General

Kevin Nelson Isn’t a Big Urban Meyer Fan

Jun 9, 2010, 7:50 PM UTC

â†µVarious members of the Miami Hurricanes football coaching and support staffs are sitting on wide receiver recruit Kevin Nelson right now. Whenever he reaches for his phone, the guy right over his diaphragm bounces up and down. This is evidently the only way to stop him from dropping bombs on Florida's coaching staff: â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥“Grimy, two-faced and disrespectful,” Nelson said of Gators coaches. â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µâ†µThis is in the process of blowing up into a major story, but back in November Nelson put the Florida coaches on blast using the exact same lingo:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥“They are disrespectful. They didn’t really want me. They only wanted me because LSU offered me. They are grimy and two-faced.”â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µâ†µAt which point Hurricanes coaches told him “if you ever do that again we’ll have to sit on you,” which is why he is under three quality control assistants right now. Everyone loves red meat.â†µ

â†µâ†µSo it’s too bad that the substance of Nelson’s complaint is weak. Florida didn’t offer him right away (though they did offer). They pointed out that Randy Shannon hadn’t won much at Miami and said he would leave after this year. And they wouldn’t let him in the locker room after a game because he was already a ‘Cane commit. Other than suggesting Shannon would leave Miami, everything in that seems reasonable or, you know, true.â†µ

â†µ

â†µMeyer's done worse in the past. Jevan Snead was told that he was the only quarterback the Gators were recruiting and that Tim Tebow was coming in as a linebacker. Current Michigan receiver Darryl Stonum was told that Lloyd Carr (who had just retired) and Erik Campbell (who had just moved to Iowa) told Meyer that he would "be a much better fit in the Florida offense than I would be in the one at Michigan," which the coaches denied*. Worst of all, Patrick Johnson accused Meyer of getting his test score flagged when the highly-touted cornerback picked LSU over the Gators. Some garden-variety negative recruiting shouldn't even register on the epic lists of Meyer's malfeasances maintained on message boards across the SEC, though it will because everything goes on those lists.â†µ

â†µâ†µNot that Nelson should even consider shutting up. Verbal blasts make a rivalry spicy, and once those staffers get off Nelson he should immediately look up “grimy” in the thesaurus so the next time he pops off it will have some novelty to it.â†µ

â†µâ†µ*(Unfortunately, newspapers have paywalled all this stuff under the mistaken impression that anyone’s going to shell out five bucks for a two year old article, so I have to grab it from less reputable sources. The original quoted text comes from Official Journalists. If you have ESPN Insider, here’s a Bruce Feldman article with the relevant quotes.)â†µ

â†µâ†µ(HT: CFTalk.)â†µ

â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

See More: