"Why is he even here?" HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel's Andrea Kramer asks about Urban Meyer at Ohio State's home opener against Virginia Tech this past year.
Reiterating the same story that Ohio State (and Florida fans alike) have grown accustomed to over the last several years, Kramer probes into Urban Meyer's descent from the top of college football, while also broaching what's changed and why he's confident the same self-admitted addiction to winning won't become an issue again.
"If a key study is ever done on those years...It wasn't pretty," Meyer says in the HBO feature set to air Tuesday at 10 p.m. "The toll on my body, on my mind. I would just get sick. Like physically ill."
As had made the rounds in the mainstream media last week, Meyer talks in-depth about the two-Ambien and beer self-medicating habit that drove him to the brink in the late 2000s and how far he's come since.
Though the overarching narrative of HBO Sports' piece is nothing new or groundbreaking, the Meyer family's interpersonal dynamics with respect to his decision to come back to the highest level of coaching so soon after walking away is delved deeply into in a personal way that hasn't really been done before.
Urban's wife Shelley admits that she cried after the Ohio State job first opened up knowing how alluring it would be to her husband, as she didn't think it would be a good idea for him to take the job at first.
"That news broke, and I was devastated. I loved this guy. He was great. He was so not stressed," she says in the episode.
While the Meyer family's famed pink contract is rather familiar to Ohio State fans, the recent much Instagram-ed appearance at Gigi Meyer's volleyball game a night before OSU's biggest game of the fall paints a portrait of the lengths to which Meyer's gone to honor it.
"He's a great father and husband," Shelley Meyer adds. "He's been even better since the year off," she says fighting back tears.
Despite the life changes, and even in light of some of the difficulties Meyer's experienced on the field through his now third season in Columbus, Meyer remains adamant that life balance and winning aren't mutually exclusive.
"What I've learned is we're not here to please others," Meyer says. "I'm here to coach this football team. As long as I remained focus on the task at hand -- motivating and mentoring the team -- there's no issues."
But can Meyer truly do one thing one way for 25 years and repeat the highest success he's experienced despite taking a different approach?
"Can you win a national championship doing that? Absolutely you can," Meyer says.
HBO's feature on Urban Meyer, his departure from Florida, his time at Ohio State and his newfound work-life balance premiers Tuesday night on HBO, Channel 602 on Time Warner Columbus-Delaware.