Sunday diversion into one of the meccas of college football, but not why you think

making progress, pilgrim?
I long ago gave up on college football as a source for entertainment, not merely because my alma mater was more famous in my day for losing football (not in my day as bad as this 1994-2000 streak, but still) and radical sports programs but because it has become an ugly tail on the “education” dog. Without going the obvious PSU route, let’s just say that the sociology of BCS World is fascinating.

You know that I find it easy to ridicule; this is not one of those rants. Instead of ranting (in addition to …?), here is why I am going to root for the new Ohio State University head football coach this year: Urban Meyer faced a crisis (a series, really) and has very publicly committed to things that will improve his family life and his health if he can meet his commitments; no doubt, he will get spit out of The System if his team does not succeed on the scoreboard, so I am necessarily (but secondarily) also interested in the scoreboard.

If you are a college football fan, you already know the outline of the story. If not, ESPN has a wonderful piece that lays out the first few acts: small success, leads to big success, leads to anti-social anti-family Type A behaviors, leads to health and family crises, and leads to the next act(s), to be determined. The charm of the piece is the extreme sharing of the extreme behaviors and their extreme impact on his family, with the explicit warning well understood by him and his family that he may not be able to change in the ways he has promised. It seems clear that if he does not change he may still succeed on OSU’s scoreboard yet he will then, very likely, lose his family.

Heady stuff, even in a Facebook saturated TMI world.

You read lots of success-breeds-stress-breeds-epiphanies stories these days, with endings either happy, or not. This one is a rare mid-point story, with an ending to be determined. It is easy to overlook how hard the journeys and lessons are when you already know if they have worked or not. In a year or three or seven, Meyer may know if he has been able to avoid being That Guy again, or he may long since have crashed and burned his health and his family. All possible endings are still possible endings, and what may later look like endings may just be more middles.

Life’s a mess that way. The Meyer family’s lives have been a mess that way. My life has been a mess that way. We’re all just poor, wayfaring strangers.

avoiding the obvious injustices seems mandatory, for now
I am not going to extend in this post my misgivings about college football, about how Meyer would never have been offered this OSU position if he had not previously been an obnoxiously over-committed coach who won Mythical National Championships, or about whether the people who work for him now will get the same opportunities to (try to) balance their football and family lives. Those are difficult and legitimate issues, but the wonder is that anyone in his position is so publicly committed to doing (some) things right and so publicly on record as fearing that he may not succeed.

I will worry about the other people at another time (almost certainly not in another post, so fear not!). Shelley, Nicki, Gigi and Nate Meyer are no more deserving of a happy family than anyone else, but I am rooting.

I doubt there will be this level of follow-up on the family scoreboard, but here’s hoping.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012