Urban Meyer’s Wife Encouraged Him To Look At Utah Job In 2003
Jul 19, 2020, 4:20 PM | Updated: 4:22 pm
Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer poses for a photo with his family while celebrating the victory during the Rose Bowl Game between the Washington Huskies and the Ohio State Buckeyes on January 01, 2019, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. Ohio State defeated Washington 28-23. (Photo by Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Photo by Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – When Urban Meyer started receiving offers from multiple schools, he decided on Utah after his wife encouraged him to look at potentially going to Salt Lake City.
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Meyer finished his second season with Bowling Green, his first head coaching job. He led the program to a 17-6 record in two seasons.
The rising star in the coaching profession wasn’t really planning on leaving Bowling Green until his wife told him to take a look at the Utah program.
“Well, we lived in Fort Collins, Colorado for six years and my wife loved it, I loved it,” Meyer told KSL Sports. “Greatest climate to this day, Colorado and Utah are great places to live. We won at Bowling Green and I started getting a lot of phone calls about job opportunities. Obviously, Shelley (Urban’s wife) and I are very close and I would share them with her, ones that maybe we would have interested in. I really was going to stay at Bowling Green unless the right one came along. She (Shelley) said ‘will you go please take a look at Utah?'”
Listen to Meyer’s full interview on the Crimson Corner podcast, below.
Visit On Campus
Meyer took his wife’s advice and visited the Utah campus and the Salt Lake City community. He talked about his experience on campus.
“I remember Ron McBride, I just had great respect for him. I just remember Salt Lake City but I really had no idea until I got out there and really looked around,” Meyer said. “So I talked to Chris Hill and Dr. (Bernie) Machen at an airport, they brought me back out. It was the Burbidge Center that sold me. I went through the Burbidge Center. I was at Colorado State and Colorado State was the best team in Mountain West at the time. I know for a fact they had facilities in Colorado that were nothing close to Salt Lake City and University of Utah.”
.@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
Exploring Salt Lake City
After Meyer was done visiting campus, he requested a car so he could drive around Salt Lake City. That drive ultimately sold him on becoming the next head coach on the Utah football program.
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“I stayed the night and I just drove around. I asked for a car and I drove around and I went up on that ridge that overlooks Salt Lake City and I just remember staring at all the lights saying ‘how can we not get 50 or 60, 55,000 people in that stadium with all these people here, we can do this. That’s what I decided, I called Shelly and said, ‘I think we’re gonna do this.’ She said ‘let’s go.'”
Meyer went on to lose just two games as the head coach of the Utes before moving on to Florida and Ohio State where he won three National Championships as a head coach.
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.
