Fritz Pollard Alliance head slams Jaguars’ hiring of Chris Doyle

Urban Meyer has been put on blast by the head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance for his hiring or controversial former Iowa strength coach Chris Doyle

Urban Meyer has yet to coach a game for the Jacksonville Jaguars and he already has stirred controversy.

The Jaguars’ head coach announced the hiring of former Iowa strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle on Thursday. The same Chris Doyle who lost his longstanding job with the Hawkeyes when he and the school reached a separation agreement in the summer after numerous former players spoke out about mistreatment within the Iowa program.

A number of the allegations came from Black players concerned with the way Doyle treated them and his use of racist language. Doyle was the nation’s highest-paid strength coach at $800,000 annually. He received 15 months’ salary (roughly $1.1 million), and he and his family were awarded benefits from Iowa for 15 months,

Rod Graves of the Fritz Pollard Alliance skewered Meyer and the NFL in a statement released Friday. The Fritz Pollard Alliance exists to champion diversity in the NFL through education and providing its members with resources that will help them succeed at every level of the game, per its mission statement

Meyer defending his hiring — of course — saying Thursday, “I vet everyone on our staff and like I said, the relationship goes back close to 20 years and a lot of hard questions asked, a lot of vetting involved with all our staff. We did a very good job vetting that one.

“… I met with our staff and I’m going to be very transparent with all the players like I am with everything. I’ll listen closely and learn, and also there’s going to have to be some trust in their head coach that we’re going to give them the very best of the best, and time will tell. … The allegations that took place, I will say [to the players] I vetted him. I know the person for close to 20 years and I can assure them there will be nothing of any sort in the Jaguar facility.”