Indians legend Feller transferred to hospice care
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Indians Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller has been moved from a hospital to hospice care.
The 92-year-old Feller, who was recently admitted to the Cleveland Clinic with pneumonia, has been transferred to a hospice in the Cleveland area, Bob DiBiasio, the team's vice president of public relations confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday night.
Feller's health has been in decline in recent months. He was diagnosed with leukemia in August, and after fainting while undergoing chemotherapy, Feller had a pacemaker implanted.
Feller won 266 games in 18 seasons -- all with the Indians. An eight-time All-Star, Feller interrupted his baseball career to enlist in the Navy during World War II. Feller served three years in the military before returning to the major leagues.
Will Urban Stay Retired?
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- It didn't look or sound like I was watching someone's retirement news conference Wednesday night.
Urban Meyer, 46, walked to a dais inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, made a very brief statement that he intended to step down as Florida's football coach to spend more time with his family and then took questions from reporters.
Outside the stadium affectionately known as The Swamp, Florida students went about their normal business, seemingly unaware that the coach who led them to two BCS national championships in six seasons was leaving the program for good.
It was almost as if everyone in the Gator Nation knew this day was coming, sooner rather than later.
"I wasn't shocked at all," said former Florida quarterback Shane Matthews, who still lives in Gainesville. "I think a lot of people could tell it was coming. I think what happened last year with his health situation scared him a lot."
A year ago, Meyer quit as Florida's coach only weeks after he was taken to a local hospital with chest pains. Meyer was hospitalized the night of the 2009 SEC championship game, in which the Gators were beaten badly by Alabama.
But Meyer changed his mind about retirement the next day, before the Gators flew to New Orleans to play Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl. Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley and university president J. Bernard Machen persuaded Meyer to take a short leave of absence in the spring, but Meyer was back coaching the Gators during spring practice and never really left during his leave of absence.
"Last year, his life was in turmoil," Foley said.
Meyer said this summer that doctors diagnosed his health problem as esophageal spasms and corrected it with medication. Also this summer, Meyer spent more time traveling with his family, visiting Hawaii, Israel, Italy, Key West and the Bahamas.
Meyer said he spent more time away from football than ever before and vowed not to let his job consume him like it had in the past.
"I'm talking about certifiable," Meyer said in July when asked about his work ethic in the past. "They'd lock me [up] if they really knew."
The coach who always seemed to work 100 mph for 100 hours per week tried to slow down this season. He delegated more responsibilities to his staff and wasn't consumed by every minute detail of the program.
But Meyer's new way of coaching didn't work for him -- or the Gators. Florida finished 7-5, losing to South Carolina 36-14 at home on Nov. 13, which cost the Gators an SEC East championship. Two weeks later, the Gators lost 31-7 at Florida State, their first loss to the Seminoles in seven years.
"[The program] has to be fixed," Meyer said Wednesday. "It's a little broken right now."
And Meyer could no longer be the coach to fix it. If Meyer couldn't coach the way he had in the past, there was really no use in him coaching at all. If Meyer wasn't willing to sacrifice himself to his profession, he couldn't win at the level he was accustomed to. But if Meyer returned to his previous coaching habits, he was putting his health and family at risk.
"I think it was a little more wear and tear here at Florida, more than it was at his other two stops [Bowling Green and Utah]," Matthews said. "The pressure really wears on your family. There comes a point where the pressure is too much."
Even Foley said he wasn't surprised when Meyer called him Saturday and told him that he was having thoughts about quitting again. Foley gave Meyer a couple of days to think about his decision, and the men met Monday. On Tuesday, Meyer decided to resign as Florida's coach for a second time.
"I wasn't totally surprised," Foley said. "[It's] not that he gave me any indication [this season] that this is what he wanted to do. But I could see it a little bit in his eyes, so I wasn't totally surprised."
This time, Foley didn't try to talk Meyer out of quitting.
"I know this is not a knee-jerk reaction to being 7-5," Foley said. "He changed some things that caused his [health] situation last December and worked his tail off this summer to fix them. I think it changed his life, and he's a better person because of it and he's a better coach because of it."
Meyer told his players about his decision to resign during a team meeting at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday.
"I was very supportive," Florida center Mike Pouncey said. "Coach changed a lot of lives at this program and obviously turned this program around from nothing. We were very supportive, just like we were last year."
Said safety Ahmad Black: "We were a little surprised, but I knew deep down he was going to do the best thing for him and his family comes first."
Meyer's final game as Florida's coach will be against Penn State in the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla., on New Year's Day. Now we can add even Meyer's name to the long list of those who couldn't outlast Joe Paterno, 83, the Nittany Lions' iconic coach.
"Someone made a comment if Coach Paterno would have stepped down at my age, it would have been 1972," Meyer joked.
Just like that on Wednesday night, one of the greatest -- and brief -- coaching careers in college football history might have come to an abrupt end.
But it still doesn't seem like a retirement.
It seems more like an interruption.
The Urban Meyer Effect
By Tony Gerdeman
The butterfly effect has been a popular idea for over one hundred years now. Roughly, it states that something as innocuous as the flapping of a butterfly's wings can trigger a series of subsequently larger events until the point that even something as large as a tornado or hurricane is formed.
In the world of college football, there is no such thing as the butterfly effect. It's more of a pterodactyl effect, and the flapping of wings causes storms almost immediately—and the long-lasting effects are felt far and wide.
Urban Meyer's sudden retirement on Wednesday is one such instance of the “pterodactyl effect”, and the winds have already blown into Columbus, Ohio.
One of the byproducts of a head coach stepping down at any major university is that the recruits that he had already “landed”, or was in the mix for, suddenly become quasi-free agents. Other schools come after these recruits like they're Tickle Me Elmos, and it's 1996 all over again.
Those recruits aren't simply just innocent dupes getting into windowless vans. They're calling around as well, asking to see what other campuses are like, and seeing if maybe their second and third choices still have room for them.
That very situation appears be happening for Ohio State and a number of recruits that they were battling Florida for. Rivals and Scout are both reporting that Ryan Shazier, a four-star linebacker who had been committed to the Gators, will be visiting the Buckeyes next week. He is planning on enrolling early, and with Ohio State's winter quarter starting on January 3rd, things would have to move pretty quickly.
Urban Meyer has made a practice of discouraging committed players from making official visits to other schools. So much so, that offers could even be pulled if a player visited another school. Now with Meyer stepping down, Shazier is free to see what Ohio State has to offer without fear of losing his spot with Florida.
The Buckeyes only have one true linebacker in their current recruiting class, and after missing on the top two in-state linebackers (as well as Jamel Turner) in the last two classes, this could be just the band-aid the coaching staff has been looking for. Rest assured, they will come out with all guns blazing in an attempt to land Shazier (6'3” 205), who is a tremendous athlete and brings the speed the Buckeyes covet.
Generally, this late in the game, you can count the number of recruits Jim Tressel takes from Urban Meyer on your third hand, but this could very well happen and let us not forget to mention that Shazier is also the high school teammate of current Ohio State commit Jeremy Cash who plays safety.
Shazier isn't the only windfall candidate for Ohio State. Defensive back Jabari Gorman (5'11” 170) from Miami is likely to be choosing between Miami (FL), Florida and Ohio State. Only one of those three schools has a coach right now, so you do the math.
The Buckeyes are in a very good position to reap some rewards in the prospect front, but the flapping wings of change don't just stop on the recruiting trail.
Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley says he expects to have a head coach in place within the next three weeks. The first place he will look will be Mississippi State and their head coach Dan Mullen, who was Urban Meyer's offensive coordinator at Florida until he took the Bulldogs gig following the 2008 National Championship.
Mullen has fashioned out a serviceable offense and already has Mississippi State winning in just his second year. The Bulldogs finished 8-4. Their four losses came to Auburn (by three points, by the way), LSU, Alabama and Arkansas.
Don't think their 10-7 win in Gainesville will soon be forgotten. The Gator offense has disappeared under offensive coordinator Steve Addazio (and without Tim Tebow, of course), and the last strong link to those days gone by is clearly Mullen.
Mullen has already said that he's committed to Mississippi State, but coaches lie everyday, especially when they talk about how happy they are at a stepping stone.
What does this possibly have to do with Ohio State? Imagine when Mullen DOES take the Florida job. If it's in the next two weeks or so like Foley says, Mississippi State will be playing their bowl game against MICHIGAN with a shattered staff and possibly broken spirit. Their interim head coach will have all of a week or two to put his game plan together.
Those are odds that even Rich Rodriguez can take advantage of.
If the Wolverines were to beat Mississippi State, can Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon fire a head coach who just won a January bowl game against an SEC opponent on his way to an eight-win season?
Heck, Dan Mullen just got the Florida job BECAUSE he won eight games.
Would Brandon almost HAVE to see this thing through for another year?
If he does give Rodriguez another year, do they lose their one shot at the most perfect candidate they're ever going to find in Jim Harbaugh?
Michigan WINNING the Gator Bowl could be the one thing that holds them back for years to come, oit could be the one thing that finally gets things clicking. Which of those two possibilities requires the larger leap of faith?
Wouldn't it be an amazing twist of events if the Gator Bowl is the game that SAVES Rodriguez's job, after years of being known as the game that COST Woody Hayes his?
The possibilities don't just end with recruiting and the future of rivalries. There's also the future of Ohio State itself.
Eventually, once Urban Meyer gets tired of watching his daughters play volleyball and whatnot, he will return to coaching. He's only 46 years old now, so he can sit for a few years and wait for a desired opening and still be a very legitimate candidate well into the next decade.
You probably don't even want to think about this, but by Jim Tressel's own admission, he will likely only be coaching for another five or six seasons. You have to wonder if an opening at Ohio State would be something that would interest Meyer, and would Meyer's interest be reciprocated by the University?
Questions will continue to be asked, and the effects of flapping wings will be felt long after this season. These winds will cause ripples of their own, and those ripples will do the same. The process of a new future has already begun, and we have set off on a path that wasn't even presented us to us as early as Wednesday morning, but here we are now, happy passengers, excited for a future that can change with the flap of a wing.
Welcome to a different world than the one you woke up to the day before, though by the time you read this, Meyer may have already un-retired and blamed it all on some bad cheesecake. If so, our apologies for all of this unnecessary speculation. Carry on with your day as you normally would have. Thank you.
Duke star Irving could miss rest of season with toe injury
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- Top-ranked Duke says freshman point guard Kyrie Irving is out indefinitely with a toe injury, and coach Mike Krzyzewski said there's a possibility it could be for the rest of the season.
Krzyzewski said after Wednesday night's 83-48 win over Bradley that the star guard is being evaluated by doctors at Duke and nationally. The team hopes to learn more about his status in the next week to 10 days, but Krzyzewski called Irving's injury "a serious one."
Irving sat on the bench in street clothes wearing a boot on his right foot to protect the big toe injured in last weekend's win against Butler. Krzyzewski said the team didn't learn of the seriousness of the injury until it returned to campus and that Irving could be out "for a long time."
"Everybody's game changes, including mine," Krzyzewski said. "It doesn't mean a wholesale change in what you're doing, but it changes everything including the habits of having played with that great player for the entire preseason and eight games."
Irving was second on the team in scoring at 17.4 points per game, while his ability to push the ball in transition had sparked a faster pace for the defending national champions. He had a season-high 31 points in a practically flawless performance here against Michigan State last week, then had 21 points against Butler and even returned to the game after suffering the injury.
Senior Nolan Smith was the primary ballhandler against Bradley and had a career-high 10 assists, but he managed just two points on 0-for-8 shooting. Seth Curry served as Smith's backup, while freshman Tyler Thornton also saw minutes early against the Braves.
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