During his year-long sabbatical from college football following his retirement from the University of Florida in 2011, Urban Meyer worked as an on-air personality for ESPN. Now that Meyer has decided to call it a career once again after his time with Ohio State, the national title-winning coach is on the verge of heading back to the airwaves.
According to a report by Michael McCarthy of the Sporting News, Meyer, who stepped down at the conclusion of this season, is on the verge of agreeing to a deal with Fox Sports for the 2019 season. It’s unclear what Meyer’s role would be and how it would impact the various commitments he has to Ohio State next year, but as one source told McCarthy, this is an aggressive move by Fox with the hopes of catching up to ESPN, long considered the kings of college football broadcasting.
“Fox feels like they have enough good (college football) games now to really compete with ESPN,” McCarthy’s source said. “If this comes off, the question is: Does he call games or work the studio?”
Fox certainly gets some of the sport’s marquee matchups — this year, it hosted a number of highly-anticipated regular season games along with the Pac-12 and Big Ten title games. Meyer does bring a big name to the network as a broadcaster, and as we saw during his stint on ESPN, he’s comfortable on television.
There’s an easy joke to be made about Meyer doing this for a year and heading back into coach because, uh, that exact thing has happened before. But of course, time will tell if that’s his plan or if he’s going to stick with the Fox Sports team for a long time.
