Mike Bianchi is one of the most loathed sports columnists in the state of Florida, the kind of bombthrower who shoots first and asks questions later. Owning strong opinions is a requirement for being a columnist, but offering well-calibrated opinions — not just strong ones — separates the better practitioners of the craft from the mediocre ones.
If you polled Floridians about Bianchi, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, you would probably get a more negative reaction to his work when compared against other sports columnists in the Sunshine State. National media outlets have been known to relentlessly expose the shortcomings of Bianchi’s shoot-from-the-hip style. Why? Bianchi makes himself an easy target. He doesn’t just put himself out on a limb on a consistent basis; the limb frequently breaks.
Don’t think coaches or coaches’ wives don’t notice.
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Thursday night, the four coaches in the College Football Playoff happened to gather in Orlando — Bianchi’s home base — for a press conference while the sport handed out its lengthy list of postseason awards. (Side note: The awards show will move to Atlanta next year, in order to originate from the newly-built College Football Hall of Fame.)
Bianchi asked a question which — on the surface — was harmless enough. Coming from his lips and not another’s, however, it was impossible to deny the adversarial nature of the query.
Shelley Meyer, Urban’s wife, made sure to chime in:
https://twitter.com/spinnershells/status/543185464401080322
There’s a history between Bianchi and Meyer. It’s been consistently adversarial, with few secrets hidden, as this August 1 story by Ben Axelrod of Bleacher Report so clearly shows. What stands out about the Bianchi-Meyer feud — and this also applies to Matt Hayes of The Sporting News — is that when anything about Meyer’s Florida tenure resurfaces, the Ohio State coach meets a fresh wave of criticism. Florida and Ohio State fans have been united over the years by Bianchi and Hayes, who have pointedly written about Meyer’s shortcomings in Gainesville so regularly to the point of piling on.
Let’s be clear: Meyer didn’t discipline his players or his situation very well at Florida. Did he deserve criticism at the time? Without question. Was it more than fair of Bianchi and others to rip him to shreds for those mistakes and shortcomings? Absolutely.
What’s tiresome about the continuous pummeling of Meyer by Bianchi is that — get this — Meyer has evolved as a coach and person. (Imagine that — people learning from past mistakes!) A year ago, Meyer suspended Carlos Hyde three games for an offense that other coaches would have allowed to slide. If he deserved to be excoriated for the way he handled player issues at Florida, he’s taken a step forward at Ohio State.
The deep subtext of this Bianchi-Meyer conflict is that Bianchi seems to think Meyer didn’t give his all to Florida — at least not at the very end of his tenure — for reasons that were less than honest. (Axelrod’s story, linked above, unpacks that tension point in great detail. You want to be sure to read it.)
This is where Shelley Meyer comes into the picture.
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Urban’s wife became a particularly public figure late in 2009, when her husband’s health problems became a major national story and discussion point. This piece of news analysis by longtime Florida football chronicler Buddy Martin delves into many of the struggles and wrenching moments Urban and Shelley faced — together, yes, but also in their separate internal worlds. Urban engaged in a lot of flip-flopping back then, but his lack of complete honesty was the outward symptom of a life that had clearly lost balance. Meyer won two national titles at Florida, but the relentless journey to the mountaintop consumed him in a way that threw his life off course. This has been known to happen to athletes and coaches (understatement alert).
Meyer took 2011 off, essentially, spending time as an ESPN game analyst so he could remove himself from the stresses of coaching and mend the ways in which he carried himself. Shelley Meyer surely used this time to ensure that when her husband returned to coaching, he couldn’t do things the way he did at Florida. He had to be more accountable, and he couldn’t allow the beast to devour him.
The past three seasons would certainly suggest that Meyer has lost none of his coaching acumen while gaining a profound new understanding of how to manage his body and his time. Shelley has seen this. She’s reveled in her husband’s triumphs…
… and here’s Mike Bianchi, nipping at Urban’s heels again, insisting on being a confrontational figure for no reason other than he doesn’t like the Ohio State coach.
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No one should be surprised that Shelley Meyer spoke out here — not in light of the history between a columnist and a coach, and not in light of said columnist’s inability to appreciate evolution and change on the part of that coach.
Twitter is not just for creating grudges. As we see in the case of Mike Bianchi versus the Meyers, social media can be used to sustain bitter feuds and remind national or regional audiences of past slights that won’t be forgotten.
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