Urban Meyer names college football teams on the brink of embarrassment

Urban Meyer reveals these two college football powerhouses are on the verge of complete disaster... Or are they?

It's going to go one way or the other for these two college football blue bloods, and it's up to them which path they take. | Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Last week’s college football action saw two of the more surprising upsets involving highly-ranked playoff hopefuls that fell out of the rankings, and now both teams are on the verge of complete disaster, coach-turned-analyst Urban Meyer has warned.

Preseason No. 1 Texas dropped a close game at unranked Florida as the 9th ranked team in the country, and then-No. 7 Penn State was upset by then-winless UCLA, each getting voted out of the poll with two losses and seemingly afterthoughts still early in the year.

Urban Meyer's warning

Urban Meyer believes what happens immediately after that experience could define what happens to both programs, one way or another.

“This is going to go one of two ways. It’s not going to be a medium. They’re either going to fall off a cliff and it’s going to be an embarrassment for both places, or they’ll fight back,” Meyer said on The Triple Option podcast.

In the age of an expanded College Football Playoff, merely losing two games is no longer a death sentence for a team’s national championship hopes.

But the nature of these teams’ most recent losses, especially amid lingering and serious questions around offensive quality control, have seriously damaged the reputations of both Texas and Penn State as we play deeper into October.

It starts with the players

Meyer doesn’t know how the teams will respond to their newfound struggles, but whatever happens will start in the locker room.

“Ohio State lost a horrific game against the Wolverines last year and they had some grown men in the locker room flip it and turn it around,” he said.

“You saw Florida State two years ago have an awful locker room and as a result, they were an embarrassment to their school.”

Penn State certainly has some veterans hanging around the locker room among that cohort of returning offensive stars, in particular. But it also had the worst loss.

“The players said we’re going to come back, we have unfinished business. There’s a bunch of dudes, both those tailbacks could be playing the NFL right now, and they said, ‘We’re coming back,’” Meyer said of Penn State’s returning talent. 

But, he added: “...And as a result, they got on a plane and that was the first time in 40 years, 45 years the Big Ten Network told me, that a team in the top 10 lost to an 0-4 team. Think about that.”

What comes next?

Now comes the hard part of regrouping from that loss and using the rest of the season to try to convince a skeptical selection committee that they deserve consideration.

The same goes for Texas, which debuted in the No. 1 position in the AP poll for the first time ever, but has failed to get anywhere near the production it hoped it would from quarterback Arch Manning, the former No. 1 overall recruit.

Instead, the narrative around Manning is that of questionable mechanics, faulty decision-making, and accuracy concerns. And a 3-2 record.

So, which of the two ways will Penn State and Texas ultimately go? Off the proverbial cliff?

“I don’t think it will happen,” Meyer said. “I’m guessing at the end of the year, it’ll be eight, nine wins for each of these teams and they’ll go to some bowl game and try to go again.”

Not quite what either program expected after such lofty preseason expectations, but at least it’s not a cliff.

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