Urban Meyer mocks NCAA vacating wins as a punishment: 'Everyone starts laughing'

The Michigan Wolverines were in the news for some unsavory reasons once again this week, as they announced a two-game suspension for head coach Sherrone Moore, stemming from the sign-stealing case in 2023. It caught former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer‘s attention.

In response to Moore’s suspension and the idea of the NCAA vacating wins in college football, Meyer simply had to laugh. He doesn’t believe vacating wins is a suitable punishment, and the risk versus the reward when it comes to certain forms of cheating in college football is worth it if that’s the only drawback.

“Everyone starts laughing,” Meyer stated, regarding what vacating wins means to the coaching community, via The Triple Option. “Yeah, vacate what wins? Seven years ago, six years ago, four years ago? You know, that has no impact. You know, that’s the risk-reward. You can vacate all the wins you want.

“Now, obviously, that this discussion will come up — you start vacating wins from the national championship season, that’s a problem. But I think Tennessee had some wins vacated, if I remember right. Maybe Arizona State. The teams weren’t very good, so who cares? The risk-reward is in full effect there.

“That means there’s no risk, and a great reward. I guess, if you do the things that they’re doing. So, you hear the word vacated wins, everybody rolls their eyes in college sports.”

Urban Meyer: Lying to the NCAA should end coaching careers

Evidently, Meyer believes in a completely different form of punishment. The national championship-winning coach later made the argument that if a coach lies to the NCAA, they should be banned from coaching. A far cry from simply vacating a couple of wins.

“The NCAA is to blame for a lot of this. Obviously, those who commit the activity, illegal activity, and that’s what it is. Not by law, but according to the laws of the NCAA, and I would come out pretty strong and say that. They said, if you do that, you’re done playing sports. That sport, not for a game, not for two games, not like the marijuana. It used to be marijuana where it was up to the school. This was not up to the school. If you got caught with steroids and performance enhancing drugs, you know what happened? You just went away,” Meyer added. 

“Because the risk reward for an athlete was, don’t do that, or my career is over. If you lie as a college football coach to the NCAA, in my personal opinion, you’re finished. You’re done. That’s not making a text message, that’s not going to lunch with someone you’re not supposed with, all the level three’s and all that nonsense. But when they got you, and they said, ‘did you do this?’ and they refuse to cooperate or they lie — in my very strong opinion, you’re finished coaching in Division I college football.”

Time will tell if the NCAA changes any of their tactics, but it’s evident Urban Meyer believes they’ve been complicit in a lot of cheating. He wants them to bring the hammer down, but whether they do or not remains to be seen.

— On3’s Dan Morrison contributed to this article.