Urban Meyer denies a report that claimed he met with Penn State for its vacant head coaching job, and the talks broke down because of Meyer’s answers when asked about Name, Image and Likeness.
“Who is this guy again?” Meyer said on the Triple Option Podcast that he co-hosts with Mark Ingram and Rob Stone. “My phone started blowing up.”
“This guy” is Zach Gelb of Audacy.
“The reason why those talks did break down is, when they got to the topic of NIL, which Urban Meyer has never been a head coach during the NIL era, his plan and his answers in terms of navigating those name, image, and likeness waters were not viewed satisfactory enough,” Gelb said Oct. 31. “And that’s ultimately why Penn State is not going to view Urban Meyer as a fit for their program.”
Meyer did confirm that he met with Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, which was hard to deny considering there was photographic evidence.
“You have to give him credit,” Meyer said. “I mean he has two sources that say that I met with the Senator that became… we became friends, Rob, you were there, with Dave McCormick. When we covered a Penn State game, and I stayed in touch with him and we had breakfast in the Capital, and we talked politics, Mark.”
As for the rest of the report, we’ll…
“The source says I had conversations with Penn State about NIL and didn’t know how to handle the NIL,” Meyer said.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.”First of all, that never happened. How do we get the two sources on our show here? Can we invite the two sources?”
Gelb heard Meyer’s denial but maintains his report.
“He had interest in the Penn State job and Penn State rejected him because of NIL,” Gelb said. “That’s what I was told and I will stand by that.”
Gelb then had a proposal for Meyer.
“How about you come into studio, we’ll hook you up to a lie detector test, and I’ll ask you a simple question: were you ever interested in the Penn State job?” Gelb said. “If it’s erroneous, if the report is ridiculous, you should be able to say I wasn’t interested, and the lie detector test person should be able to say that’s right.”
The pros for Penn State hiring Meyer would be obvious: He’s one of the best college coaches of all time, winning three national championships in less than 10 years at two different schools, Florida and Ohio State.
But regardless of whether Meyer ever met with Penn State or if the talks fell apart because of NIL, Meyer hasn’t coached since 2018, years before NIL came into play. So that is something that would be a legitimate question should Meyer return to college coaching.
