Urban Meyer calls out report claiming he wanted NFL to suspend Jim Harbaugh

Former National Championship-winning head coach Urban Meyer began trending on social media Thursday morning when FootballScoop.com published a story titled “Urban Meyer wants the NFL to suspend Jim Harbaugh for Michigan violations”. This took a quote from the latest edition of “The Triple Option,” in which Meyer compared Jim Harbaugh‘s punishment to Jim Tressel‘s punishment following Tatoo-Gate in 2010.

“There’s an elephant in the room here that no one’s talking about,” Meyer said on the podcast. “When Jim Tressel was fired by Ohio State and he was given a suspension. Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the National Football League, came out and said that we’re going to honor that suspension. (Tressel) went to the Indianapolis Colts to work in the replay room. The Colts, because of the respect they had for the NCAA and the suspension, suspended Jim Tressel, so he was unable to perform his duties for the first six games of the year.”

When looking at the quote thoroughly, however, Meyer never claimed that he wanted the NFL to suspend Jim Harbaugh from his position with the Los Angeles Chargers. Meyer cleared the air on his true feelings on the situation during Thursday afternoon’s edition of The Herd with Colin Cowherd, where he called out the media for twisting his words.

“Yeah, a friend sent me that quote and I’ve never said that,” Meyer said. “That was a typical media guy saying that. On the podcast, we talked about the penalty and I brought up when Jim Tressel was fired from Ohio State. He got suspended six games and went on to be suspended by the Indianapolis Colts.

“Did I say that Jim should be suspended by the NFL? No, of course not. I didn’t say that. It was made clear that the NFL wanted to respect the decisions made by the NCAA, but to answer the question, I’ve never said that, but that’s typical. Someone’s gonna put something in a headline here. That was never said.”

After listening to the podcast, it seems like Michigan may have gotten off a little too easily in Meyer’s estimation although he did indeed never state that Harbaugh should be suspended by the NFL. His co-host, Rob Stone, agreed, following up with a scathing critique of the NCAA.

“We know the NCAA is toothless at this point,” Stone said. “They’re not here to dole out punishment. This was kind of their last hurrah. They could’ve come down hard on Michigan. If you’re a Michigan fan, they’re like, ‘Thank you. We just paid $20 million for a national title.’ Every damn day they would do that.”

As of Thursday afternoon, the story claiming that Meyer has called for Harbaugh’s suspension is still public.