College Football is Better off Without Urban Meyer | ONE AND DUNN

Show of hands, folks. Raise 'em up high if you're sitting here lamenting that we're six weeks into the college football season and Urban Meyer is no longer patrolling the sideline. Any sideline.

(I'll wait. Take your time. In fact, I'm gonna make a freaking avocado BLT while you deliberate.)

No, from Salt Lake City to Gainesville to Columbus, not a single fan, booster, or administrator is sitting around bemoaning the fact that Urban Meyer left their programs and is now back on television and teaching a few classes in between.

In so many ways, college football isn't simply doing just fine without Urban Meyer-- it's better off.

And it must be said that Urban Meyer is better off without college football, too. Because football nearly killed him.

Meyer is a vestige of what hastily and mercifully became a bygone era. The ridiculous win-at-all-costs pressure that saw Meyer downplay notable misdeeds from guys like Percy Harvin (and, it must be said, Aaron Hernandez) while running the show at Florida doesn't fly anymore. It can't. This is a man who featured DJ Durkin -- who later watched a player die under his watch at Maryland -- and a sick domestic abuser in Zach Smith on his former coaching staffs.

This is a man whose health nearly failed him for good because the job was squeezing the very life out of him under a mountain's worth of demands and scrutiny.

Ohio State is rip-roaring under Ryan Day, undefeated and in line for another Big Ten title and a possible College Football Playoff run. Florida is likewise unblemished, and while far from perfect, they're on track for their best season since Meyer led them to a 13-1 mark in 2009. Hell, even Utah is ranked 15th and has achieved historic levels of stability under Kyle Whittingham, their winningest coach in the modern era.

None of these fan bases is pining for years gone by. They'd be crazy to do so.

For Meyer, health has to come first. He's a husband and the father of three children, after all. But ultimately, nobody should miss his presence inside the game because he just isn't a sympathetic figure. Really, he never was. If anything, he was a cruel maniac utterly consumed by his profession.

Yes, when football is concerned, the guy is amoral on his best days-- look no further than his uproarious mismanagement of the Buckeyes' Zach Smith scandal. Nobody ever mistook him for the kind of affable back-slapper fans and reporters love to follow. There was always that puritanical midwestern edge about him. Steely. Stern. If not prickly, then distant.

And now, we're free of him. The game is free of him. And he's free of the game.

If he has any sense or sensibility anymore, he'll keep it that way.