During the 2009 season, Urban Meyer began wasting away. The former minor league baseball player dropped from 217 pounds to 180.
“I would get sick — physically ill,” Meyer said for a piece on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” that debuted this week. “What could I have done better? It was my fault we lost this game. I didn’t cover that in practice. … I thought I was dying. Mentally, I was broke.”
The amazing part: Meyer’s Florida Gators went 13-1 that season.
“I was addicted to winning,” Meyer said on the show.
After being hospitalized for chest pains, he quit, un-quit and then quit for real after the 2010 season, opting for the broadcast booth. Now he’s at Ohio State, like someone who’s afraid of heights taking a job cleaning windows at the John Hancock Center.
Asked Tuesday how he now manages stress, Meyer replied, “When I leave, I actually leave-leave.”
Yes, leave it to an obsessive football coach to invent a new term: leave-leave.
What does that mean?
“There was a time I’d get away where if a top recruit (needed attention), I’d be on the phone or right back (at work) the next day,” he said. “Now when I get away, I do. I shut ‘er down.”
Dave Wannstedt got away entirely. After bouncing from the Bears to the Dolphins to the University of Pittsburgh to two more NFL jobs, he left coaching to join the broadcast booth with Fox Sports 1 and the Big Ten Network.
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His stress came from clashing with his boss, Pitt athletic director Steve Pedersen, rather than his team’s performance. The Panthers went 26-12 (15-6 in conference games) in his final three seasons.
“The guys that last a long time in this profession, guys like Chuck Noll and Don Shula, all had some type of faith in their life,” he said. “They were all grounded. So many things happen that you don’t have control over. You have to keep it in perspective; otherwise, it will drive you crazy.”
As he spoke on a land line, Wannstedt’s cellphone went off. The ring tone: “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
“I told my wife and kids, it might not be quantity of time, but it will be quality,” Wannstedt said. “Make that an emphasis.”
Indiana’s Kevin Wilson and Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald agree that family time is the key.
“One of the least stressful things is game day,” said Wilson, whose Hoosiers stunned Missouri on Saturday. “I get revved up, but I don’t think I get stressed out. My previous bosses, (Bob) Stoops and (Randy) Walker, were very good about including family in so many things — practice, meals, travel. You don’t need to go golfing or goof off as long as you have some good family time.”
Fitzgerald carries on Walker’s tradition of a Thursday “date night” for NU coaches. He said wife Stacy is sometimes “all over” him to quit messaging recruits if they’re at a sporting event involving one of their three boys. But sometimes, he said, he is able to unplug.
“If I’m home, I’m home,” he said. “I’ll make my recruiting calls before I go home or I will make them at home after the boys go to bed. If we go on vacation in the summer, you get up early and send a direct message before the kids wake up. So you have to manage your time.”
And marry well.
“I’m blessed to have an incredible partner,” he said. “She is the No. 1-rated mom in America … and a lot stronger than I am. Her life is incredibly hectic … from being disciplinarian, chauffeur, room mom, on the board of the grade-school football team.
“The wives in our profession allow us to do what we do, and that’s how I’m inspired. I leave before my kids are up and come home when they’re asleep.”
Technology also helps.
“Last night I tucked my kids into bed with FaceTime,” he said. “The home front is non-negotiable. I’m going to get fired as a coach before I get fired as a husband and a father.”
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein