Following Chris Rainey‘s arrest earlier in the week on an aggravated stalking charge, the focus has once again shifted to the less-than-stellar off-field record of the Florida Gators under head coach Urban Meyer.
Rainey’s arrest was the 30th of the Meyer Era, a fact chronicled in great detail over the last couple of days. So much so, in fact, that it seems as if the numerical rallying cry for Gator detractors is no longer “30" but rather “16.2", which represents the percentage of Meyer’s Gators who have been arrested the past five years.
Speaking at length for the first time since the latest arrest, Meyer indicated that he’s grown weary -- and seemed exasperated -- over the number of off-field incidents.
“I’m real upset about that,” Meyer said. “After a while, enough’s enough. If there’s something we can improve on, we’re certainly looking into that. It’s like if our graduation rate stinks, then we’ve got to improve that. If there’s other issues in the program, that’s our job to get it better. People making stupid mistakes - that’s something we’ve got to correct.
“We follow the rules and some guys make some mistakes and we’ve got to correct those mistakes, but we follow the rules, we do it the right way at Florida. We have to do a better job of correcting some of the people making mistakes.”
Meyer did bristle at the perception some people have that he’s in charge of a rogue program.
“I don’t care,” Meyer said of the criticism that’s come his program’s way. “We do our best to win games. Dirty program? It’s not a dirty program. We follow the rules and some guys make some mistakes and we gotta correct those mistakes. We follow the rules and we do it the right way at Florida and we have to do a better job of correcting some of the people making mistakes.”
As for Rainey’s status with the team, Meyer couldn’t say when or even if the receiver would return.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s not on the team.”
It’d be very easy to say boot Rainey in order to teach others a lesson, but Meyer has taken that tack in the past and it hasn’t seemed to stop or even slow the steady stream of incidents.
It’s obvious, though, that Meyer needs to do something different as the arrest record could start -- if it hasn’t already -- overshadowing the won/loss record he’s compiled in Gainesville. Especially now that Tim Tebow and his saintly visage are no longer around to garner a spotlight that may have otherwise been cast upon the legal issues that occurred during his time in Gainesville.
