Former University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer was appointed to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday.
The governor also reappointed Mark Bauerlein and Debra Jenks to the board of the Sarasota school. All appointments are subject to confirmation by the state Senate.
Meyer, 61, who also coached at Ohio State and won one national title with the Buckeyes and two with the Gators, currently works as a college football analyst for Fox Sports. In 2025, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
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Meyer, who was also head coach of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars in 2021, earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Cincinnati and a master’s in sports administration at Ohio State.
Meyer’s resume and background in sports administration could be seen as a boost to New College’s accelerated expansion into intercollegiate athletics, part of a 10-year master plan to increase enrollment and expand the school's physical footprint.
New College, which has an athletics department, added multiple teams since 2023, when it joined the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, a governing body for small college sports. The school also became a member of the Sun Conference and selected Mighty Banyans as a mascot.
Although a winner on the field, Meyer’s 17-year coaching career has included controversy. He left UF after the 2010 season following a health-related leave of absence and was hired a year later at Ohio State. At OSU, he was suspended for three games in 2018 for his handling of domestic violence allegations involving an assistant coach, then stepped down for health reasons. His 13-game stint with the Jaguars ended amid reports of organizational dysfunction.
DeSantis has led a shift to turn the once-progressive liberal arts school toward a more conservative model through the selection of trustees and Corcoran as president. The state university rebranded and dropped courses deemed “woke,” such as gender studies.
The college tried to acquire The Ringling museum and the University of South Florida's Sarasota-Manatee campus in early 2025. Efforts were unsuccessful after public pushback. However, according to DeSantis' proposed budget for 2026-27, the adjacent USF campus is back on the agenda.
Florida's Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] recently released a report that New College far outspent other state universities.
