The University of Florida Gators football team, under the tutelage of their young head coach Urban Meyer, beat the No. 5 ranked Tennessee Volunteers 16-7 Saturday night.
It's hard to believe it, but it's 2005 and Urban Meyer, in his 50th game as a college football head coach, beat the first top-five team of his career.
Four short years ago he was beginning his head coaching career at a very laughable program in northwest Ohio. And I was starting college.
The Bowling Green football team had little hope in the '90s. Under head coach Gary Blackney, the Falcons suffered through a spell of six straight losing seasons, the icing on the cake a 2-9 campaign in 2000.
2001:Going into his first season, little was known about Meyer. His previous gig was coaching wide receivers at Notre Dame during the Bob Davie era.
As his first game as head coach, Meyer and his Falcons went on the road to a Big 12 conference team, won and never looked back. That 20-13 victory over Missouri set the tone for his coaching career up to this point.
I remember listening to that BG/Mizzou game on campus radio as a freshman. I was surprised to hear that we had won, because I know Missouri was a very solid team. I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe our football team will be good after all." After all, all I had known was that the BG team wasn't that good.
But they were more than good.
In the wake of September 11, their game against nationally-ranked South Carolina was cancelled and a make-up game was scheduled with the high-scoring Northwestern Wildcats. Again, this was another game I listened to on the radio.
It looked grim at the end, with BG trailing the potent Wildcat team 45-32 with two minutes remaining, and Northwestern controlled the ball near BG's 20 yard line. But NW fumbled and BG, operating in mayday mode, moved the ball under Urban's spread offense and scored a touchdown in less than a minute (59 seconds, matter of fact).
An extra point would have tied the game. at 42-42 But Meyer seemed to realize that Northwestern was a more talented team with more energy for an overtime. The coach called in for the two-point conversion play. And they got it. Bowling Green upset Northwestern 43-42 and knocked them out of bowl contention.
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Article comments
1 - Joel
I can't get any love for breaking the Meyer-to-UTah story?
Damn.
2 - Matthew T. Sussman
That's old news, Hammond.