Urban Meyer Compares Big Ten Canceling Fall Football To Ohio State’s 2012 Probation
The Ohio State football season won’t be taking place until the spring, if the Big Ten can pull off the postponed season at all. Former Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer compared the situation, and its impact on players, to the 2012 season when he took over at Ohio State.
Meyer, who had taken a season off after stepping down at Florida, took over the program after its tattoo scandal. Jim Tressel had resigned a year before, and Luke Fickell led the Buckeyes to a 6-7 record in 2011 as interim head coach. When Meyer got there, he admitted that he was under the impression that there would be no scholarship reductions or bowl games.
“My heart is broken for these young people that have a shelf life of college football, and you have a very small, tight window in which you can perform,” Meyer said during Wednesday’s edition of FOX Sports’ Big Noon Kickoff. “I heard from a bunch of families and I think I’ve heard Gene (Smith, Ohio State athletic director) say it, and I try to put myself… when I was hired at Ohio State, I took the job with the intent of being able to go to bowl games.
“I was told there was not going to be any probation, no loss of scholarships. Gene Smith walks in and said they took nine scholarships, no bowl game this year,” Meyer recounted. “I remember, it was like somebody hit me right in the jaw. Like I got knocked out.”
Urban Meyer then compared his job in 2012 to the situation that Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day and Gene Smith have with Ohio State football this year, along with the rest of their Big Ten counterparts. Players with NFL aspirations are still going to rely on their help and guidance, whether there is a season this spring or not.
“All of us have a job to do. Go do your job Ryan Day and Gene Smith, go do your job, and do it as best as you all can for the most important people on the planet right now: those players who just had everything ripped away from them.”
“Just swing as hard as you can for players. If that means spring ball, it’s spring ball. If that means helping them get to the NFL, help them get to the NFL. We all have a job to do, and that’s the approach that I know these great coaches are going to take, and ADs.”
It’s good advice from Urban Meyer. Coaches often preach to “control the controllables.” That may never be more relevant than this year, when so little is up to those who usually have so much influence over what happens within a college football program.
That 2012 Ohio State football team, which was not eligible for the postseason, went 12-0 on the year. Two seasons later, they won a national championship.
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