Urban Meyer addresses how he handled stress throughout coaching career

Be it at Utah, Florida or Ohio State, Urban Meyer was never a paragon of detached calm on the sidelines during games. Looking back on it, he knows he didn’t manage stress well.

Discussing the ins and outs and demands of coaching on “Urban’s Take with Tim May,” the former head coach dished on how he wasn’t good at that aspect of coaching. For him, there were not days off.

“When I was a head coach Tim, I never took a day off. I never — now there was times we’d go away for three days, maybe four days. But I never one time took a day off. And that means I would get up in the morning. And I had my routine of recruiting. You know when you’re supposed to get away? I never got away. I was there,” Meyer said, alluding to mentally being back at the football facility.

The stress at certain points got to Meyer in a physical fashion, resulting in headaches during his tenure at Ohio State, among other manifestations.

And Meyer noted the stress didn’t just eat at him once he got to the big time.

“Well I didn’t handle it well. Some coaches, they kind of water off the ducks backs, I heard, or something like that. I tried. I tried everything for my entire career. That wasn’t just Florida. That was Bowling Green. I remember we lost to Miami (OH) and Ben Roethlisberger one time and I swear I didn’t think the sun was going to come up the next day,” Meyer said. “I stayed up all night just trying to figure out what happened. How did we — and it’s Bowling Green vs. Miami (OH).”

He ultimately thinks it’s the sort of thing that, when not managed well, will come back and bite one unless they walk away, like Meyer did. He would try to sequester some time to spend away with family, but he never quite managed to do it.

He was always — always — burning to keep working, keep gaining a competitive edge. And the fix, it seems, was backing off entirely.

“I would try to discipline myself to be with family, etc. etc. but that was one of the reasons why — I hate to use the word burnout — but that’s one of the reasons why, when you’re burning that hot constantly, at some point you’ve gotta let it go. And I’m glad I was able to do that,” Meyer said.