Posted on 08/02/2018 12:09:11 PM PDT by Red Badger
Former NCAA athletes shed light on embattled coach’s abusive treatment of players in undercover videos Xavier Nixon, OL: “They had a guy’s quads explode in the weight room… during what we call the Valentine’s Day Massacre.” William Green, DE: “There was these mat drills, where people would literally get choked out.” Gideon Ajagbe, LB: “A lot of what played into my depression was they humiliated me… they said I was a pu**y… “ Meyer’s players experienced “arm dangling,” “quads exploding” on Florida Gator team Urban Meyer threw objects at players “it’s a f*cking full bottle of Gatorade, and he’s chucking it at people.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Stephen Gordon
Email: media@projectveritas.com
Phone: 914-908-2300
(Ohio) Project Veritas has released undercover video of former University of Florida athletes discussing the history of physical and mental abuse they experienced at the discretion of Urban Meyer, the now-embattled head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes.
The videos were filmed in separate meetings throughout late 2017 and 2018 across the country, and feature four players that played at various times during Urban Meyer’s tenure as head coach of the Florida Gators.
According to these players, Meyer would blatantly disregard player’s health and wellbeing. Xavier Nixon, who played at the University of Florida for coach Meyer, recalled an incident where Omarius Hines, a teammate at the time, was severely injured during a weight training session Meyer oversaw called “The Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
“They had a guy’s quads explode in the weight room on the leg press during what we call the Valentine’s Day Massacre. You basically do everything until failure and the lactic acid had built up in his legs so much that his quads literally exploded, they erupted, and he had to be taken out in an ambulance.“
Another player who witnessed the injury, Josh Evans who played safety for the University of Florida between 2009 and 2012, corroborated the event:
“We had a guy on a leg press machine… Guy had probably about six plates on each side of the leg press. So [the coach] blew the whistle as he goin’, and the whole team kinda came over there like go, pushing, pushing, pushing. He got to about 38 [reps,] blew, the sides of his quads just erupted, boom. Legs, screaming, had to take him to the hospital.“
According to the players, there was a culture under Coach Meyer where injured players would be mocked, and the severity of their injuries would be kept from them.
Nixon spoke specifically of an incident regarding Gideon Ajagbe, a freshman for Meyer’s 2010 Florida Gator team, who contracted a severe infection in his shoulder that led to hospitalization. Before he was hospitalized, Ajagbe was forced to practice and was purposefully subjected to ridicule from the team.
Nixon said Ajagbe “was literally dying.” Despite having “bacteria eating the muscle in his shoulders,” Ajagbe was forced to carry “a 45-pound plate over his head… he was crying.” Nixon believed Meyer’s staff “didn’t adequately acknowledge” Ajagbe’s injury. Ajagbe confirmed this event in his own words:
“… it was bad. A lot of what played into my depression was they humiliated me. They thought I was trying to skip out on practice… the word they used, imma be frank, they said I was a pu**y. They’re like man, you’re a pu**y, you’re soft, you’re this, you’re that… There was one day, my arm was literally dangling, like I couldn’t lift my shoulder… And they were like everybody run like Gideon… The whole team, like everyone was laughing at me.”
Ajagbe said he communicated that he was in pain, but that Meyer’s staff would still push him to practice:
“And they’ll try to make me lift up weights, and I’ll literally have [my bad shoulder] up, I don’t know how I got it up there, but I would put all my weight on [my good shoulder…] But they didn’t know, nobody knew, but it was still like daggers.”
Ajagbe expressed remorse, saying, “My mom and dad sent me out here and they put all their faith in this coaching staff to take care of me.” The abuse nearly led Ajagbe to suicide.
After being examined by medical professionals, Ajagbe became depressed and struggled with pills. “Imma be honest with you, I was suicidal.” ”
“For six days nobody knew. They didn’t know how bad it was… ” continued Ajagbe, who claims that Meyer threatened to take him off the team unless he would start “being serious.”
Ajagbe explained how Meyer would psychologically abuse players:
“He’s the kind of dude that would get all the information he needs to get on you and he would use it to manipulate you or he would use it against you.“
“If [Meyer] know that you’re not really smart, he’ll put you in front of the team and make you do trivia. And everyone would laugh at you.”
William Green, another former Florida Gator, said he believes those workouts were excessive, and spoke more to the nature of “The Valentine’s Day Massacre” workout:
“The Valentine’s Day Massacre was a tough ass workout… so it’s basically like, we used to have these types of workouts for us, and they had them labeled by certain things. We had like Failure Fridays or the Massacre where we would [do] a workout that’s ridiculous. Like you’ll do a full body workout, but it’d be everything to failure. Benching until you can’t bench no more, pull down until you can’t pull down no more… pretty much, you’re feeling like you gotta throw up because they just running you down the field, up and down the field.”
Green explained “mat drills” where players “would literally get like choked out… the whole idea behind it… you’d have to wrestle, and it wasn’t like normal wrestling. It was like you both stand up… and there was and there was this one mat… and you gotta crawl across the mat. These guys on top of you. It’s his job to not let you get across the mat, and they literally get up on there and choke you. And you might go to sleep… It’s extremely unnecessary. We don’t talk about the stuff we used to do is not normal, at all. It just wasn’t.”
Nixon also described a pre-game ritual where Meyer would “grab a Gatorade bottle… and throw it at you.”
“I’m sure he thought he was joking, but it’s a f*cking full bottle of Gatorade, and he’s chucking it at people.”
This is the first video in an undercover series exposing issues in both the NCAA and NFL.
Sorry, can't tell you that. This might be a story that everyone needs to hear.
One might tell you that he's taking an unexpected, yet due, turn in his operation. Remember, surprise has much to do with his success, and to be perfectly honest, if he's getting into NFL and college football he's in a target-rich environment.
There will be more to come... although the kind of sadism they're talking about here with humans being deliberately knocked out is the lowest of the low, and hard to beat in terms of human lowlife-ness...
...And, to be completely honest with you, depending on the timeline of Mr. O'Keefe's story I uh, won't be surprised if another certain team's recently laid off strength and conditioning coach... maybe others too... get called to account.
I say let Mr. O'Keefe go for it, and let the chips fall where they will.
I'm not saying "all", nor am I saying "most", but I, for one, won't be surprised if it turns into "many".
(Check out my new tagline, I've had it for a couple of weeks now.)
‘Urban did nothing to help prepare Tebow for the NFL’
first, that’s not why he was hired; secondly, Tebow was effectively blackballed in the NFL because of his outspoken religious views...
Yes. Brevity is eloquence, thank you.
Yeah, Urban is probably an a**hole, but a lot of this is just Millennial Whining. They cry about everything these days...just look at the NFL whiners when they are told to stand for the anthem.
Preparing for football is not meant to be the same as preparing for a dance recital.
Where does this end? Are we gonna put drill sergeants in prison for calling new enlistees “dog face”?
Pro football perhaps, the National Felon’s League?
I don’t think O’Keefe has joined the dark side or even trying to be all inclusive. I think he thinks conservatives hate football because a lot of conservatives are hating the NFL. What he doesn’t know is there are toooooonnnnnnnsssss of conservatives who still love, love, love us some college football. But he’s from NJ, so try telling him there’s a football game that’s not a NLF game.
It’d be like trying to tell a Big 12 fan that it’s possible to have a good defense. :)
Agreed. Return all college sports to club status. Pay coaches like adjunct faculty. Let the pros run their own developmental leagues.
Re: “This might be a story that everyone needs to hear.”
Right, because only hundreds of sports journalists and tort lawyers have been talking about brain injuries and highly aggressive white coaches - for the last 30 years!
Now sweetie lets not get our panties in a wad.
First let’s settle Kriby the man’s education and football...
Smart was a four-year letterman at defensive back for Georgia and a first-team All-SEC selection as a senior. He finished his career with 13 interceptions, which ranks fourth all-time at Georgia, and led the Bulldogs with six interceptions in 1997 and five in 1998. He also was a four-time member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll.[2] Smart graduated from Georgia in 1999 with a degree in finance. Also 4 year honor student.
Now paying attention. I love the old ball coach and respet him.
This old women has seen a few games, did you know as a quarter back, Spurrier NEVER beat Georgia once. Well of course you didn’t or you wouldn’t have spouted that silly stuff.
Saban, I love him too. See I am an All SEC girl, unless you play my Dawgs then it’s war son and I will hang with the best if you drinking beer and talking trash backed up by facts, a few of you facts are true.
I don’t have a lot of time to educate you on the fine facts of football. So just let me say this...
The Dawgs are coming and we are bringing HELL with us...
BTW check the news today bless your heart you got another Gator arrest today an I believe an AK-45 loaded in the back seat, GOD bless his Mama’s heart.
“Urban did nothing to help prepare Tebow for the NFL”
And yet he won the Heisman and was drafted in the first round. I guess all those NFL scouts disagree with you.
“Are we gonna put drill sergeants in prison for calling new enlistees “dog face”?”
My Drill Sergeants called me a whole lot worse than that, and I was pretty anonymous. Glad I was not one of the guys they did not like.
No. Only one NFL scout. Everybody saw Tebow as a third round pick. Denver decided to traded picks away to get him in the first round. And the guy who made that call got fired a year later.
Geez, this again? Tebow was given multiple chances. He just wasn’t a very good NFL quarterback. Watching him throw was painful.
And if he was blackballed by the NFL, why did MLB embrace him? No way any other 28 year old who hadn’t played baseball since high school would have gotten a minor league contract.
And yet he took a crappy team that looked like it was out of playoff contention and got them there. Even won a playoff game. Did not look like a bad pick then. But then they got Payton. Tim is not in the Payton mold so they went another way. I don’t see how the scout/GM could be blamed for that. But I am not in the NFL. And Brady was a sixth round pick. And if Tim was willing to switch positions he might still be playing.
Point is, I don’t see how you could blame Meyer for that. Tim doesn’t seem to.
uhh... what? Are you suggesting this is a racial thing???
I’ve always liked Urban Meyer. The level of detail he went to when grading out the performances of each player in a game impressed me. I thought he was a tremendous coach.
Winning the Heisman and getting drafted has nothing to do with preparing one to play in the NFL. And apparently the NFL scouts were pretty wrong when it cam to Tebow.
His team finished 8-8 with a 3 game losing streak and made the playoffs because the other teams sucked enough to lose the division to an 8-8 team. And won a playoff game against a destroyed defense that got more destroyed by injuries as the game wore on. It was a TERRIBLE draft pick, they wasted 3 draft picks on a guy that started 11 games. 3 draft picks to get a guy in the first round that NOBODY thought was going in the first round (and the first round was almost over by then). They could have waited a couple hours, drafted him with the second round pick (still earlier than projected) they traded away and still had their 3rd and 4th. It was a bad pick in every way.
I don’t blame Meyer. The idea that college coaches are supposed to prepare guys for the NFL is laughable. A college coach’s job is to win college games. If that instill skills into the players that help them in the NFL great, but 90% of their players are never going to the NFL so it’s silly to think they should be getting prepared for it.
I like Urban, too. I think he’s a fine man. I think everyone needs to put down the torches and pitchforks. I’m a ‘Bama fan (Roll Tide), but I don’t like seeing someone tarred and feathered like this.
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