Urban Meyer’s House Is Freaking Me Out, Man

You might think the weirdest part is the coffee table. I couldn't really argue with you. Look at this insanity:

That's from Jacksonville local news anchor Jeannie Blaylock, who scored an invitation into the home of Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer to get some quotes, take some photos, and, I can only assume, be chilled to the marrow by this man's lunatic decor sensibilities.

Who is the "you," here, who might think a designer is responsible for this? It sure as hell is not me. I feel highly confident no one who has ever beheld this tableau has for even a moment thought that it was assembled by a professional designer. No one capable of the thought, "A low table between two couches in a living room should look like that," has ever received even one dollar in exchange for their design insights. Is that a coffee table or a damn stegosaurus. Where were you when you learned Meyer takes his decorating cues from photovoltaic arrays? Does this man even know what photos or coffee tables are for?

I would like to further call your attention to the end table in the near background of the above photo. Psycho shit. A framed photo immediately in front of another framed photo. Blocking the other one. Are these talismans? A deck of trading cards? Is the rear photo a haunted/accursed type of deal, where if you gaze upon it your eyes melt? Are the photos there less for their visual elements and more for the quality of their conversation? I'd scarcely be more disturbed by a photo of this living room if all its seats were occupied by lifelike full-sized wax figurines. I'm not sure who should feel more insulted, here, "you" or literally every designer on the face of the earth.

Here you might posit that perhaps the Meyers do not typically festoon every square horizontal inch of their home with framed family photos—where would they set their drinks?—but only have put these out to emphasize their down-home coziness and love of family for how they estimate that will play with the likely conservative-skewing subset of people who give a shit about how Urban Meyer and his wife decorate their home. Fine, sure, I'll buy that. The follow-up question is: Then where do all of these photos reside the rest of the time? Now I am picturing closets in the Meyer home filled to the ceiling with framed photos of various family members, ready to be deployed as a phalanx against bad PR. Honestly that is every bit as creepy to me as the idea that the tables always look like a giant used an upside-down Michaels craft store as a salt shaker to decorate them.

There's other stuff. Here is Urban Meyer's somewhat more normal, yet also dank-looking backyard swimming pool:

I'll be honest, reader: I do not have any choice burns for this pool. I would swim in it, gladly, so long as there were no creepy Stepford Meyers around. I am not picky about swimming holes! As for the giant inflatable flamingos:

I am incapable of reading "A bit of trivia to make you smile" in anything other than DadBoner voice. Love to kick back on the giant inflatable flamingo in my backyard pool and enjoy a smooth, delicious Gatorpagne. I feel reasonably sure those flamingos are slimy with algal growth on their undersides. You can't just leave them floating in the pool, Shelley.

For my money, though, the photoshoot's most disturbing image is the master shot of the Meyers' living room:

The huge framed ... photo? Painting? Photoshop? on the mantle is exquisitely spooky. Here is our visually indistinguishable Borg-family, being creepy on the coast. Nothing in it looks halfway real. Dressing your entirely identical family in matching hyper-gendered pastel uniforms for a beachfront family photo is one of the more disturbing practices of white culture in America, right ahead of "holding one hand up weirdly during the bland praise-rock at the megachurch" and right behind "Jan. 6, 2021."

And then there's—oh. Oh no.

Oh no.

Oh no!!!!!!!!