Urban Meyer Says He Fabricated Media Quotes to Motivate Florida During 2006 CFB Title Run

Urban Meyer admitted he fabricated false quotes from media figures "all the time" while coaching Florida to the first of his two national championships from 2006 to 2008.

Meyer spoke about using fake criticism from ABC and ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler to motivate players around the 51:30 mark of the AMP Original The Triple Option podcast.

"In '06, Ohio State beat the Wolverines in the game of the century, and everybody said, 'Well, they should go play each other,'" Meyer said. "And then we won, USC lost, and... all of a sudden we get in. And ESPN and everybody said, 'They don't belong. They don't belong. They're not very good.' And I mean, I used that.

"And I would meet with my ops guy every day and say, 'Okay, make up some good quotes.' And then put Herbstreit's name on it, put Fowler's name on it, put someone from ESPN on it ... Sometimes I would be eating and I look over and I say, "That's not true." And I would look at my ops and go, 'That's awesome.'"

Herbstreit told reporters a similar story ahead of the College Football Playoff in 2020, per 247Sports' Brad Crawford .

"Every coach in the country looks for an angle," Herbstreit said in 2020, per Crawford. "We've been doing this a long time, and Chris and I used to laugh— Urban Meyer in '06 used to make stuff up. Just throw it out on their hotel meeting rooms and somebody would say something and he'd say 'Just put it on Herbstreit or ESPN or whatever.' But it would be a fake quote just to get his team mad."

Starting quarterback Chris Leak, backup Tim Tebow and the 2006 Gators got off to a 6-0 start to the 2006 season before losing at Auburn.

Whatever motivational tactics Meyer used at that point of the campaign seemingly worked. The Gators went 7-0 down the stretch on their way to winning the SEC Championship Game over Arkansas and BCS Championship over Ohio State.

Meyer led Florida to another BCS title in 2008, then won the CFP national championship with Ohio State in 2014. He retired from coaching in 2019 and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame last December.