College football won't learn a thing from Urban Meyer's spectacular NFL failure | Estes

Now that the ridiculousness in Jacksonville has reached its inevitable conclusion and Urban Meyer is unemployed after his spectacular failure as an NFL coach, I have a question. Two of them, actually.

Not about what happened with the Jaguars. I grasp that. We all should by now.

No, I’m wondering: How was this man so successful in college football for so long?

And will college football learn anything from Meyer's failure?

(OK, on that second question, I know the answer. Of course, it won’t.)

The NFL took stock of Meyer and spit out him immediately. This has tainted his reputation only so much as it’ll keep him from coaching pros again. But college? Please.

No matter what’s being said today, I guarantee plenty of school presidents, athletics directors and football fans across this land awoke Thursday morning and viewed Meyer’s firing not with consternation but inspiration:

Urban Meyer is available.

I'll bet that Meyer will be back. If he wants another college coaching job, he’ll get one. At a big-time program, too, and it might not even take that long.

It’s a well-worn storyline that a good college coach does not guarantee a good NFL coach — and vice versa. That was proven true long before Meyer was calling people losers in Jacksonville.

But his downfall is different from those before him. Meyer wasn’t fired by the Jaguars because he lost games. It was more that he lost his mind, not to mention his team’s respect and his owner’s trust. What would be the next embarrassment? This wasn’t a football problem. It was behavioral.

How is it that standards of decency have become higher in the NFL — where coaches oversee grown men — than in college football? Perceived character flaws that quickly disqualified Meyer from the NFL were barely a speed bump in his wildly successful stints in college, where for 17 seasons he carried a greater moral responsibility, helping teenagers grow into men.

That should be troubling to those running college athletics, but it won’t be.

Individuals in college football operate with dignity and standards, but as a whole, their industry has zero shame. It hasn’t for some time. Too much money at stake, and here’s a little secret: The people who end up earning the most tend to be jerks. Like most industries, they didn’t get to the top by being nice.

College leadership should be about so much more than in the NFL. At the professional level, this truly is a business in which nothing else matters but winning.

But that has become a truer statement about big-time college football.

For all you can say about Meyer, he won a whole lot in college. Six winning seasons and two national titles at Florida. Seven winning seasons and a title at Ohio State. A record of 187-32 for a crisp college win percentage of 85.3%.

I’d assume you couldn’t do all that by being the clownish figure painted in this Jacksonville mess.

But maybe you can.

Note the lack of people rushing to defend Meyer. Not just among the Jaguars. From Florida and Ohio State, too.

The NFL didn’t create Meyer’s flaws. It exposed them. It revealed, after all these years, that he was a deficient leader, a hypocrite who lacked self-awareness and dodged the accountability he demanded of everyone who worked for him. Perhaps even worse, he comes off as a bully who deemed people losers and felt justified in physically kicking one of his players on the practice field, as Josh Lambo told the Tampa Bay Times.

Seriously? Was Meyer doing that sort of thing in Gainesville and Columbus, too?

If he was, then either no one cared or — far more likely — Meyer was so powerful that no one could raise any objection to him, publicly or privately. College football emboldens despotic rulers. Meyer was obviously accustomed to being one. 

Yet in Jacksonville, Meyer was losing. He'd also become so unpopular within his own organization that, basically, a coup was conducted to help get rid of him. Without sports journalists and in-house leaks and Lambo going public, Meyer would likely still be coaching the Jaguars. 

Because, I mean, he’s Urban Meyer. This great coach. A winner.

The NFL knew better.

Something tells me, however, that college football hasn't learned a thing.

Reach Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.