Shelley always said, “Daddy’s climbing a mountain.” His children often asked why they kept moving. The survivors, and their coaches, were underdogs, united. Purging the weak, he locked teams inside a gym with nothing but bleating whistles and trash cans for their puke, forcing the unworthy to quit. He lost 15 pounds during every season as the head coach at Bowling Green and at Utah, unable to eat or shave, rethinking things as fundamental as the punt. Urban embraced his dad’s unforgiving expectations, finding a profession that allowed him to re-create the world of Bud Meyer: the joy of teaching, the lens of competition, the mentoring, the pushing - the black and white… Some boys rebel against demanding fathers. His whole life had been unintentionally preparing him to coach after baseball, he played college football at Cincinnati, and the stern men in whistles seemed familiar. Not only did Urban finish the season, he told that story to every freshman class he recruited. Just call your mom on Christmas, he advised. The Braves drafted Urban after his senior year, and when he tried to quit minor league baseball, realizing he wasn’t good enough, Bud told him he no longer would be welcome in their home. …A chemical engineer, Bud enjoyed Latin and advanced mathematics, but when his son struck out looking in high school, he made him run home from the game. Urban grew up in a house free of contradiction. Stay focused on the future reflection is weakness wrapped in nostalgia. His father, Bud : Hard work solves every problem. He romanticized the experience in later years, when the SEC’s recruiting wars got too dirty, he waxed about the Big Ten, where it was always 1986, which was just another way of hoping he could look in the mirror and see his younger, more idealistic self. As a 22-year-old graduate assistant for the Buckeyes, right up the road from his hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio, each day brought something new. Like any man who destroys himself running for a finish line that doesn’t exist, Meyer often longed for the time and place where that race began: Columbus, 1986. arbiter of (impossible standards of) approval that would almost be laughable if they weren’t so damaging, ht TT: The article begins with a textbook description of father as lawgiver, i.e. All have fallen short of the glory of Saban, as it were. Or, you might say, it only takes prisoners. As Meyer’s tale so vividly illustrates, it doesn’t matter who we are, how determined or gifted we may be, the burden of perfection (you must win, win, win and never stop winning) takes no prisoners. (Just one of many reasons that sports are such a fertile, er, field for illustrations of judgment and love). The -ism comes in when the outcome of a game becomes more than a verdict on relative ability but on the people involved, period. The piece paints a stark portrait of “performancism,” i.e., what it looks like when one’s self-worth is synonymous with one’s achievements, when failure is not an option–in theological language what’s known as “works righteousness.” Of course, performance is a necessary and important part of competitive sports–if there were no winners or losers they’d be pretty boring/pointless. I’m referring to the jaw-dropping story by Wright Thompson about (in)famous Ohio State coach Urban Meyer that ESPN Magazine ran in August. It is easily the most powerful account of Law and Grace I’ve read this year, not to mention a touching look at father-son relationships. Even if, like me, you don’t know much about college football.
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