'Changing' the operative word for world, Florida's Meyer

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- It's the guns that bother Marty Johnson the most.

Fighting an Aryan gang in high school was tough enough for Johnson, who is African-American. The Peckerwoods, he says they were called. It took his entire high school experience and a bunch of student expulsions, but the "big, old race riots" finally died out. So did the swastikas and n-words spray-painted at Rio Linda High School.

Urban Meyer came to Florida two years ago promising Buford Pusser-like justice. (Getty Images)

The former Utah tailback recently moved out of his native Sacramento, Calif., to Brigham City, Utah. Half to get away from the violence, half to be with his girlfriend.

That says a lot for a guy who should be in the gutter somewhere, a guy who certainly has a right to be bitter. Last year, a suspected gang member shot and killed Kevin Kimble outside a party in Oroville, a city about an hour from Sacramento. Kimble, 34, was shot in the back of the head.

He was Marty Johnson's brother.

Johnson wonders how some of those high school fights would have turned out 10 years ago if guns had been involved. He also wonders where he'd be without Urban Meyer, his coach at Utah.

"It seems that society was moving in a different direction," Johnson said of Florida's current national championship coach. "The carelessness for life, these days. That kid at Virginia Tech.

"That's the thing Coach Meyer had a hard time dealing with. If anybody failed a drug test, he couldn't believe stuff like that went on. He was raised Catholic, conservative."

Meyer has to believe now. The world has changed around him, near him.

His team has had its share of off-field incidents -- allegedly involving a gun and failed drug tests -- to go along with that amazing national championship in his second year at Florida. Too much wrongdoing, critics might say, for the guy who promised a get-tough policy for a program that was veering out of control under Ron Zook.

Two prominent players were arrested during the spring. Linebacker Dustin Doe was charged with fighting in public. Offensive guard Ronnie Wilson, was charged with a felony after shooting off a semi-automatic weapon in the street after a confrontation with a man at a Gainesville club.

Earlier in the spring, Meyer had to answer a question he thought he'd never hear.

Are you thinking about doing the same thing Miami is?