1/5/2024 0 Comments Gigi meyer escoeSmith helps the Florida coaches break down opponents’ tendencies on film, a job like the one Meyer had 20 seasons ago. Meyer asked Escoe to get their father an empty ring box for his 75th birthday last month he included a note saying he would fill it with either a Southeastern Conference title ring or a national title ring.īruce’s grandson Zach Smith works as a student assistant to Meyer. Bruce is a regular visitor at spring practice and has attended some Gators games. Meyer took to the coaching life as a graduate assistant under Bruce and began carving a career path with days that began at 6 a.m. A man who taught Meyer the two credos that guide his Florida program: Life is a lot better if you are good off the field, and discipline is 90 percent anticipation. In Bruce, Meyer saw a mentor, a man who worked his players hard on the field and loved them off it. “He always told me, ‘If you ever come home drunk, your clothes are going to be outside on the sidewalk you’re gone,’ ” said Bruce, who now works in radio. Bruce then pointed to a picture of Meyer wearing a yellow polo shirt and green pants, with a thick mustache from his days at Colorado State.īruce also learned from his father, who had 13 boys and was a safety inspector in a steel mill in Pittsburgh. There are photos of a shaggy-haired Pete Carroll, now the coach at Southern California, and a baby-faced Jim Tressel, now the coach of the Buckeyes, as Ohio State assistants under Bruce. He then went to Ohio State, where he was a graduate assistant under Bruce.Ī tour of the basement of Bruce’s home in Dublin, Ohio, outside Columbus showed that Meyer was not Bruce’s only successful protégé. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, a local powerhouse. Urban was rewarded with a dollar for hitting a home run and 50 cents for knocking in a run, though he lost a quarter for every strikeout. Bud Meyer often doled out punishment in laps or push-ups: breaking curfew usually resulted in some type of productive sweat. “I was expected to produce,” he said sternly. Bud Meyer said his and his wife’s simple parenting philosophy derived from his father’s. Urban, though he thrived academically, was not allowed to skip a grade because it would put him at a disadvantage in sports. He demanded the most from his children Gigi and Erika skipped grades. ![]() She recalled Sundays spent at a nearby yacht club and a comfortable childhood.īud Meyer made sure they were not too cozy. Though Ashtabula is a primarily blue-collar town, Escoe chuckled at portrayals of her brother as a blue-collar kid. She then looked at her father seated across the table and said, laughing, “That seems familiar.”īud and Gisela Meyer reared their three children - Gigi, Urban and Erika - primarily in the northeast Ohio town of Ashtabula, which lies on Lake Erie and, as he put it, “has gone the way of rust.” ![]() ![]() “Earle strikes me as no-nonsense, straightforward and a disciplinarian who expects a lot out of people,” she said during a recent interview in a restaurant near the University of Cincinnati, where she is a senior associate dean. ![]() Gigi Escoe, Meyer’s sister, got to know Bruce over the years. Bruce played for and coached under Woody Hayes, another disciplinarian who helped shape an attitude so salty in Bruce that he would paint the opponents’ locker room pink to psych them out. Earle Bruce won 154 games in his Hall of Fame career, with his most notable stint coming at Ohio State from 1979 to 1987, when he won or shared four Big Ten titles.
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