I remember clearly sitting in the audience with my son listening with extreme pride and joy as this new, young, vibrant, articulate, confident, and convincing man named Urban Meyer spoke for the first time to the Broward Gator Club. I attended the first such visit from Ron Zook just a few years earlier, and this time was so different...so exciting...I honestly remember feeling my eyes well up a little when he spoke of the high standards for behavior he demanded, about his demands on his assistant coaches to be involved in the day to day activities and lives of the players, and of course the now infamous top 1% standard. And while our opponents laughed at such comments, we bowed our backs and scoffed at their jealousy.

A year later, he was hoisting the MNC trophy and we were in our glory. Player issues would arise, but so what. Kids will be kids, but our coach knew how to deal with them. Another trophy was won, and the glare from Tebow's aura further outshone the reports of repeated off field issues, failed drug tests, and violated gun laws. Our coach was on it.

What a #badword#ing crock of bull#badword#.

To all the rival posters I ever scoffed at for telling us we were being naive and delusional...you were right and I was wrong. We were sold a bill of goods, and I for one bought the whole collection, lock, stock, and barrel.

It's a good thing this guy we have now is the real deal.

(Meyer recruiting/harboring individuals of questionable character to play a violent sport while getting passed through a facsimile of college) with other dots (grown man in the NFL, years later but still of questionable character and apparently, jawdropping stupidity, implicated in murder) that aren't even tangentially related. 

It seems as if you're intimating that something more substantial than a failed drug test happened while AH was at UF under Meyer's care, something much more substantial, that would not only somehow wait to manifest itself years later after Hernandez's returning to the Northeast and to the problematic element in his surroundings(while at the same time somehow inexorably and directly connecting him to DevilMeyer!), but which would also certainly curl the hair of even the most fervent Meyer supporter.  So what's the bombshell you're sitting on?  Because otherwise, to draw a connection between the Florida football program/leadership circa 2008 and the thuggish behavior FIVE years later of one of its members, long gone and far away in the NFL, is lazy, irresponsible, wrongheaded, simple, and indeed comes across as something a hater or narrowminded rival would say or think.  And with all respect and affection for you, it's far beneath you.

So, if you're blaming Urban Meyer either for Aaron Hernandez's current actions - which of course would be ludicrous - or for covering him and passing him through the University all while apparently somehow knowing that he is the very shadiest of characters, and thereby years later bringing shame and embarrassment on what was prior to that the most sterling of reputations enjoyed by UF.........well,  then i really don't know what to tell ya.

Aaron Hernandez lost his father when he was 16 years old.....and at about the same time, Meyer had a kid he'd jettisoned from the Florida program go and disappear and DIE on him, just a KID, leaving behind only survivors and questions.  Hey, we both know AH only got to UF and stayed there because he can play ball, but i'd like to suggest that perhaps the job of a CFB coach as mentor/caretaker/father figure etc is JUST a little bit more involved and complicated than most of us take for granted.

But if you want to join haters in heaping crap all over UF and our fans and our fandom, or even just Urban Meyer and the ship he ran five years ago, because of one character's senseless actions years later, then have at it.  I don't get it, i don't agree with it, but i'm not going to tell you how to feel. But i'll stand by my Dislike, because such sentiments coming from you

would be one of the most disappointing things i've ever read on the

board.

If, however, your point was to mostly point the finger at yourself for swallowing the whole sale hook, line and sinker and blindly think 'our guy' was the real deal and totally different, well then welcome to adulthood.  I need to talk to you about the Easter Bunny and professional wrestling and Will Muschamp's "Florida Way", but we can take care of that away from the board.

If you think, or ever thought, that Urban Meyer was substantially different from 95% of other major college football coaches, or that he recruited different people than EVERY other school did, or that things did not go on under his watch that would make ALL of our skin crawl, or that those same types of things didn't go on during the prior regime and the one prior to it, and the one that is in place now, then you really are deserving of some good-natured ribbing. And you know i'm always there for ya, buddy.

But if you're suddenly retroactively casting aspersions on Meyer's stewardship of UF football five years ago because of something one of his former players did now, well i just think that's wrong. Rivals and haters are ALWAYS going to look down at your coach, and see the worst in him and the darker shades of gray, and tell you he's a/the bad guy.  And guess what?  We are ALWAYS going to see the better side, and support him, and defend him.  It's what they do...and it's what we do.