Report: Urban Meyer Agrees to Ohio State Football Deal of 7 Years, $40 Million

Urban Meyer and Ohio State have come to terms for their football head coaching job, according to a report from Local 6 in Orlando.

The 47-year-old has deep ties to Ohio.  He was born in Toledo, graduated from St. John's High School in Ashtabula, and played college football at Cincinnati.  He was an assistant at OSU in 1986-1987, and spent two successful years as head coach at Bowling Green State University before moving on to Utah and eventually Florida.  

Meyer won two BCS National Championships in his six seasons as head coach at Florida and was the third-highest paid head coach in the nation.  He took a brief leave of absence after the 2009 season but returned to coach Florida in 2010.  He resigned after a poor 7-5 season in 2010 citing health concerns.

He has spent the last year as an ESPN college football commentator.  Meyer had been assigned the Michigan/Ohio State game this Saturday but ESPN announced it reassigned him to a desk job in Bristol.

Meyer has been successful with the spread offense, but another semi-famous head coach Rich Rodriguez tried the spread offense at a Big Ten school, and we all know how that experiment worked out.

Florida also had some problems with graduation rates and arrests of players during Meyer's tenure.  Will he avoid those problems at Ohio State?

Ohio State certainly got its big-name coach, and recruiting is the most important factor of a big time college head football coach.  The fact is that Ohio State is not getting its share of top-shelf high school prospects right now.

Also, current head coach Luke Fickell has done a solid job with the 2011 team even though his record does not reflect it. Did Ohio State panic and spend a ton of money to get a big-name coach just to keep the alumni happy?

Urban Meyer will get the recruits and he will win football games, but will some of the off-field drama that was evident at Florida follow him to Columbus?