Urban Meyer, Insufferable Prick and Hypocrite

From our friends over at The Big Lead:

The Florida Gators lost their second consecutive SEC game to LSU last weekend. Not coincidentally, head coach Urban Meyer decided Chris “Time to Die Bitch” Rainey had done his penance for texting his girlfriend a death threat. He has been reinstated. I could shake my head and attribute this to Meyer being just another ball coach, if he wasn’t such an insufferable hypocrite.


Meyer has perpetuated an ethos since he became Gators coach. Florida is the school of Tebow. They don’t just recruit talent. They recruit for character. This is Meyer from a profile by Stewart Mandel in 2006.

“I always like to ask a female at the school — a secretary, or someone coming down the hall,” said Meyer. “It’s important a kid has respect for women. And they [the women] will tell you the truth.”

“We won’t offer a kid unless we’re sure he’s a good kid,” said Meyer.

Meyer has had 30 of his Florida players arrested since those statements. That number is only the players who were caught. Either these comments were complete bullshit or Urban Meyer is sanctioning such an outlandish den of iniquity it is corrupting every fresh-faced innocent who arrives there. Either way, Meyer comes off poorly.

There are youthful indiscretions and there are malicious acts. You don’t learn from the latter. They are obviously wrong to anyone with a moral barometer. Urban Meyer isn’t teaching Rainey a lesson. He’s keeping him out long enough to satisfy the media. With their second SEC loss, the cost of keeping Chris Rainey off the field outweighed the PR benefit.

The sad thing is Meyer’s cynicism is the appropriate attitude in college football. No one besides Gregg Doyel cares how Florida wins as long as they win. Cam Newton stole a laptop. His punishment was sitting out from D-I for a year and becoming a Heisman candidate at another school.

Football players aren’t necessarily bad guys, but bad guys who play college football get away with it. Urban Meyer will be ripped for playing Rainey, but far less than if he lost to Mississippi State. His crime is pretending to have values.

Point the Finger at Yourself, LeBron

This is by Jason Whitlock. I love Jason Whitlock:

Send this column to LeBron James’ black enablers and sycophants, the men and women circling the racial wagons around King James in hopes of being invited to his South Beach parties, the men and women determined to cripple LeBron the way they once crippled Michael Vick.

LeBron James is not an innovator.

He is not the first athlete to create a business and give jobs to his unqualified friends.

Deion Sanders jumped from Super Bowl contender to Super Bowl contender.

Magic Johnson fired Paul Westhead.

Curt Flood and Oscar Robertson are the fathers of free agency.

Please, let’s stop with all the nonsense that white folks are uncomfortable with LeBron because he’s “taken control of his career.”

Give me a &*%$ing break. The rationalization is as tired and lame as listening to Limbaugh defenders claim his black call screener is proof Rush is free of bias.

With his self-aggrandizing, narcissistic one-hour TV exit – The Decision – LeBron James ruined his public image, not racism. LeBron inflicted more damage to his image Wednesday night when he told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien that race is a factor in the public backlash against him since The Decision.

In an attempt to justify his asinine statement and gain favor with The King, LeBron’s enablers launched a counter offensive. Rather than deal with the real catalyst for the LeBron backlash – The Decision – we heard talk about how troubled some white folks were by LeBron deciding on his own to take his talents to South Beach.

Are you kidding me? Shaquille O’Neal has played for damn near half the NBA. Shaq bolted Orlando and took his talents to Hollywood without turning off most of America.

Quiet down.

LeBron James can't talk his way into popularity again. Mark Kriegel's advice is just shut up.

LeBron’s exit was disgraceful. It pissed people off. It painted LeBron as an uncaring boob. I’m sure that some bigots used The Decision as an excuse to air racist comments toward LeBron on Twitter or through e-mail.

No doubt, bigots – of any color – don’t need much of an excuse to flash their stupidity. But that doesn’t mean the backlash against LeBron is racist.

The truth is, LeBron James and his kiddie corps of handlers are no threat to the power structure. None.

They’re not Muhammad Ali and Elijah Muhammad telling the government the Viet Cong never called me nigger. They’re not John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising black fists on the medal stand. Hell, they’re not Barry Bonds chasing down Babe Ruth’s greatest-slugger-of-all-time legacy.

LeBron James and his business partner/friend Maverick Carter are two spoiled kids, drunk on fame and privilege and clueless about how to maximize and utilize the power they have.

I’m speculating, but my hunch is many white folks feel sorry for James. They wish he’d open his mind to mature advice. They hope The Decision isn’t an indication James is going to have a Kobe Bryant-, Lindsay Lohan-, Tiger Woods-child-celebrity fall from grace.

LeBron’s enablers are providing him the racial cocoon of denial. They’re giving LeBron an excuse to avoid dealing with his own bad (The) Decision.

Racism exists. It touches the lives of millionaire black athletes, too. I was at ground zero when it was fashionable for the national white media (and the public) to pretend that Barry Bonds invented steroids. I was one of the first journalists to call out the Duke lacrosse prosecutor for succumbing to the black racism that tried to lynch white college kids on the word of a black hooker.

I don’t leave home without my race card. I hate it when people throw it around to cover their shortcomings.

On Thursday, LeBron told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols that people were looking too deep into his CNN comments, but he stands by what he (and Maverick Carter) said. He’s playing the race-is-a-factor-in-everything card, which is true. But that’s not what he and Carter implied on CNN. They implied that people have a problem with James and his handling of his free-agency situation because his skin is black.

Outside of Cleveland, no one cares or cared that LeBron left. No one could understand why he left in such a classless manner. It’s not like he claimed that Cavs owner Dan Gilbert did him dirty behind the scenes or Cleveland fans mistreated his family the entire time he represented the city.

LeBron pissed on Cleveland because he could and because he apparently doesn’t know any better. Well, people don’t like self-absorbed bullies. So America is taking a dump on LeBron.

Claiming racism might win LeBron the respect of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the folks at ESPN who concocted and participated in The Decision, but all it does in the rest of America is once again illustrate that Team James is in over its head.

LeBron blew a perfect opportunity to say, “Man, I screwed up the way I left Cleveland, and I regret the animosity it created. It’s a mistake I’ve learned from.”

Maverick Carter half-heartedly acknowledged this when he said “the execution could’ve been better.”

Just admit you were dead wrong and apologize. The people unwilling to accept your apology and move on are the people who have a problem with your skin color.

The rest of us are just tired of seeing athletes do dumb (stuff).