It's hard to believe that Urban Meyer is quickly approaching his 20th season leading a college football program. It's a journey that started at Bowling Green for two seasons back in 2001, before going on to Utah for two years, and then Urban spent six years at Florida, winning two national titles, before taking a brief break from coaching.
Then, in 2012, he was named the head coach at Ohio State, where he has led an incredible 61-6 run, including a 39-2 mark in Big Ten play with a national title in 2014.
With an incredible career record of 165-29 as a head coach, and about 16 years of head coaching experience under his belt, Urban shared what he believes to be the new definition of leadership, via the OSU Sports Coaching Twitter account.
Interestingly enough, Urban notes that this new definition of leadership comes from the "second half" of his coaching career (his words, not mine).
"Here's the new definition of leadership that I've learned since the second half of my career. It's, a leader must earn trust, be very clear about the standards that you set, and inspire and motivate those to achieve those standards."
"So it's a much more in depth quote than just, 'set a standard and demand it.' If you don't earn that trust as a leader, you're going to have a tough time coaching people how to leave this room. If you earn the trust of people, you can push people as far as they trust you."
That's some really great stuff, but now I can't help but wonder how Urban would have defined leadership early on in his coaching career as both an assistant, and then as a head coach.