With the arrival Wednesday of his eldest daughter from Ohio, where she was finishing school, Urban Meyer's family is whole again, and the new Utah football coach was planning to move today into the new family house, even if the moving van doesn't arrive in time.
After four months in a small condo with his wife, son and one of two daughters, Meyer is anxious for a place the family can really call home.
He's actually the last of his coaching staff to complete the move to Utah. Defensive ends coach Kurt Barber brought his family out from Ohio last weekend.
By Friday or Saturday, Meyer's extended family is expected to be in tact, too.
He expects 100 percent participation by his players in the voluntary summer workout program that he says is the key to whether Utah starts his coaching tenure with the kind of bang he produced in his two years at Bowling Green, where he took over a 2-9 program with six straight losing seasons and went 17-6 with a No. 20 national ranking in two seasons.
"It depends on the summer, if guys work with the passion that they have to work with," he said. Coaches cannot be on the field with players during summer workouts, but they can give them goals to reach and can talk with them in other settings.
Through his years as an assistant at places like Ohio State, Notre Dame and Colorado State, Meyer, 38, observed the things that made those teams respected winners, and he fully expects Utah to reach that class.
"What's the difference between Arizona State, Texas, Notre Dame, USC, Washington, Ohio State and Utah?" Meyer asks. "In my mind, nothing.
"That's the mentality that we've got to have. We're going to train the same way they are. We're going to work the same way they are because that's our goal, to reach the upper echelon of college football."
It may be a bit of a process to convince the Utes in his first year, but he hopes it will happen within the next two months.
"I still don't think that's sunk in yet," he said. "We want our guys to be as strong as the guys at the University of Iowa. We expect our guys to be in as good a shape as the upper echelon, and that will happen.
"It's happening right now. We have kids with good attitudes. Pretty much the entire team is back training. It's voluntary, but if you preach enough — I know Michigan guys are there. It's expectation level. It's the demands placed on them, in my mind," said Meyer, adding he wants players who come to Utah expecting to win and expecting to even compete "for a national championship," just like those who go to a Texas, Ohio State or Michigan.
"The training and commitment is the same as the big boys — because that's what we're going to be. We will be in that upper echelon," Meyer said.
The off-season and passion for the game are keys, and so is unity. "It's the greatest team sport there is. There's not another team sport like it where, if you take one person out, you're not functional," he says.
Those are things he observed when he was assisting at big-time programs, and he hopes to breed that over the summer with things like a team cookout at his new home on Sunday.
"You don't have to get silly about it," he said, but he will encourage players to tell their teammates about themselves. "If I'm this guy's teammate, and I'm hearing this guy spill his guts about something that's gone on in his life, I care for that guy a little more because I know something about him," Meyer says. "In my mind, that's how you win and lose."
If these things come together quickly, if players indulge the coach's philosophies, Meyer could have an exciting club right away.
"It's our first year," he said, anxious for August. "In our first year at Bowling Green, we kind of slept-walked through our first four games. We won them because we played good defense and didn't turn the ball over, but we didn't become explosive until the end because they didn't understand the training involved," he said.
"The same thing will happen here if they don't train. If they don't come back with the skills developed, we won't be very good."
Meyer hints that this team is more advanced than the one he took over in northeast Ohio. Twenty-two players left Bowling Green after he took over. Four have left Utah since spring semester started (Justin Walterscheid, Jaun McNutt, Mark Palmer, Kylee Brown).
The Utes have already taken to Meyer's academic push. Forty percent had GPAs of 3.0 or better this spring, and the team averaged 14 hours passed per player. He wants that up to 15 hours, but 14 is an improvement over last fall. That's not a knock on former coach Ron McBride, Meyer said. He blames the uncertainty and emotion of the coaching change.
Two or three current players are struggling with the academic hole of last fall, but Meyer is optimistic. Twenty-four of the 25 2003 recruits are on track to enter the U. in the fall. The 25th has two chances to pass a test to become eligible, and Meyer sees that situation positively.
UTES IN THE NFL: With Tuesday's release by the San Diego Chargers of rookie receiver Josh Lyman, there are 19 former Utes still listed on NFL team rosters as of Wednesday. They are: RB Dameon Hunter, DL Ma'ake Kemoeatu and DB Antwoine Sanders with Baltimore; DL Andy Bowers, DL Lauvale Sape, DL Richard Seals and WR Paris Jackson with Buffalo; WR Kevin Dyson, OL Jordan Gross and WR Steve Smith with Carolina; OL Dustin McQuivey, Cincinnati; RB Mike Anderson, Denver; DL Luther Elliss, Detroit; DL Ed Ta'amu, Houston; DL John Frank, New York Giants; OL Barry Sims, Oakland; RB Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala, Pittsburgh; DB Andre Dyson, Tennessee; and WR Cliff Russell, Washington.
E-mail: lham@desnews.com