This is my essay for a project in my composition class. DISCLAIMER: It's about 2000 words, so it's probably not worth reading, and I'm sure it's mostly common knowledge-type-stuff for most of you hardened 11W'ers, but if for some reason you are bored enough to read it, I would appreciate comments and advice since it's due tomorrow. Thanks!
One way people often contrast football between college and the NFL is the balance of power. The NFL is much more controlled by the players themselves, because players have leverage from their contracts and ability to be traded, and because to some extent players (particularly quarterbacks) even have control over playcalls. In college football however, head coaches have an huge amount of impact over a program. This is why the go-to approach for a struggling college football program is a change of head coach. One of the best examples of the positive change this can bring about, and one I, as a passionate Buckeye fan, am very familiar with, is when Urban Meyer was hired at Ohio State. The year and a half before he was hired, in December of 2011, were a tumultuous time in the Ohio State football program. The NCAA, college athletics’ governing body, had just conducted an investigation which revealed an benefits scandal that had not been reported by then-head coach Jim Tressel. This led to Tressel’s resignation, as well as the loss of key players for most or all of the 2011 season. That season, when the Buckeyes went just 6-7, was one of the worst in Ohio State history. Near the end of the year, however, former Florida head coach Urban Meyer came out of early retirement to take the job at Ohio State. His effect on the program was immediate; In 2012, just one year later, the Buckeyes went undefeated. So how is one man able to have such an impact on a team? Ohio State’s hiring of Urban Meyer as its head football coach, as well as various other recent hirings around the country, are excellent examples of how college football coaches are able to use changes in recruiting, culture, and scheme to have immediate impact on their teams.
Before he even made an impact on the field, Urban Meyer was making waves around the country in the recruiting field. He took over the job at the height of the 2012 recruiting cycle and was able to turn it from a relatively mediocre class of almost entirely Ohio prospects into a nationally top five class in just the few months he was provided until signing day. One of the way he accomplished this was by “flipping” recruits who were committed to other schools into committing to the Buckeyes. This is a tactic that is all but a foundation of recruiting today in every conference across the country, and not something that any coach would necessarily like to have to worry about or do to an opponent, but an accepted part of recruiting nonetheless. This wasn’t the case, however, especially in the Big Ten, five years ago. In fact, when Meyer flipped two four-star players from Michigan State and Wisconsin, he drew heavy fire from then-Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema: “We don’t want to be like the SEC in any way, shape, or form.” Bielema said in response to Urban Meyer’s tactics. (Slightly ironic as he was soon to abruptly ditch his job at Wisconsin and is now head coach of an SEC school) This whole scenario, however, soon came to be the norm. Urban Meyer was really the spark that modernized the Big Ten, and revolutionized Ohio State from the Jim Tressel days. Just a look at recruiting classes under the two head coaches show a stark difference in aggressiveness. Jim Tressel rarely offered more than 60 players in any recruiting cycle, and usually signed about 20 per year. In 2014, Meyer offered 183 players, and signed 31. Buckeye rosters under Tressel were also mostly geographically centralized, with the majority of players coming from Ohio high schools. Meyer's rosters are littered with players from every region of the country. In fact, in 2016, Meyer signed a lower percentage of Ohio players than any other time in Buckeye history, with only 36% from the state of Ohio, a talent rich state in its own right.
Beyond recruiting, the impact Urban Meyer has had on the culture at Ohio State has been dramatic, and has helped propel players to the highest levels of college football and beyond. After back to back losses to end the 2013 football season which gave some cause for concern to fans, Meyer was working to instill his culture into players at Ohio State. Two of the most famous tenets of his cultural change are “4-6 seconds,” indicating for players to devote their full effort for four to six seconds, the average length of a football play, and “A-B,” indicating him wanting players to get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible. Before the 2014 season, Chris Ash was hired as a co-defensive coordinator. These cultural tenets, as well as Chris Ash’s aggressive pass coverage scheme, revolutionized the Buckeyes, especially on defense. By reducing frills and fancy schemes and channeling players' focus towards aggressiveness and fundamentals, Urban Meyer and his staff were able to bring about a huge turnaround from the often horrendous pass defense of 2013 to the reincarnation of the “Silver Bullets,” lockdown defenses of old, and the national championship of 2014 and top 5 defense of 2015 which gave up only 13 points per game.
Probably the most noticeable difference that Meyer brought to Ohio State was the aggressiveness on offense. In 2014, the Buckeyes scored an average of more than 44 points per game. When the team was playing in it’s prime, OSU would come out of the gate firing on all cylinders, scoring 2 or 3 touchdowns in the first quarter alone. Meyer and his coaching staff were responsible for a complete overhaul of the offensive playbook as well. Meyer’s best coaching job is often considered the 2012 season, when Ohio State went undefeated. He took a battered, depleted, and demoralized roster that had just had the worst year in living Buckeye memory and found a way to coach them to a win in every game. What I find so remarkable about this season was Meyer’s resourcefulness on offense. While 2011 was miserable all around, perhaps the biggest bright spot was the play of true freshman quarterback Braxton Miller. No doubt that without Braxton’s raw but highlight-worthy plays, that season would have been much more unbearable. He wasn’t the most polished passer early in his career, but Miller made up for it with his shiftiness and moves as a runner. He provided a crucial spark to an otherwise struggling offense, and when Meyer took over, he made the decision to make Miller the centerpiece of the offense. Teams knew what was coming, but there was nothing they could do as Miller gashed them with shifty moves and deep bombs. Miller led the team in passing as well as rushing, and carried the team on his back through 12 victories.
While 2012 was played almost entirely with Jim Tressel recruits, Meyer was able to adapt his offense in the next few years as his cupboards began to be stocked with recruits that were hand picked by him and his staff. One of the positions where this was most noticeable was at running back. Halfback Carlos Hyde had his breakout year in 2013, soon to be followed the next year by the even more outstanding (and now top-five draft pick), Ezekiel Elliott. Throughout his coaching career, Meyer has been known for his “power spread” offense, a scheme which spreads receivers across the field to allow for fast-hitting passes while focusing on the strong inside running game provided by a quarterback like Tim Tebow at Florida or a running back like Elliott at OSU. Over the past three seasons, Meyer has had the perfect pieces in place to run an offense like this. A good running back like Hyde or Elliott is the obvious one, but to maximize its effectiveness it also requires a mobile quarterback to keep defenses on their toes (Miller and current quarterback JT Barrett fit this role perfectly), and most important of all, a solid offensive line. The Buckeye offensive line in 2013 was nothing short of legendary; three of them were starters as rookies in the NFL the next year.
2014 went a bit differently. Miller was injured just weeks before the start of the season, leaving freshman JT Barrett as the starting quarterback with zero game experience to his name. While the offense started off the season running a more simplified playbook than normal to allow Barrett to gain experience, the coaches were soon able to tweak the offense to showcase some of his strengths. Purely by a scheme standpoint, these were his surprising deceptiveness, solid accuracy, and ability to run a quarterback/running back option play quickly and efficiently. Meyer and his offensive coordinator Tom Herman turned the offense into a well greased and fast-hitting machine, letting Barrett take advantage of the spread offense to accurately hit his receivers on quick passes, while running plays at a quick tempo and making the option a staple of the playbook. Barrett and Ezekiel Elliott were able to ruthlessly and efficiently pick apart defenses. It seemed like bad luck had struck again when Barrett was injured in the last game of the regular season, but the coaches were once again able to take advantage of 3rd-stringer Cardale Jones’ cannon arm and steamroller-like running style to go on a legendary three game post-season run and turn the season from a potential catastrophe into a most unlikely national title. This goes to show how Meyer was able to adapt his team to fit the talents of its best players, and how he was able to instantly turn around a struggling roster and program.
Tom Herman was one of the key pieces to the team during the first three years of Urban Meyer’s tenure. As offensive coordinator, he played a crucial role in working with Meyer to develop the offensive philosophy that was so effective, particularly in 2014. He was also responsible to introducing the “Inside Zone” concept, something Meyer had never worked with before. It was a more adaptable version of blocking which the offensive line could use to match the defense, and it allowed the Buckeyes to play to their strengths and pick up larger chunks of yardage on running plays. He was also invaluable in developing quarterback play, in Miller, Barrett, and Jones. In short, the unlikely championship in 2014 probably couldn’t have happened without him. His success didn’t go unnoticed, however, and after the 2014 season he left to take the head coaching job at Houston, and became another prime example of the immediate impact a coach can have on a football team.
Tom Herman was hired by Houston near the end of the 2014 season. After coaching Ohio State to victories and a national title in his final two games, he went to Texas full time to coach the Cougars. On paper, it was a remarkable turnaround. After a mediocre 8-5 season in the year before, Herman revitalized the team and led them to a 12-1 record, a major bowl win over Florida State, and a top 10 ranking. Similarly to how Meyer was able to immediately catapult the Buckeyes into relevance, Herman used a mix of resourcefulness (A converted wide receiver, Greg Ward Jr, was Houston’s starting quarterback) and promoting a culture of family and brotherhood to make the Cougars one of the best stories of the season. Although I am a Buckeye at heart and would rather not discuss “That Team Up North,” Jim Harbaugh was able to orchestrate a similarly immediate comeback at Michigan this year. He took the Wolverines from a horrendous 5-7 season to a very solid 10-3 season in arguably the hardest division in college football in just one year. However questionable his methods might be (see: climbing trees and sleeping over at recruits’ houses), if his first year was any indication then he has his team on a path to maintain this relative success, with a top-5 recruiting class in his first year. Because of this historical trend, many other schools, such as Nebraska, Penn State, Florida, Maryland, and USC, just to name a few, have tried to bring about success with a coaching change in the past few years.
These success stories of new coaches aren’t always the case, but they won’t stop teams from trying. The “Coaching Carousel” has historically taken place at the end of every college football season, when coaches are fired, hired from smaller schools, or hired in desperation to fix a sinking ship of team. Ohio State couldn’t have come out of the carousel at a better spot when they were able to lure Urban Meyer out of retirement. Out of all the fantastic players on Buckeye rosters, there is no one who could have had a bigger impact on the team than him. His top notch national recruiting has brought in the best players from across the country year after year, and his on-field results speak to his greatness with an astounding record of just 4 losses during his time at Ohio State. Urban has made it his business to make it a great time to be a Buckeye.