Urban Meyer recalls wife's cookie scandal with Utah football player

Back in the day, the NCAA could get pretty strict when it came to enforcing compliance on college football programs, sometimes a little too strict.

Like the time Urban Meyer’s wife was ratted out. For making some cookies.

The former national champion revealed that when he was at Utah more than 20 years ago, somebody in the school’s compliance office found out that Mrs. Meyer was baking cookies for players, and that just couldn’t stand.

“I was the head coach at Utah, and Shelley would always get the player of the game, she would make cookies for them,” Meyer recalled on The Triple Option podcast.

“Brandon Warfield was our tailback. This is 2003. He got Player of the Week in the Mountain West Conference. Shelley made him cookies. Our compliance guy turned her in...”

Meyer added: “I got a letter. The letter said that you’ve committed a violation and you’re going to be reprimanded by your husband. I kid you not.”

Meyer didn’t say what game Warfield got the illegal cookies for, but Utah’s 2003 football program noted that he was named MWC Player of the Week in Weeks 1 and 2.

Warfield ran for 173 yards and a touchdown in the opener against Utah State, a 20-point victory, and added 181 yards and 3 scores in a 2-point loss against Texas A&M.

That season, he compiled 976 yards rushing and scored 11 times.

Thankfully not much, if anything, appeared to come by way of punishment in the cookie scandal of 2003, illustrating just how different the world was a short time ago.

These days, in the world of NIL endorsements and multi-million dollar collectives, it’s not uncommon to see players posing with sports cars and other baubles they were able to buy with booster money, all made legit by the recent wave of reforms.

We’ve come a long way from illicit cookies.

(Triple Option)

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