Urban meyer 2025 NFF COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME CLASS

urban meyer

By Matt Fortuna

Urban Meyer wasn't even a teenager yet, but the intensity of the moment spoke to him. His father, Bud, was a Cincinnati graduate who would take him to Nippert Stadium for Bearcats games. One game, Urban looked down and saw a Wichita State assistant with a whiteboard, passionately getting his message across to his players. That coach was Bill Parcells. And Urban Meyer found his calling.

"I just stopped, and I looked at my father and said, I want to do that someday," Meyer said. "From that point forward I knew that I wanted to be a coach."

Meyer did that and much more, turning around four different programs and winning national titles at two of them en route to a College Football Hall of Fame career.

"My father would say: 'I don't care about your ACT score, how fast you are, how tall you are, how strong you are, but I got a simple question for you. It's a simple question with a complicated answer: Are you the hardest-working guy on your team?'" Meyer said. "And then when I became a coach, he'd say the same thing: 'Are you the hardest-working coach out there?' And I wasn't as honest as I could be with him, because I'd always say yes, but in my heart, I probably knew I wasn't.

"And then when it became where I really believed I was, it was one of those cathartic moments where you could say, Yeah, Dad, I am. I am the hardest-working guy out there. Because I really believed if I wasn't, that was a problem. So, it was Earle Bruce, my father, Lou Holtz and Sonny Lubick - those were the guys that really shaped me as a young coach."

Sporting a 187-32 career record across 17 seasons as a head coach, Meyer's . 853 career winning percentage trails just fellow Hall of Famers Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy.

In 2001, Meyer took over a Bowling Green program that had gone 2-9 the previous year. He went 17-6 in two seasons, including a 3-0 mark against BCS opponents in his first year. He then went to Utah and took the Utes to even further heights, going 22-2 in two seasons and becoming the original BCS Buster, leading the program to the Fiesta Bowl and a perfect 2004 season.

"I fell in love with the community, " Meyer said of BGSU. "And the average attendance went from very small to very large. And yeah, we were good. We started winning. But that town is a magnet. I mean, the people there, it's Midwest USA. It's the most friendly people. Obviously, there's not a ton of resources. But what they don't have in resources they have in people, as far as quality people. And I loved every second of that."

Meyer's Utah experience was similar.

"That was probably my greatest experience in coaching," he said. "We had low expectations and incredible talent."

At Florida, Meyer went 65-15 across six seasons, winning national titles in the 2006 and '08 seasons. He returned to the sidelines at Ohio State in 2012, immediately lifting the Buckeyes to a 12-0 season. Meyer went 83-9 in seven seasons in Columbus, winning the first College Football Playoff national championship in the 2014 season. The Buckeyes won three Big Ten titles, went 7-0 against rival Michigan and posted an NCAA-record 30-game conference winning streak under Meyer.

He has no shortage of great memories, but that first national title at Florida forever holds a special place in his heart.

"I'm always the half-empty guy during the game, and we're winning pretty good and everyone's celebrating, I'm kind of ripping them to say, It's not over yet," Meyer said. "And then Percy Harvin gets that (last) first down, and I remember I looked at the clock, two minutes left or something - it's over.

It's like someone cut your heels off, and every ounce of pressure just released through your body. Like, it's over. We just won the national title, and so I'll never forget that one."

Now an analyst on Fox, Meyer has had the pleasure of seeing two of his quarterbacks get inducted into the Hall of Fame recently in Tim Tebow (2023) and Alex Smith (2024).

He received the news about his own induction shortly before Ohio State won the national title in January, marking a full-circle moment for a coach who remains deeply connected to the program.

"You always want to make sure you leave a program in better shape than when you took over, the legacy piece," Meyer said. "When I met coach (Ryan) Day and hired him, I knew at age 55 I wanted to go live a life and move on, and I was trying to find that right successor. Everyone was envious of the way Coach (Bob) Stoops did it, where he handed it off to Lincoln Riley and no one loses a job, and you just keep going. And that's exactly what happened when I found Ryan."