Ohio State Football: Urban Meyer's Plea to College Football Playoff Committee

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Election Day was last Tuesday. But for Urban Meyer, campaign season is just getting underway.

That's nothing new for the Ohio State head coach, who is a decade removed from having to fight to get his undefeated Utah squad into a coveted BCS bowl. Two years later, Meyer would again campaign—successfully—to land Florida in the national title game, and he found himself last year arguing the Buckeyes' national championship game worthiness, before Michigan State made it a moot point.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that as we head down the homestretch and toward the first-ever College Football Playoff, Meyer again finds himself at the center of controversy. With the selection of the playoff's field of four fewer than four weeks away, there may not be a team with a more interesting resume than Ohio State—especially after last weekend's big win over Michigan State.

Meyer knows that his team's most impressive win—maybe the most impressive of all of the teams remaining in the playoff field—will be weighed against Ohio State's albatross of a loss to Virginia Tech in the second week of the season. Which is why, when asked about the subject on Monday, the third-year Buckeyes coach was prepared.

"I don't want to act like it's rehearsed, but it's rehearsed because I tend to say stupid things sometimes," Meyer said, drawing on his previous campaign experiences. "That early in the season, we were not a great team. We had a quarterback that was a quarterback for about two weeks and did not play very well. We had an offensive line that played horrible that game and a group of receivers that were not ready to play.

"This is the most improved team that I've been a part of."

The numbers back up Meyer's assessment.

Since suffering that early-season defeat at the hands of the Hokies—who have compiled just a 4-5 record on the season—the Buckeyes have reeled off seven consecutive wins, concluding with last weekend's road triumph over the Spartans. Ohio State has looked far from the team that completed just nine of 29 pass attempts against Virginia Tech, ranking 10th in total offense (512.1 yards per game) and fourth in points per game (46).

Al Goldis/Associated Press

A big part of that has been the improved play of freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett, who saw his Heisman Trophy odds increase to 20-1, per Odds Shark, following his 386-yard, five-touchdown performance against Michigan State. But that's just been a part of the story of the Buckeyes' improvement, as Ohio State's wide receivers, offensive line and defense have each played noticeably better in the past two months as well.

That trajectory, to Meyer, is the sign of a championship-quality team, something that he knows a thing or two about.

"I've been fortunate to be around some championship-level teams," said Meyer, who captured national titles with the Gators in 2006 and 2008. "They have a common characteristic and they're grinders. And they get better each week. Those are championship-level teams."

The problem for Meyer and the Buckeyes, however, is that at this point in the season, they aren't the only one.

In fact, Ohio State only catapulted back into the playoff discussion following its signature victory over the Spartans. The Buckeyes' odds of winning the national championship shifted from 14-1 to 15-2, per Odds Shark. In the first two weeks of the College Football Playoff rankings, Ohio State measured in at No. 16 and No. 14, respectively, with the committee explaining that the Buckeyes lacked victories impressive enough to justify otherwise.

"We're still early in this process and while I wouldn't get that excited about Ohio State's placement, we do think that based on the other teams that they've played to this point in the schedule, this is where they deserve to be ranked," committee chair and Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long said after the first batch of rankings were released. "Ohio State has opportunities on their schedule to play up, as many of these teams do."

It remains to be seen how far the Buckeyes played themselves up this past weekend—we'll find that out Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. ET—but if the latest AP Top 25 and USA Today Coaches' Polls are any indication, Ohio State should land at No. 7 or No. 8. That would put the Buckeyes on the outside looking in at the playoff field, behind the likes of Mississippi State, Florida State, Alabama, Oregon, TCU, Baylor and potentially Arizona State.

Of course, there's a lot of football left to be played between now and the playoff committee's final selection show, and at least one of those teams will pick up an additional loss with Mississippi State and Alabama squaring off this weekend.

A likely trip to the Big Ten Championship Game will provide the opportunity for the Buckeyes to add another potential quality win to their resume, but even then, that pesky Virginia Tech loss still looms.

Paul Vernon/Associated Press/Associated Press

And while Ohio State still has one more month and four more games to prove it's a different team now than it was back then, that scarlet letter of a defeat is still going to need some explaining. But in the Buckeyes' first game of the season, Meyer may have had just that, as Ohio State was tasked with spending a large portion of its summer preparing for Navy's unique triple-option attack.

That might be more than just an excuse for Meyer to use, as well. Navy's opponents have gone a combined 1-7 in the weeks following their matchups with the Midshipmen, proving that preparing for an offense as unique as Navy's can throw a wrench into any team's extended plans.

"I could see that," Meyer responded when presented with that stat on Monday.

Factor in that the Hokies opened the season with I-AA opponent William & Mary and thus essentially had all summer to prepare for Ohio State, and the Buckeyes' lone blemish doesn't appear as big as it might seem. Still, Ohio State is going to need to continue to showcase its growth in the next four weeks if Meyer is going to have any chance at again making good on his campaign-trail promises.

"This could all be gone if we don't go out and continue to do what we do," Meyer said. "But I do know a championship-level team. A team continues to grow like they are, like this, there's no question this is one of them."

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 statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com and recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports.