The Return of Urban: All Signs Point to Ohio State Dominance Sooner Than Later

A swell of scarlet and grey is set to engulf much of the Big Ten and beyond, and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop it.

The loss of a few scholarships won’t do it; neither will being left out of a Big Ten championship and other postseason opportunities for one season. Ohio State has their coach, a firm clutch on momentum and appears poised for familiar dominance in a conference that is ripe for the taking.

The jokes surrounding Urban Meyer’s brief stint to “spend more time with his family” were plentiful. His one-year hiatus from the game never seemed permanent, regardless of what Meyer said regarding his comfy job as an ESPN analyst. He’s a football junkie, and as much as he needed to step away from the playbook, there was absolutely no possible way he could stay away for long.

It’s in his blood and who he is. The timing of the Ohio State opening was the perfect storm for an early return, and he jumped right back in. The money would be there, and it was, and the mutual interest made this an easy decision for both sides.

Urban Meyer’s Ohio State Buckeyes, which still takes some getting used to, will hit the field for the first time on March 28th for spring practice. Smiles and signatures have been exchanged, but the honeymoon is over, and there will be much to be accomplished in a short amount of time. This transition will not be easy, especially with a complex offensive system to implement, but it will no doubt be made easier by the fact that Meyer has a quarterback who should thrive with his playbook.

As a freshman, Braxton Miller showed flashes of utter brilliance while also making some mistakes that you’d expect an 18-year-old to make. He’s already a better passer than many give him credit for, and his ground game is already well established. In the last six games of the season, including their bowl game, Miller threw for 756 yards and racked up 472 yards rushing and 15 total touchdowns.

Miller is the perfect fit for Meyer’s offense, and his presence for the next two or three years was no doubt an enticing opportunity as Meyer eyed a return. Miller’s crash course of Meyer’s offense has already begun, and he’ll learn more in the next few months than he’ll likely ever pick up in his football lifetime.

With his QB already a part of the incoming foundation, Meyer entered Ohio State and hit the ground sprinting. In a matter of months, he turned an average recruiting class into one of the nation’s best. This, of course, came while the nation learned of the NCAA’s punishment of the school and the unanticipated bowl ban the team will face in 2012. It didn’t matter—not one bit. The verbal commitments all signed when national signing day came, and the kids bought in. How could they not?

Meyer finished 65-15 while the head coach at Florida and won two national championships during this time. His success, which helped jump start the dominance for the nation’s premier conference, has been matched by few coaches ever in this game.

Meyer will now have the task of returning another school to the expected dominance that it has seen over the history of the program. And unlike the job he did in the past, this domination will be much easier to come by.

The simple truth to evaluating Meyer’s potential success relies much in the fact that the Big Ten should be very average from top to the bottom for the foreseeable future. Perhaps, this is a “by default” outlook to some degree, but it’s also a true assessment of what he’s up against.

Although Brady Hoke and Michigan are absolutely rolling and will no doubt be a force in on-the-field and recruiting battles for years to come, they are the only other Big Ten team with significant momentum at this moment.

Since 2008, Ohio State and Michigan combined had 10 classes rank in Rivals’ Top 25 team rankings. In this time, the remaining teams of the Big Ten conference has had only eight teams make it into the Top 25.

These rankings are only one scouting opinion and are in no way an exact science. With that said, it’s abundantly clear that top talent is not consistently heading to the Big Ten outside of these two programs. This will work significantly in Meyer’s favor, and it already has. 

Meyer’s health is the only thing between him and complete success at Ohio State. If he can manage his personal life and his coaching life, which is a big “if” knowing the obsession for detail that he has, then the Buckeyes should roll from the get-go and never look back.

The expectations for early success will be somewhat tempered for his team because of the bowl ban which will go into effect this year. In the grand scheme, this might not actually be a bad thing, unless, of course, Ohio State finds themselves in the championship hunt earlier than expected. Although the pressure will be off, even briefly for a season, Meyer will be expected to dominant the Big Ten and compete for championships on a yearly basis.

Given his history and the sheer amount of football data in his oversized football brain, there’s absolutely no reason to think he will do otherwise.