It is Wednesday afternoon of a vacation week and I have Mom and Dad's taxes done. I am on pace to finish our taxes this afternoon, but I have to take a break to write this now.
I am listening to Urban Meyer being interviewed on ESPNRadio and it reminds me of an interview he did some weeks ago on Mike & Mike in the Morning on ESPNRadio. They asked him why he is not coaching. We know about his health problems which he discussed but he brought up another issue which I had heard only a little about before then, but now he covered it with some detail and I hope I can remember this correctly.
Urban and his wife have three children, two daughters and a son. Both his daughters are/were women's volleyball Division I college student/athletes. I don't recall which one, but I believe it is his second daughter who was the subject of his story. Her day for her official signing ceremony to sign her college letter-of-intent for her athletic scholarship had arrived and Urban was at his office as the head football coach of the University of Florida not intending to be at the ceremony. He was convinced to leave the campus and go to the ceremony by a secretary who said he had to be there for his daughter.
He arrived just in time to see his daughter sign on the dotted line and address those in attendance. He said that she thanked her mother in several ways for always being there to watch all her volleyball matches and for being there for her whenever she needed her and said how much she loved her mother for that. Then she said one sentence about Urban. She said that she loved her father too because she knows he would have been there for her too if he could have.
Urban told Mike and Mike that hearing those words from the mouth of his own daughter was like a dagger through his heart. He began to question what he was doing with his life and why he was working 100+ hours a week and missing his children growing up.
I think his lesson is one that all of us need to hear and remember.
