THE URBAN LEGEND: HOW STUPID NOT TO KNOW HE’S A GOTCHA TARGET

Already whiffing as an NFL head coach, Meyer foolishly allowed a young woman to dance near his lap, a hideous lapse in social-media awareness that doesn’t bode well for his Jacksonville future

     In another era, before Steve Jobs and gotcha video-making, Urban Meyer could claim he was trying to show the pony-tailed, halter-topped blonde how to execute a snap from center. Hey, this is where you place your hands. And, sure, keep swinging those hips.

     But fictional deniability isn’t an option in 2021. Meaning, Meyer was captured forevermore with his paws in an inappropriate place as he sat on a barstool and allowed a woman to dance within inches of his lap — all while wife Shelley was at home tending to their grandchildren.

     “Meanwhile, I am babysitting,” she wrote that night alongside photos of the grandkids. Oblivious to his frolicking, Shelley included hashtags: “My choice,” “Mimi rules” and “Buddy deserved a night out.”

     Should this startling lapse in judgment cost Buddy his NFL coaching career? No, not as a singular incident. But if the viral episode impacts his ability to command the respect of his players in his rookie season — already a daunting challenge as the Jacksonville Jaguars stare at an 0-5 start, if not the first 0-17 season in league history — we’ll remember the killer blow as an Oscar Mayer moment that revealed his alarming lack of social media intelligence.

     How does a 57-year-old man expect to teach his players, most more than 30 years younger, about responsible decision-making when he’s foolish enough to let the woman sashay into his crotch region without bothering to — oh, I don’t know — get up and leave immediately? All this does is pile atop a narrative that Meyer continues to feed: He’s a college coach unfit for the NFL, where young men can’t achieve adulthood when the coach is acting like a frat boy on spring break. So much for urging his players not to distract the bigger mission when he has done exactly that, oddly responding to a devastating loss in Cincinnati with a quick escape to nearby Columbus — where he still owns a home and runs a suburban restaurant, Urban Meyer’s Pint House — instead of bonding with his wounded team on the chartered flight back to Florida.

     We could excuse him for trying a publicity stunt, bringing back Tim Tebow for a training-camp hiccup in his hometown. But he was rightly excoriated when he hired and quickly fired strength coach Chris Doyle, who was accused of racist remarks and bullying tactics while at the University of Iowa. And Meyer was reckless when he acknowledged he considered vaccination status when deciding whether to keep or cut a player — a practice that should be kept private to avoid a locker-room rebellion. Now, we have Meyer in a compromising situation that he only wishes were an Urban Legend. His only saving grace is that he owned the video — and apologized, incurring a public reprimand from team owner Shad Khan — instead of claiming he had been hacked.

     “There was a big group next (to) our restaurant and they wanted me to come over and take pictures, and I did," he said. “They were trying to pull me out on the dance floor, screwing around, and I should have left. … Just stupid. I should not have put myself in that position.”

     As a college coach amid the advent and explosion of social media, it’s hard to believe Meyer was that naive when members of ‘’the group’’ first aimed their phones at him and asked the Ohio State legend to pose for photos with women. Not long ago, he’d warned his celebrated rookie quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, about the perils of social media. “I have always been so defensive of them (the players),” he said. “I remember when Trevor told me he was going to go to Vegas for his bachelor party. I was just like, ‘My gosh, man, be careful and surround yourself because I've seen this happen.’ ’’

     Not to psychoanalyze, but if Meyer wanted to withdraw from his early-season NFL nightmare, he figured his triumphant stomping grounds in Columbus were at least convenient. And therapeutic … until they weren’t. In a failing operation that begs for steady leadership, this was the last news the players — and Khan, who gambled on Meyer amid widespread doubts throughout the sport — needed as the Jaguars gathered after a long weekend and began preparations for Likely Loss No. 5 against the Tennessee Titans.

     “The team, I spoke to a bunch of leaders one-on-one, spoke to all the players. They're good,’’ Meyer said. “They're focused on Tennessee. I apologized for being a distraction. A coach should not be a distraction."

     Does he not realize why people in the public eye, in entertainment and sports, routinely avoid bars and even restaurants? That way, you thwart some miserable loser from trying to jazz up his meaningless life by photo-stalking a celebrity. On a much smaller level, I dealt with this creepery during the peak run of ESPN’s “Around The Horn,’’ when my 1,700 appearances over eight years made me a national target. All sorts of photos were taken and posted, most meaningless, but that didn’t stop rogue websites from trying to claim I was stinking drunk (because I had a beer in my hand) or passed out (when I was laying down at a friend’s place).

     Then came the morning when a crap site reported I’d been in a bar brawl, prompting an ESPN producer to put that day’s “Around The Horn’’ appearance on hold until he contacted the bar. The bar owner said I had not been at his establishment, no fight had taken place, and that he had no idea who I was. I taped the show, as always, but the crap site ignored my attorney’s request for a retraction — I am a public figure, after all, legally helpless against published lies. Some time later, while leaving an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, I was chased across Canon Drive by someone claiming to work for TMZ. Only now, a decade out of the wacko mainstream, am I left alone in Los Angeles, where sports media generally have the buzz appeal of plumbers.

     If I am aware of the dangers, why wasn’t Urban Meyer? That’s what his players must be wondering. “I am concerned about that,’’ he said Monday. “Yeah, I am concerned, but I’ve just got to do right."

     How is that possible when he doesn’t know right from wrong?

     Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he has gravitated by osmosis to film projects.