Urban Meyer says he was 'mentally broke' while coaching at Florida

Urban Meyer, like many football coaches, isn’t one that goes out of his way to share his feelings. But Ohio State’s current coach opened up to Andrea Kramer from HBO’s Real Sports and revealed a side of his coaching personality that is both disturbing and distressing.

In a preview released by HBO — the interview will air in its entirety on Tuesday — Meyer admits that he had severe struggles during his years at Florida that took a toll on him emotionally and physically.

“If a case study was ever done on those years, it wasn’t pretty,” Meyer said. “The toll on my body, the toll on my mind. I would just get sick, I mean like physically ill. What could I have done better? It was my fault we lost this game. I didn’t cover that in practice.”

Meyer said he would take two Ambien sleeping pills and drink a beer just to get sleep and noted that he lost 37 pounds due to stress even though his team was undefeated.

Meyer, who ultimately had to quit Florida after the stress became too much, said the entire ordeal left him “mentally broke.”

We’ll reserve comments until we see the entire piece, but listening to Meyer talk about his struggles with coaching football — even in this two-minute clip — make you wonder why he’s still in the game? It also makes you wonder how many other coaches have gone through a similar situation and ignored it because of the drive to win or simple machismo.

Here’s hoping the rest of this piece shows that Meyer is undergoing the help he needs to stay healthy while still doing the work he loves.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday

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