NCAA Football

Urban Meyer Wants To Protect His Team From “Internet People, Scumbags”

Florida Gators football coach Urban Meyer has closed practices to the public, and told the Palm Beach Post that he wants to protect his team from “internet people and scumbags.”

In addition to web-based boogeymen, Meyer wants to keep agents and autograph hounds at bay.

“When I tell my colleagues that you get dressed, you walk across and people just maul you and bother you and internet people grabbing helmets, ‘Sign this,’ and we don’t have security saying, ‘Get the heck out of here.’ You’ll see a lot more ‘get the heck out of here’ from now on and let the kids go practice and concentrate on football.”

Meyer, if you’ll recall, doesn’t have the greatest working relationship with bloggers. In March, he got into a verbal confrontation with Orlando Sentinel reporter Jeremy Fowler, accusing Fowler of misquoting one of his players.

Will Meyer’s strategy of keeping web reporters out of Gators practices work? Of course not. Lumping internet reporters in with scummy agent types will only widen the chasm between Meyer and this cross-section of media, especially when many of said internet reporters are employed by mainstream media outlets.

Also: crab people.