Tennessee football: Fulmer Cup, Urban Meyer and Florida’s insane hypocrisy

Orson Swindle owes Tennessee football an apology. If you’re wondering who he is, two 2010 articles, one by Bleacher Report and the other by Iowa State Daily, an Iowa State University independent student newspaper, will bring you up to speed.

A Florida Gators fan, Swindle created The Fulmer Cup in 2006, which he gives tongue and cheek each year to the college football program with the worst criminal record. It was named after Phillip Fulmer because of the arrests the Vols suffered during a 16-month period from 2004 to 2005. Swindle did it to take a shot at the Vols.

Well, 15 years later, the irony of a Florida fan and targeting Tennessee football for scandals is insane. With the Jacksonville Jaguars firing Urban Meyer in disgrace, we should revisit this hilarious hypocrisy.

WhenSwindle created the Fulmer Cup, Florida was about to begin a three-year run of two national championships and a Heisman Trophy quarterback in Tim Tebow in between. This was all with Meyer running the show.

The Fulmer Cup and Tebow helped push separate narratives: that Tennessee football was the out of control program with no standards while Florida was the one with integrity, led by a Christian quarterback. Don’t think that didn’t impact recruiting.

In 2006 and 2008, Fulmer had the worst two recruiting classes of his career, which probably contributed to him losing his job after 2008. Florida, meanwhile, was in the midst of its best run. Of course parents would want their kids to play with such an upstanding gentleman like Tebow and the coach who molds young men in Meyer.

It was all a lie.

Nobody debates anymore that Meyer was a fraud at Florida for pushing this narrative. It’s the same way Joe Paterno was a fraud when he pushed the victory with honor narrative while the Penn State Nittany Lions let Jerry Sandusky hold an office on their campus.

While Meyer was hiding behind Tebow making a public spectacle of his Christianity, he was allowing Florida players to literally get away with anything. Just check out this Orlando Sentinel article on Florida arrests under Meyer, published before he even finished his last year there. You could literally do Florida Man stories with just Gator players.

Chris Rainey was arrested on aggravated felony, allegedly texting his girlfriend “time to die,” according to this report from CBS. Meyer suspended him for only four games. Carlos Dunlap got a DUI, falling asleep at a traffic light, and was only suspended for one game. Tony Joiner was accused of breaking into a car impound to retrieve his girlfriend’s car and suffered no suspension.

We don’t even need to touch on Aaron Hernandez and his activities while at Florida, but speaking of other players who became infamous during their NFL career, Riley Cooper’s N-word incident wasn’t his first scandal. Cooper was accused of failing to comply with police after refusing to get out of the way of a police car in college. He was never suspended.

On the field, Meyer was even more brazen. In 2009, linebacker Brandon Spikes literally tried to gouge out the eyes of Georgia Bulldogs running back Washaun Ealey. Meyer suspended him for a half against the Vanderbilt Commodores after this gross play.

Let’s note that Tennessee football was held to an entirely different standard. Ahead of the 2008 season, Fulmer suspended punter Britton Colquitt for half the season and stripped him of his scholarship over a DUI, which you can read about here.

At the time, that punishment was not sufficient for many in Knoxville media. Indeed, John Adams of the Knoxville News Sentinel criticized Fulmer for letting him back at all and called for his firing, at which point Fulmer responded with a column on his own.

While Fulmer was having to fight off scandals like that daily, fair or unfair, Florida was cloaking Meyer in a false sense of integrity because of Tebow while its players threatened to kill their girlfriends or tried to gouge people’s eyes out with no or limited punishment. This is who Meyer is.

By the way, when Tennessee football hired Lane Kiffin, admittedly a mistake, and Kiffin took shots at Meyer, all the talk was about Kiffin’s classlessness. He couldn’t live up to the beacon of morality that was Meyer. This is the narrative that was pushed.

Of course, Florida paid for it in the end, as Meyer left the program, essentially running after Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide emerged, in 2010. Then he jumped to the Ohio State Buckeyes in 2012, and the Zach Smith domestic violence scandal broke.

Hilariously enough, Tennessee football isn’t the only program to suffer a fake integrity stain at the expense of Meyer. After leading OSU to the 2014 national championship, Meyer went on Bill O’Reilly and said he’d have a hard time accepting a player like Jamies Winston on his team.

This is rich. A guy who parted ways with his show on Fox News because of a series of misconduct allegations involving women is talking with somebody on that show who has left three jobs in disgrace about how it’s wrong to accept players of low character on football teams.

Jimbo Fisher, fair or not, had to fight off that reputation with the Florida State Seminoles, and he left it in not great shape as a result. Of course, Meyer ran after that in 2018 and didn’t last a year in Jacksonville before scandal after scandal hit there.

Nobody would debate Meyer is a fraud at this point. However, Florida fans were perfectly happy to hide behind his fraudulence if it meant they were winning, and they were perfectly happy to create a reputation around Tennessee football in the process.

In reality, Gator Nation is no different from Meyer. They judge everybody else and prop up their own morals while covering up for all of their failings. Meyer and Florida were a perfect fit in that regard, and nobody should ever forget it.