame men who beat up the Klan went back to campus, do you suppose their next move was to pick out lilies and baby's breath for the football team?
In any event, unless Urban "Flowers-Sunshine-and-Hugs" Meyer exhibits a change of attitude, the idea that years down the line he ever might be a dream coach for the Fighting Irish is just not realistic. And right now the Fighting Irish need a little less yoga, and a little more Fight in their Irish. And definitely not flower bouquets.
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