Urban Meyer tells story of how Mack Brown helped him in his first year at Florida

Few coaches have had as many ups and downs as Urban Meyer over the years. He’s won national titles and stepped away from the game briefly over health concerns.

But before he had won any of his three national championships, Meyer was wound pretty tightly. That drive for perfection was part of what made him such an elite coach. It also nearly wrecked his health.

On an episode of The Triple Option podcast, Urban Meyer and the crew had on former Texas and North Carolina coach Mack Brown. In the process, they revealed an early story from Meyer’s coaching career that made a world of difference.

Mack Brown was the voice of reason. Meyer explained, thanking Brown on the show.

“You’re known throughout the profession as just a genuine, sincere and good friend. And you were to me,” Meyer told Brown. “So I took the job at Florida ’05 and we had great success at Bowling Green, great success at Utah. Then I step into that different planet now, the SEC. We lose to Alabama and we lose at Alabama, at LSU. And Mack, I get a phone call like on a Sunday night. He watched a press conference, and it looked like someone beat me with a bat.”

Urban Meyer famously teared up during that post-game press conference and it was viral enough moment that Brown saw it. He recognized the look.

“I’m walking and my cell phone rings, I don’t recognize the number,” Meyer said. “I don’t answer and I get a text message, ‘Hey, it’s Mack Brown, give me a call.’ Never met Mack Brown. And I answer the phone and I’ll let Mack take it, but basically he said, ‘Hey, it’s Mack Brown. How you doing?’ And I gave the standard, ‘I’m good, everything’s great, everything’s fine.’ He said, ‘No, honestly, how you doing brother?’

“And I said, ‘Really? Not good. I’m six feet under already, man, and I’ve only been here a couple months.’ And he walked and talked me through the things he went through in this profession, that other coaches have gone through, ways to handle the stress, the perfection, the fanbase.”

The call helped Meyer through a trying time. A year later, he’d win his first national championship with the Gators. But he never forgot the lesson.

“And Mack, to this day, I called Marcus Freeman, I’ve called… when I see that same look on a coaches’ face, because of you I pick that phone up and I call them,” Meyer said. “And I want to tell you thanks for doing that.”

Brown beamed as he heard that from Urban Meyer. Clearly his gesture had meant a lot to another coach in the profession.

The longtime coach, who recently retired, opened up on how he became that guy in the profession. He had help from other legendary coaches who showed him the way.

“I had the Joe Paternos, Bobby Bowdens, coach (Darrell) Royal, Bo Schembechler, Lou Holtz… those guys would call me,” Brown said. “And I would text or call them and they’d call me right back. I would say, ‘I’m in trouble, how do you handle this?’ And they would hit me. And I thought that that’s my role now. My role as an older coach is to help younger coaches. And I’m not going to call unless I respect the guy. I loved what you were doing.”

That Urban Meyer has continued to take that kind of action, providing useful guidance for younger coaches, says a lot. It’s a carrying on of a tradition that helps the entire sport get to a better place.

That means a lot. Brown was happy to hear the story from Meyer.

“I think that’s what we do. You and I are at a point in our careers where we’ve had a good run, we’ve had a lot of fun,” Brown told Meyer. “We’ve done some things we liked, we’ve done some things we would have done differently. And what a gift to be able to tell a young coach, ‘I wouldn’t do that, and here’s why I wouldn’t do it. I tried that in 1972 and it didn’t fly, and here’s why it didn’t fly and it sure wouldn’t fly now.’ So that’s fun for me, and I appreciate you saying that. It was an honor for me for you to take the call.”