Ohio State Football: Why Urban Meyer Should Take Credit for Cam Newton

COLUMBUS, Ohio — It started with what seemed like a fairly innocuous question toward the end of his weekly call-in show. But when Urban Meyer was asked by a caller about Ohio State's plans when it came to recruiting quarterbacks, he couldn't help but share the Buckeyes' sales pitch.

"There's always guys on the horizon. That's never going to change," Meyer said on Thursday's edition of The Urban Meyer Call In Show on the Ohio State Radio Network. "That's the one position that's so unique in all of sport, especially for what we do, and the quarterbacks I've been fortunate to be around, I mean it's a who's who now."

That led to some discussion about what made Tim Tebow special and some banter with co-host Jim Lachey. From there, Meyer continued to sell his history with signal-callers, listing the "who's who" that he's coached.

"The unique thing we can sell is our offense has had more first-rounders. [Along with] Florida State, we've had three first-rounders come popping out out of our offense," Meyer said. "We've had two Heisman Trophy winners—well I count Cam Newton because he was with us for a couple of years."

Meyer's answer continued, but this caught my attention. I tweeted it. Outrage and comments from national media members followed.

Newton, of course, earned his Heisman Trophy at Auburn, en route to leading the Tigers to the 2010 national championship. Prior to that, he spent two seasons with Meyer at Florida, backing up Tebow before leaving Gainesville in the spring of 2009 amidst no shortage of controversy.

Newton's two-season totals with the Gators amounted to a whopping 54 passing yards on 12 attempts to go along with 113 rushing yards and four scores on the ground. Those numbers obviously pale in comparison to what Newton accomplished at Auburn—as well as Blinn College in 2009—but that doesn't matter to Meyer.

Nor should it. 

Because as the head coach at Ohio State, Meyer's responsibility lies with the Buckeyes. Not Newton, not Auburn and not any opponent he finds himself facing for a top-tier quarterback on the recruiting trail.

Meyer's pitch of Newton is of course a stretch—a Bikram Yoga stretch, as Kobe Bryant might say—given that Newton only appeared in a total of six games during his two-season stint in Gainesville and hardly scratched the surface of the talent that led to him becoming the first overall pick of the 2011 NFL draft.

But the fact of the matter remains that Meyer can claim a tie—albeit a flimsy one—to Newton, one of the NFL's most popular players.

That's especially important when one of the questions that Meyer hears most often from high school quarterbacks is, "How are you going to the get me to the NFL?" No, Meyer isn't responsible for nudging Newton to the professional ranks, but his decision to play for Meyer in the first place and eventual success in a similar spread system are enough for the third-year Buckeyes head coach not to ignore that of Newton's four-year college career, more of it was spent with him than anyone else.

Auburn obviously has a stronger pitch when it comes to Newton, and perhaps fittingly, the Tigers are one of the teams that Ohio State finds itself battling with in the race for the services of 5-star quarterback Torrance Gibson. But that's all that this is really about anyways, as high school kids aren't really interested in picking apart a head coach's embellishments.

Which is why as Meyer continued his answer, he had no problem continuing to stretch the truth, referring to Josh Harris as a Heisman Trophy candidate and Chris Leak as an All-American. Harris never received a vote for college football's most prestigious award during his career at Bowling Green, and Leak was only named an honorable mention for All-American in 2004—the season before Meyer arrived in Gainesville.

Craig Ruttle/Associated Press

"I tell the kids in recruiting there's a lot of theory, a lot of staffs will say, 'We hope we really develop a good quarterback,'" Meyer said. "Where we can say that everyone who's ever played for us has been developed."

And while that, too, is an embellishment—Newton's 2007 classmate and fellow 5-star prospect John Brantley never caught on in the NFL after a lackluster college career—Meyer's track record with quarterbacks speaks for itself. Harris—a running back when Meyer arrived at Bowling Green in 2001—was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in 2004, a year before Utah quarterback Alex Smith was selected first overall by the San Francisco 49ers.

Despite being a polarizing prospect, Tebow—the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner—was taken by the Denver Broncos in the first round of the 2010 draft, and after Meyer's arrival in Columbus in 2012, Braxton Miller reeled off two consecutive Big Ten MVP award-winning seasons. Even the development of unheralded Kenny Guiton and current Buckeyes starter J.T. Barrett speaks favorably for Meyer, and that's before you even mention the two national titles that he totaled with the Gators.

Which begs the question, with all of Meyer's success otherwise, why even bring up Newton's name?

The answer? Because he can. In the world of recruiting, resumes aren't regulated and every edge matters—no matter how dull they may be.

Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report's Ohio State Lead Writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes obtained firsthand. All recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports.