Former Gators head coach Urban Meyer attended first-year head coach Jon Sumrall's press conference last December. (Photo: Hannah White/UAA Communications)
Urban Meyer's Florida Legacy Gets Permanent Place In The Swamp
Thursday, November 5, 2026 | Football, Scott Carter
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Urban Meyer has many fond memories of his six seasons as Florida's head coach, including national championships in 2006 and 2008.
He coached some of the greatest players in program history, led the Gators to two Southeastern Conference Championship Game victories and, when facing Florida's top rivals — Tennessee, Georgia and Florida State — went 16-2.
Those accomplishments have been top of mind for him recently.
"You're older and look back and say, 'Wow, we really put our stamp on college football for those years.' Two championships in three years, three 13-win seasons,'' Meyer said. "Pretty incredible."
Urban Meyer went 65-15 as Florida's head coach from 2005-10. (UAA file photo)
When Meyer is honored at the end of the first quarter on Saturday night with the program's most prestigious honor — induction into the Gators Football Ring of Honor — he'll become only the seventh man to have his name unveiled on signage around the top of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. He joins Steve Spurrier, Jack Youngblood, Wilbur Marshall, Emmitt Smith, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow.
Meyer expects to be flooded by memories in the moment, and one of them is a story he has told many times. Meyer said when he thinks of the Gators and his path to taking over the program in 2005, his mind often drifts to his first exposure to The Swamp.
He was an assistant at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz in the late 1990s and was driving along Interstate 75 on a recruiting trip. He saw signs announcing the Gainesville exits. On a whim, he pulled off the highway, drove to the UF campus and called his wife, Shelley.
"I had a little time, parked the car, walked into The Swamp,'' he said. "Surprisingly, it was open. It was a January day in South Bend."
Shelley wanted to know what it was like to be in the place they had seen many times on TV.
"I really didn't know much about Florida until the Steve Spurrier era, and I was a young coach watching the transformation in which Coach Spurrier and the Gators transformed college football,'' Meyer said. "And like a lot of young coaches at the time, I said, 'Man, I want to be there.' I told her, 'It's a beautiful sunny day.' So it's surreal that I had the opportunity, and now it's going to be forever."
The 62-year-old Meyer becomes the first Ring of Honor inductee since Tebow, who helped him transform college football the way Wuerffel helped Spurrier during the program's first national championship in 1996. Tebow was inducted in 2018.
Shelley and Urban Meyer visited Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in 2025 for his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. (Photo: Hannah White/UAA Communications)
Meyer quickly restored the Gators to national championship status, beating Ohio State for the title in only his second season. He won another national title in his fourth season and led the Gators to a 12-0 regular season in 2009 before a loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. Meyer concluded his Florida tenure in 2010 with a victory over Penn State in the Outback Bowl, finishing with a 65-15 record as UF's head coach.
Meyer coached at Bowling Green and Utah before Florida, and he returned to the sideline in 2012 at Ohio State, where he went 83-9 in seven seasons and added another national championship. He finished his career with a 187-32 record across 17 seasons as a head coach. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2025; his .853 career winning percentage trails only fellow Hall of Famers Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy at the FBS level.
First-year Gators coach Jon Sumrall has talked extensively to Meyer about the Florida job. When UF athletic director Scott Stricklin was searching for a new head coach late last season, he called Meyer to help research Sumrall. The two coaches clicked instantly.
"Urban's been nothing but great to me," Sumrall said. "Have always had a great deal of respect for the way his teams played, the edge, the physicality, the style of play; tremendous leader. When he came here and spoke to our coaches' clinic this spring, I had him spend time with our coaching staff and basically gave him the head coach's chair for a little bit, let him lead a meeting with our staff to kind of help cast what expectations look like in Florida and what the standards are. He deservedly is being honored this weekend."
Meyer currently serves as a host and analyst on FOX's Big Noon Kickoff and has a reunion scheduled this weekend with some of his former UF assistants.
Besides winning big, Meyer made his mark at UF in other ways. He established traditions that have become part of Gators football. He created the Gator Walk, helped build the original Heavener Center attached to The Swamp, and instituted singing the "Orange & Blue" fight song at the end of home games.
He last coached Florida 16 years ago, but his place in program history has a permanent home on Saturday night.
"We elevated Florida to championship level again,'' he said. "I really learned about the game and the highest-level football."
