As of today, the retirement age for college football coaches is 46. The pressure is that overwhelming. The time demands are that great. The money can be made that quickly.
That's what Urban Meyer is telling us by retiring for the second and presumably final time in less than a year from the head football coaching job at the University of Florida. Six years, including two national championships, have been just about enough time on the sidelines in Gainesville for Meyer, one of the most intense, focused and driven men in a profession filled with nothing but the intense, focused and driven.
"At this time in my life, I appreciate the sacrifices my 24/7 profession has demanded of me, and I know it is time to put my focus on my family and life away from the field," he said in a statement Wednesday. "After spending more than two decades motivating and celebrating the young men I've been so proud to coach, I relish the opportunity to cheer for my three terrific kids as they compete in their own respective sports."
Who can blame a guy for wanting to exchange watching other people's kids play sports for watching his own? Especially when he said the demands of college coaching forced him, incredibly enough, to miss both of his daughters' entire high school volleyball careers.
"I have not seen my two girls play high school sports," he said in a news conference Wednesday evening at the University of Florida. "I've missed two years of my daughter's college (volleyball at Georgia Tech). I was blessed with a family that never missed anything … I can't get that time back."
Hearing that, you begin to wonder why he didn't quit a couple of years ago.
But he's going to make amends now, Florida athletics director Jeremy Foley said. "He wants to spend more time with his family (in addition to his two daughters, he has a younger son) … When all is said and done, he loves us, he loves the Gators, he loves football, he loves his players, but his world revolves around his family. I think more than anything else that was the impetus for this."
There are other parts of the retirement equation for Meyer. You don't walk away from a job that's paying you $4 million a year unless you can do without the $4 million a year, and by all accounts, Meyer and his family are set financially, at least for the time being.
Then there's his health, which concerned him so much last year that he decided to retire the day after Christmas, then unretire within 24 hours. He committed to a healthier lifestyle and found out the chest pains he had been experiencing were not related to his heart, but were esophageal spasms, for which he has been taking medicine.
"It's so much different than it was a year ago," Foley said. "He went through some tremendous issues a year ago. But I see his face now and I see the peacefulness. He's totally at peace with the decision. He certainly has given every fiber of his body to this university. I've seen it every day. The results speak for themselves, but to get those results, how do they happen? That guy has given everything he had to this university."
This year has been difficult for Meyer's Gators, his worst in six seasons at Florida. The Gators were a disappointing 7-5, including a 31-7 regular season-ending loss to archrival Florida State. Tim Tebow, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback with whom Meyer was particularly close, left for the NFL, and things have not been the same since for the Gators' spread-option offense.
Meyer's last game, fittingly enough, will be played in the Outback Bowl New Year's Day against Penn State and 83-year-old Joe Paterno. Meyer has now retired twice in a year while Paterno hasn't done it once in 45 years.
It's probably safe to say the future of college football, with the win-at-all-costs pressure and those eye-popping salaries, will give us far more Urban Meyers and no more Joe Paternos. Who ever would have thought that between the two, the coach retiring after the bowl game would be Meyer?
Now it?s a question of whether Meyer goes to the beach or the booth, or perhaps a little of both. It?s difficult to imagine such a driven man spending the rest of his years reading by the shore. The TV booth certainly will beckon, and that makes sense, allowing him to spend plenty of time in the stands watching his kids play their sports.
It?s difficult to imagine that we have seen the last of Urban Meyer, that he?ll never coach again, although for this one day at least, that was exactly what he was saying.
?At the end of the day,? he said at his news conference, ?I?m very convinced that you?re judged as a father and husband.?
He didn?t mention the word coach.