Urban Meyer to Ohio State: Why Buckeyes Will Regret Major Hiring

With Urban Meyer finally telling the world what we all knew to be official last week, that he is taking the head coaching job at Ohio State, the fans in Columbus are no doubt rejoicing because they got their man. But I would caution that optimism because no one knows what he is going to do.

The Buckeyes have invested a lot of money in Meyer because they believe that he is the coach to bring them back to prominence after a tumultuous year that saw them finish under .500 in the Big Ten and lose to Michigan for the first time in seven years.

But this is strictly a panic move meant to appease a distraught fan base and one that has all the potential to blow up in their faces.

As Matt Hayes of the Sporting News wrote, this Meyer is not the same Meyer that we all remember.

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The Meyer they’re getting is the man who called off a retirement, returned to the game, tanked a season and left the best job in America because he was burned out and needed to spend time with his family.

Then spent time doing his ESPN thing over the last year.

Let me be brutally honest, again: If Meyer truly needed to get away from football and “be with his family,” he would’ve walked away completely and definitively. Instead, he kept his toes in the pool by doing ESPN “work” of traveling to different programs and “interviewing” coaches—while learning from various staffs while the cameras were off.

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Meyer resigned from Florida in 2009, where he was already a legend after five seasons, because he thought that his health was in jeopardy and he wanted to spend time with his family, but he came back just a few days later.

Then Meyer really left Florida in 2010 because he wanted to take care of his family. It seemed like a noble gesture and one that we should all respect, but that was obviously a lie.

Now Ohio State, one of the biggest programs in the country, is handing the keys to the car to one of the most unstable and flaky coaches that we have seen in recent memory.

Who is to say that Meyer won’t wake up in a year and decide that he doesn’t want to do this anymore or wants to spend time with his family again and walk away from them?

Ohio State should have done a more thorough job of searching for its next head coach after the season was over instead of marrying the first pretty coach on the street that would talk to them.