You’ve heard of the college professors’ lament, “publish or perish.” Well, we have college football coaches’ “publish AND perish.” The twist is, in the case of Florida’s Urban Meyer, the coach doesn’t do the publishing.
An unidentified football fan, who claims he is a coach, has published Meyer’s highly popular spread offense playbook and sold it this week on eBay.com. Labeled “Urban Meyer Utah and Florida Playbook Package,” it is 130 pages and was listed at $15. On the left of the ad is a diagram of Florida’s “Thunder Shovel Option Right F Back,” whatever that means.
The seller, listed as “latech05,” claims: “I have been a football coach for over 8 seasons” and says he compiled the book “after hours of breaking down game film and installation tapes from games of Urban Meyer’s Offense both when he was at Bowling Green and at Utah from the years 2002-04, and from this past Spring at Florida.”
He obviously didn’t get the book to Louisiana Tech coach Jack Bicknell. The Bulldogs went to Florida on Saturday and got drilled 41-3.
As Meyer told The Florida Times-Union after hearing of the eBay item, “It is as overrated as it can be. I’ll give you one. You’ve still got to defend it and we’ve still got to execute it.”
Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer, who visits Florida on Saturday, learned of it this week and didn’t exactly order it through Federal Express.
“All you’ve got to do,” Fulmer said, “is watch the tape and put together a playbook on us or anybody else.”
