Urban Meyer, Longhorn fan?: "Texas is, I think, the best team in the country"
“No one asked me my vote, but my vote would be Texas No. 1” – Urban Meyer
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Urban Meyer did it again, offering some of the highest praise possible to the No. 4 Texas Longhorns.
Lettermen Row’s Tim May has a longstanding connection with the former Ohio State head coach and regularly discusses all things college football on “Urban’s Take with Tim May.” And this year, Meyer has been no stranger to heaping praise upon the Horns.
Early in the summer, Meyer explained on the same program that “it’s hard to say Texas doesn’t have the best roster in college football.”
In August, Meyer added the following.
On the most recent episode of Urban’s Take, the three-time national championship coach took the accolades to another level after watching the Longhorns defeat the Alabama Crimson Tide in Bryant-Denny Stadium.
“They were really well coached,” Meyer said. “They beat Alabama. It was one of the few games I really got to watch. Alabama tried to keep it close but it really wasn’t close.”
That led him to his estimation that Texas is currently the top team in college football.
“Top to bottom, Texas is, I think, the best team in the country,” Meyer said. “I thought that, going into the season, if they stayed healthy and if they just figured out things — Texas, you can’t go back and say ‘Texas hasn’t had players.’ That’s nonsense. There was something wrong, and whatever was wrong seemed to be figured out.”
Meyer’s praise wasn’t faint, but it still contained a jab at the Longhorn program whose head coaching job he infamously flirted with. He mentioned that Texas has too much going for it to have struggled the way it did in the 2010s, especially considering the recruiting hotbed the program is in the middle of.
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“I started reading up on this Texas outfit and I saw it first hand a year ago versus Alabama,” Meyer said. “It’s too good of a place. At some point, that rock is going to break. It makes no sense. Too good of coaches. Too good of a place. Obviously, players all over the place in the state of Texas. Then, you start looking over this roster and it’s like, ‘wait a minute. These guys are loaded.'”
Meyer hasn’t always been kind to Texas, especially when his former protégé Tom Herman was the head coach in Austin for four years. He blasted Herman for his comments about ‘pixie dust’ following a debut loss versus Maryland in 2017, and at other points during Herman’s time at Texas.
The opportunity for analysis on the Longhorns, whether praise of potshots, wasn’t there in 2021 when Meyer had his ill-fated run with the Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s hard, however, to imagine he wouldn’t have had something to say about Texas’ 5-7 team in 2021.
But since returning to Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff, there’s been plenty of admiration from Meyer for the program Steve Sarkisian has improved steadily year-over-year. It’s a program he’s seen play good football first-hand. Now, it’s a program he considers the best in the land.
With his recent comments and the trajectory the Longhorn football program appears to be on, there does not seem to be any sign of Meyer’s praise slowing down.
