When Urban Meyer took the Ohio State job, he knew the Big Ten had to get better. He also knew that the chase his team had to embark upon was tracking down the SEC and Alabama. He eventually did by pushing all the other programs in the conference to set aside gentlemen’s agreements and other things by way of aggressive recruiting and player development. But the SEC and Alabama haven’t really gone anywhere.
If you don’t believe that, just look at what the Crimson Tide did to a very talented Buckeye squad in the national championship game down in Miami about a month ago. You can list all kinds of reasons why Ohio State could have played a closer game against Alabama, but the reality is that the Tide were just the better team.
So, how does OSU chase Nick Saban and his Alabama program down once again? Well, what better way to find out than to ask the guy that was able to do it in the first place? Meyer joined the Big Ten Network and talked about the gap between the two programs and how head coach Ryan Day can close it.
“That’s reality. You take a job like this, you take a job like Ohio State and that’s the expectation and that’s what they’ve done,” Meyer said. “They’re going to enjoy the fact that they beat Clemson, but this is also the harsh reality of the Big Ten’s got to get going again. I used the word the ‘chase’ in 2012. Our conference was very average. The Big Ten Conference was not great. And then people started recruiting and pushing and started going, and the reality is the best team in the Big Ten got beat by Alabama soundly. That’s OK. Ohio State’s recruiting at a level, they’ll be back here.”
“I think it’s a challenge for everyone else in this conference to get going. I mean, the whole country saw this. And that’s not just the Big Ten — that’s the Pac-12 and the Big 12 as well. The reality is that Alabama’s on a different stratosphere right now. Go catch ’em. The one school that’s recruiting at that level is coach Day and Ohio State. So I think that this is a standup call for everybody. I can tell you there’s coaches across the country — are seeing that team that just played tonight, saying, ‘We have to go get them.'”
Well, then there you have it. The recruiting seems to be there for Day and staff. That leaves scheme and player development as the other two items that have to be as good or better than what Alabama has.
Start the clock.