Written by The saga of Urban Meyer and the Jacksonville Jaguars continues, even four months after he was fired. This is now my third article at Culture in Sports where I specifically discuss Urban Meyer’s toxic and abusive behavior, his unwillingness to change, and why he still believes that his downfall was due to fragile athletes and coaches. I can only feel incredibly sad for the athletes, assistant coaches, and support staff that were adversely impacted by Urban Meyer and the Jacksonville Jaguars front office.
During my doctoral research, I found too many stories and research papers about abusive, narcissistic, toxic, controlling, and psychopathic leaders and organizations that enabled their behavior. In my own research phase, I surveyed over 1100 people and interviewed over 30 people who were adversely impacted by these toxic managers, coaches, executives, and owners. Every single interview and survey response mirrored the stories out of the Jaguars locker room and on the field. Urban Meyer truly believed that “threats are what motivates”, constant intimidation, targeting individual athletes and coaches, breaking people down, treating athletes and coaches like they were dumb, and shifting blame for anything that he did wrong.
Unfortunately, Urban Meyer is just one of many coaches and executives that truly believe that their psychopathic and abusive treatment of others is warranted. They will continue to abuse, threaten, and intimidate others until there is a spotlight on the organization where they feel that they must do something to quiet people. And normally the organization will back the toxic coach or executive instead of doing the right thing. The Jacksonville Jaguars were more afraid of legal issues with Urban Meyer than the people that he abused. Make no mistake about it, Urban Meyer was abusive to athletes and coaches.
If you had someone like Urban Meyer in your organization, what would you do? If you were one of his athletes or assistant coaches, would you allow someone like Urban Meyer to abuse those on your team? These are some questions to reflect on when you are thinking about your organization, program, or team. What type of culture do you want in your team?