Colin Sheridan: The myth of Urban Meyer got him to the NFL. Then his troubles really began

When it comes to sports in the US, the cult of the coach is everything.

Urban Meyer was sacked from his coaching role with the Jacksonville Jaguars after a miserable start to the season

Mon, 20 Dec, 2021 - 08:41

Colin Sheridan is a writer and columnist. A former officer in the Irish Defence Forces he has extensive deployment experience as a peacekeeper with the United Nations, having lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

IF you’d never heard of Urban Meyer, you might think it was the name of a cocktail (can you fix me an Urban Meyer?), or even a moniker for a medical condition like Gilmore’s Groin (he’s laid low with a dose of the Urban Meyers).

After last week, his name could easily become a byword for either of those things. Who Urban Meyer actually is — or was — is the recently fired head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, the worst American Football team in the NFL. He was fired, the team’s owner said Friday, because the team was so bad, and Meyer was offering no coherent courses of action to redress the pervasive uselessness of the franchise.