Urban Meyer is one of the best coaches in college football history. Many people know him for being the head coach at Florida, where he won two National Championships with quarterback Tim Tebow, and then moved on to Ohio State, where he won another title with third-string quarterback Cardale Jones, making him a household name in the sport. But before he became an elite head coach, he spent time as a wide receiver coach at Notre Dame. While there, he was accused of offering players cash to come to South Bend.
B.J. Johnson Accused Urban Meyer Of Offering Him Money To Play At Notre Dame
In 2000, B.J. Johnson was a highly recruited wide receiver from high school and chose to play his college football at Texas. However, while he was still being recruited, he was suddenly offered cash from Meyer to come to Notre Dame.
Johnson was on the podcast On Texas Football and mentioned a story about Meyer locking him in a room at his high school and asking how much money he wanted that would get him to go to Notre Dame.
Here is the quote from the podcast by MATT GALATZAN from Longhorns County.
“Hell, Urban Meyer locked me in an office in my school, and no bullsh*t, asked me straight up,” Johnson said during the interview. “He was like, ‘BJ. How much?’ And this was when he was at Notre Dame at the time. And, it caught me off guard because I just thought we (were) talking football. And he was like, ‘Nah, how much?’ So, it’s been going on.”
Who knows how true the story is? It happened almost 25 years ago, and Johnson never went to Notre Dame, so he never got money from Meyer and the Fighting Irish program, so this is probably nothing. With Meyer not even being a coach in college football anymore and college players allowed to make money off NIL deals, I’m sure the NCAA won’t go out of its way to investigate this story.
I’m sure there are many stories of players back in the day who were in the same position as Johnson and were recruited by coaches who offered them money, so you might be hearing more players come out and tell stories they had from other coaches and programs.
6 Comments
Why not have a picture of Meyer at Notre Dame in your headline? This article has nothing to do with Ohio State.
Lots of players were paid, it just wasn’t publicized. Do I have any proof, no but this is not a big story.
Of course the NCAA would not investigate this, he is not accusing Michigan. If he was, you would be screaming for sanctions!
‘The existence of the impermissible scheme is proven’
The Big Ten made it clear to Michigan that there was no doubt that a scheme was in place to gather signs from opposing teams via in-person scouting.
“As described below, the existence of the impermissible scheme is proven,” the Big Ten said. “While other investigatory bodies continue to develop additional evidence of the scope, extent and individual knowledge of the scheme that may advise additional or enhanced penalties in the future, taking immediate action is appropriate and necessary under the Conference’s Sportsmanship Policy.”
The Big Ten also said that it had no information yet that Harbaugh “was aware of the impermissible nature of the sign-stealing scheme.” Remember, it’s not against NCAA rules to steal signs. In-person scouting — whether to steal signs or find out something else — is against NCAA rules.
You can read the Big Ten’s entire letter here.
NCAA president personally called Big Ten and Michigan
The conference said that NCAA president Charlie Baker “disclosed to both the conference and the university that it had received highly credible evidence of a wide-ranging, multi-year in-person off campus scouting scheme orchestrated by a noncoaching staff member of the University’s football program.”
The Big Ten said there were ‘several extraordinary aspects” of the call, which came a day before Yahoo Sports revealed there was an NCAA investigation into alleged in-person sign stealing in the Michigan football program.
Is this true or just sour grapes. ? There is no proof,no investigation at the time. Sure that it was going on everywhere if one school did it, they all did it.
Boy, we better dig up Bo and Woody and and get the real story from them. 😆