On one hand, Urban Meyer has college football's ultimate goodwill ambassador. The King of Do the Right Thing.
He is Tim Tebow, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who managed to squeeze in nine holes of golf with his coach Tuesday after his work in the Philippines, where Tebow helped circumcise young boys in need of the surgery, and preaching to hundreds of inmates in a Gainesville prison and a visit to Croatia for more missionary work.
TEBOW THE REAL DEAL
'Every once in a while I ask him, `Are you going to throw some footballs this summer to give us a chance to win?' '' Meyer said before a speaking at a Gator Club of Miami event Wednesday at Jungle Island. 'Tim is a completely devout Christian, and his life completely revolves around it. He plays football because it gives him a platform to help people. In today's day and age of being cynical and `Do you really believe it?' everything about him is real.''
On the other hand, Meyer has -- or, more accurately, he had -- a player who committed the most disturbing, heartless, atrocious act in this year's round of offseason transgressions. It is the kind of act that strengthens that collective cynicism of which Meyer speaks.
Last week, Jamar Hornsby turned himself in on charges he used a dead woman's credit card.
A woman who reportedly was his friend. A woman who died tragically in the same accident that killed one of Hornsby's teammates. And he allegedly kept using it. Reportedly more than 70 times, spending nearly $3,000 (Hornsby's major, by the way, was social and behavioral sciences, which would make for quite the irony if his story ends up in a textbook one day).
AN IMAGE PROBLEM
Hornsby was immediately kicked off the team, but the damage had been done to the image of a football program whose coach preaches character and whose star quarterback preaches for a living.
Hornsby's arrest made major headlines for its callous and cold-hearted nature, drawing nearly as much interest as Tebow's work in the Philippines.
And let's be honest: If Tebow were helping to provide vaccines instead of performing the most delicate of surgeries, his work would have gotten far less attention than that of Hornsby, a former star recruit who had become little more than a special-teams contributor.
It is the kind of event that reminds coaches just how close to powerless they are in monitoring more than 100 student-
athletes. The cynics will say coaches promote character while on the recruiting trail but place the quality well below 40-yard-dash times and high school statistics.
Meyer said it is getting harder for him to properly measure character.
''The NCAA is pulling us off the recruiting process,'' he said. ``I'm not allowed to go out [to visit players] anymore. I'm not allowed to text message. I'm trying to find out as best I can. You just keep re-evaluating.
``If you just look around and see some of the things that are going on, it's amazing. It's concerning. It's alarming. So we take a great deal of time and effort in trying to educate guys, work with them and recruit character. Are we perfect? Absolutely not.''
He's hardly alone.
Just in this state, Florida State receiver Preston Parker was arrested last month and charged with carrying a concealed .45-caliber handgun and possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana. Then there are the noncriminal issues that are less serious but just as disconcerting for a coach trying to maintain a proper program. Daron Rose, FSU's starting left tackle, was deemed academically ineligible for next season. Florida freshman Matt Patchan caught a bullet in the shoulder in a random shooting while at a park near Tampa. Central Florida cornerback Johnell Neal was injured during a shooting in his hometown of Baton Rouge, La. (notice no University of Miami players are listed, yet as soon as one is, the ''Thug U'' label will be all the rage again. Go figure).
All a coach can do is continue to sermonize on how heavily the good outweighs the troubling.
''It's a shame that one person had to steal away from what the other 104 guys are doing,'' Meyer said. ``We had the highest GPA in University of Florida football history. We had 58 [players] that had over a 3.0.''
Unfortunately, school grades will never get the attention low-grade felonies do. And it would take an act of Congress, which wouldn't really be that surprising these days, or at least an act of Roger Goodell to legitimately decrease the number of college football players who find themselves in serious legal trouble every year.
So a coach like Meyer has to discuss the Jamar Hornsbys of the world just minutes before he is about to tell a gathering of supporters just how great the University of Florida is.
It helps, then, that Meyer can distract even the most cynical with talks of Tebow -- even if he might have to use the word ''circumcise'' and try not to squirm.
''He walks the walk and he talks the talk,'' Meyer said of Tebow. ``It's phenomenal.''
Image repair is a little easier with him around.
