Urban Meyer: Utah Is Not A Good Place, It’s A Great Place
Jul 16, 2020, 5:06 PM
University of Utah head coach Urban Meyer yells at his players during a game against BYU November 20, 2004 at Rice Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)
(Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – In two short years as the head coach of the Utah football program, Urban Meyer quickly grew to love the state of Utah and Salt Lake City.
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Meyer reflected on his time at Utah and simply summed it up.
“Utah is not a good place. It’s a great place and the one thing about Salt Lake City, there’s a lot of transient communities that means that people are in or out. – I don’t want to tell other communities because it’s not my business – but I’ve been places but the one thing about the University of Utah, a lot of generations live there,” Meyer told KSL Sports.
Listen to Meyer’s full interview on the Crimson Corner podcast, below.
Building Utah’s Fan Base
When Urban Meyer arrived at Utah, he had to work on building the fan base to what we see today which is a packed Rice-Eccles Stadium.
“So, the Utah Utes, it’s a very powerful fan base,” Meyer stated. “I know they were kind of untapped for a while other than Rick Majerus in basketball, and I kept hearing that Utah’s a commuter school and you can’t do this and you can’t do that. So, my butt, we get up at 4:30 in the morning to ride the Trax. I did it every weekend for a couple months. I would give away tickets to the spring game and sing the fight song – no one knew the Utah man – I’ll bring a cheerleader, bring a mascot, bring a player and just try to really create some enthusiasm.”
Meyer went through great lengths to build the fan base to what it is today.
.@CoachUrbanMeyer woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday's and rode Trax to get fans to come to the spring football game.
Catch the full interview with Urban Meyer on the Crimson Corner w/ @TrevorASports.
🎧https://t.co/BUHY4TTERZ pic.twitter.com/AHHBmFi5By
— KSL Sports (@kslsports) July 16, 2020
Utah Has All Tools To Be Dominant Program
Meyer turned the program over to Kyle Whittingham at the end of the 2004 season and left Whittingham with a lot of pieces to continue the success of the program. The only challenge that Meyer faced when he was at Utah was the amount of very talented players the state had to recruit from.
So Utah should be good. If there’s one minor, it’s the high school football there is not enough great players. There’s very good players, but the quality of players outstanding quantities, not there. So you have to go into California. Other than that, you have everything you need to be a dominant program.”
Trevor Allen is a Utah Utes Insider for sports.ksl.com and host of the Crimson Corner podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorASports. You can download and listen to the podcast, here.
