Ohio State Football Recruiting: Urban Meyer Has Already Beaten Brady Hoke

When Urban Meyer was introduced as Ohio State's new head football coach in late November, the program's future immediately got brighter.

Meyer then proceeded to make it even brighter seemingly as soon as he left the room. All he had to do was set foot on the recruiting trail, and the commitments started coming in.

The success Meyer has enjoyed in a relatively short amount of time out on the recruiting trail is truly staggering. You really can't appreciate how staggering it's been until you take a look at the numbers.

Per both Rivals.com and Scouts.com, Meyer has secured seven commitments since he was introduced on Nov. 29. Rivals has six of those seven down as 4-star recruits, with the one exception being 5-star defensive end Noah Spence. Scout has guard Joey O'Connor listed as a 3-star recruit, but the other six are down as 4 or 5-star recruits.

Thanks to the late influx of recruits, Ohio State's recruiting haul is now widely regarded as one of the best in the country.

This would be impressive enough in and of itself, but it's even more impressive when you compare Meyer's work to that of his new biggest rival: Michigan head coach Brady Hoke.

Credit where credit is due, Hoke has done an outstanding job of recruiting since taking over at Michigan, and his 2012 class is also one of the best in the nation.

But do you know how many recruits Hoke has secured since Meyer was hired?

Two. Wide receivers Amara Darboh and Jehu Chesson. That's it.

Now, to be fair, it's not like Hoke had catching up to do. Meyer did, meaning he needed a mass influx of recruits after he was hired. Hoke didn't.

But you can't look at these two recruiting classes as being totally independent of one another. For lack of a better expression, Ohio State and Michigan have always been joined at the hip, and they always will be. Instead of cooperating, they jockey for position.

Thanks to Meyer's presence, Ohio State is winning the struggle.

There is still time for the tide to turn, of course. National Signing Day is just a few days away, and Hoke could very well secure a few more last-minute commitments to save face.

But it's too late. The damage has been done. Meyer has come in and secured a future that is just as bright, if not brighter, than Michigan's. The Wolverines experienced a revival while the Buckeyes fell back to earth in 2011, and they even managed to beat Ohio State for the first time since 2003, but their edge over the Buckeyes is not made to last. Meyer has made the Buckeyes great again, and it took him just a couple weeks to do it.

Meyer has beaten Hoke at the recruiting game this year, and that's something Hoke is going to have to get used to. Meyer's recruiting abilities are legendary, and he's shown us in the last couple months that his year away from football did not rob him of his skills.

He is still really, really good at playing this game, and that's bad news for Michigan.