NC PREVIEW PART DEUX:
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BUCKEYE RESTORATION?
How Urban Meyer Fixed Ohio State
By Greg Couch ,
Bill Haber/Associated Press
It started with disrespect. Ohio State lost the Gator Bowl to finish a year with more losses than it had had in one season since the 1800s, and the team flew back late at night. New coach Urban Meyer had already called his first meeting, for early in the morning. A bunch of players didn't bother to show up on time.
A few days later, another meeting. Players were late again. Offseason workouts were set to start the following week, but Meyer "turned to Mickey Marotti (his right-hand man) and said 'F--k it. Start now. Now!'" said Bill Rabinowitz, whose book, Buckeye Rebirth. Urban Meyer, An Inspired Team and a New Era at Ohio State chronicled the 2012 season. It was Meyer's first year at Ohio State. "They thought they were going to work out indoors, but he made them do it outside," Rabinowitz told Bleacher Report. "It was like 20 degrees and they didn't have any gear.
They were wearing socks on their head to stay warm. They were doing crazy drills, trying to weed them out. He kicked them out of the locker room, and they were dressing in the cafeteria and the halls. He wouldn't let them wear Ohio State clothes. 'Now you understand how hard you have to work.' He absolutely erased any sense of entitlement."
| Year | School | W-L | Bowl |
| 2001 | Bowling Green State | 8-3 | |
| 2002 | Bowling Green State | 9-3 | |
| 2003 | Utah | 10-2 | Liberty Bowl-W |
| 2004 | Utah | 12-0 | Fiesta Bowl-W |
| 2005 | Florida | 9-3 | Outback Bowl-W |
| 2006 | Florida | 13-1 | BCS Championship-W |
| 2007 | Florida | 9-4 | Capital One Bowl-L |
| 2008 | Florida | 13-1 | BCS Championship-W |
| 2009 | Florida | 13-1 | Sugar Bowl-W |
| 2010 | Florida | 8-5 | Outback Bowl-W |
| 2012 | Ohio State | 12-0 | |
| 2013 | Ohio State | 12-2 | Orange Bowl-L |
| 2014 | Ohio State | 13-1 | Sugar Bowl-W |
Meyer has turned around Ohio State at an incredible pace.
It's a huge overstatement to portray this like the Bad News Bears. Ohio State has all the money and all the tradition in the world, and it had come off only one bad year when Meyer arrived. Still, we've seen national powerhouses teeter and then fall off a cliff. Like Nebraska. Like Michigan. Ohio State very well could have been another one. Instead, in just three years, Meyer has the Buckeyes in the national championship game against Oregon.
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| Can you name this Buckeye fan? |
"At a school like Ohio State…you should be able to rally back pretty quick," Meyer told reporters Tuesday. "Any time there's transition or issues you have to deal with, sometimes you get a little bit of a void in a recruiting class and it's amazing nowadays, (how it takes) one year. \
"But we have a really a [sic] motto around here: There's no excuses from the coachesor players, and I don't want to hear about this, we don't have this, we don't have this, the previous staff—no, no, no. We are good, they are your players now and our players now and do the best you can with them."
Meyer said Ohio State avoided the void thanks to the seniors in 2012. They could have left Ohio State when the NCAA announced sanctions that included a ban from bowl games. Meyer said every last senior stayed, and that staved off another bad year or two.
You'd expect at least a little trouble, though. Some hard times. And even though the Buckeyes finished undefeated in his first year and couldn't play in a bowl game, Meyer did have trouble. He'd won two national titles at Florida and spent a year on ESPN, and you probably think that meant instant respect among the players.
Rabinowitz described Meyer's troubles in getting players on his side. Tressel had been the guy who hugged his players, made them feel like part of the family. But when everyone's favorite uncle left, Meyer came in as all business. In Meyer's business, that includes cracking heads.
Dave Martin/Associated Press
"He's done it everywhere to be honest," said Beckman, who has known Meyer since his college days and was his defensive coordinator at Bowling Green for two seasons. "He came in and we had a very good group coming back, and he brought his discipline and his philosophy and next thing I knew we were winning eight games, nine games right away. He did it at Utah, Florida. The same thing.
"He had some talent at Ohio State. But I think he brought that all together and incorporated a vision. And he'll let them know; he's not bashful. He'll let them know how it's going to be done. That creates change right away. No, he's not bashful."
Not bashful. According to Rabinowitz, Meyer started in right away with mat drills. Put it this way: If you were in a mat drill, you'd have a football player standing in front of you—and a line on the floor eight yards behind him. You have eight seconds to cross that line.
He has eight seconds to stop you.
Rabinowitz said plenty of players weren't buying into the change in philosophy at Ohio State and weren't buying into Meyer. The Buckeyes looked bad for the first four games in 2012 but won anyway. And when they were going to play Michigan State in the Big Ten opener, Meyer figured they were going to lose.
He told the team, according to Rabinowitz, to stop evaluating and second-guessing coaches and they'd see it pay off. Ohio State won that game, and everything turned. Also, the Big Ten was awful that year, making it easier for the Buckeyes to roll.
Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
In the long run, Meyer changed things not only by turning everything into a competition and by removing entitlement through bootcamp, but also by modernizing the offense. That, mixed with his big name, brought something that the Big Ten wasn't used to: top, speedy, skill-position recruits from all over the country. He wins everywhere he goes.
So a big-time coach fixing a blue-blood program in a hurry isn't your usual feel-good kind of story. But it started by reminding a tough program how to get its hands dirty. Hey, royalty has its problems, too.
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