There are some parts of a college football program that are simply underrated. It’s not just about hiring the right head coach. He has to fill out a staff with the best people he can find, put them in the right place and let them go to work.
According to former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer, one of his non-negotiable terms for taking the job in Columbus at the tail end of 2011 was the ability to bring his strength and conditioning guy on staff. You know him by now, it’s none other than Mickey Marotti who is now known as the assistant athletic director of sports performance.
I’m not sure the average fan knows just how much time a guy like Marotti spends with the team. After the season and up until fall camp, he’s really the guy running the show with workouts, conditioning, communication, and more. So much so that Meyer used to have a ceremony where Marotti would officially hand the team over to the head coach when it was time to do so for the fall.
Watch the below when Meyer sat down with Rick Pizzo of BTN to discuss how much Marotti meant to the head coach of Ohio State, and what he still means to the program today. Urban even says that had Marotti not came to the Ohio State with him, he “probably wouldn’t have taken the job.”
Elite https://t.co/Tw7MAwW669
— Urban Meyer (@CoachUrbanMeyer) June 20, 2020
Interesting stuff here from Meyer, but we’ve heard him sing the praises of Marotti before. It’s another reason why keeping him on staff with the transition over to Ryan Day was so important and taken care of before almost anything else.
Ohio State is lucky to have a guy like Mickey Marotti, and he probably doesn’t get enough credit from outside the program as he should.
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