Buckeyes Now

Coaching May Be the Lost Love Urban Meyer Can't Quit

After Openly Flirting with Dallas, Ex-OSU Coach Returns to Columbus

Bruce Hooley

Coaching May Be the Lost Love Urban Meyer Can't Quit
Coaching May Be the Lost Love Urban Meyer Can't Quit /

You know you're really over your ex when you spot them across the room at a party and there's absolutely no regret or spike in your emotions.

So maybe Urban Meyer flat-lines this weekend and learns he's really past the thrill and challenge of coaching football.

Be sure, all the wiles of his former life will be batting their eyes at Meyer when he joins his new pals from the Fox's Big Noon Kickoff Show on location near Ohio Stadium.

It's there that Meyer's Buckeyes -- oops, make that, Ryan Day's Buckeyes -- will put their 7-0 record and No. 3 national ranking on the line against No 13 Wisconsin.

But what if Meyer feels the slightest -- or sharpest -- pang of anxiety in his midsection when he hears the Ohio State band, bathes in the adulation he's certain to receive from OSU nation and watches a roster full of the monster talent he recruited look like a team fully capable of putting a fourth national championship ring on his hand.

That's Meyer's team, you know.

Provided he he were still Ohio State's coach, of course.

Meyer isn't the man over there calling the shots on the OSU sideline any more.

But if he still has the itch, there isn't a job he couldn't have right now, after the season, after next season, or any time in the future.

Could you see him at Notre Dame, if Brian Kelly leaves for the NFL?

Could you see him at USC, if (when) Clay Helton gets fired?

Could you see him at Penn State if Helton gets fired and James Franklin leaves for Troy?

Could you see him at Florida State, or...

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

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Meyer never won less than 11 games and never lost more than two in any of his seven seasons at Ohio State.

He called it quits after last season because, officially, a brain cyst was causing him increased physical discomfort.

That's the Michael Jordan-retired-to-play-baseball version of Meyer's exit.

The Jordan-retired-to-play-baseball-because-he-was-about-to-be-suspended-for-gambling version of Meyer's departure is that he was encouraged to leave after an ugly August scandal involving an assistant coach and alleged domestic violence resulted in Meyer receiving a three-game suspension without pay.

However the season began, it ended with Meyer walking away a hero and into retirement as the No. 1 free agent coach for any college opening and perhaps a few in the NFL, too.

Could you see him succeed his good friend, Bill Belichick, in New England?

Might Meyer be the object of Browns' owner Jimmy Haslam's wanderlust again, having turned that job down before?

The NFL has never been perceived as a possible destination for Meyer, but his love for Ohio State may be such that he can't bring himself to take another collegiate job outside Columbus.

He probably knows in his heart he'll irreparably damage his OSU legacy if he ever two-times that fan base for another.

Ohio State fans are a lot more realistic about Day's almost-assumed departure some day for the NFL, where he coached before coming to Ohio State.

They just hope that day is three or four or 20 years away.

But no one ever talks about Meyer going to NFL, which is why eyebrows arched when he brazenly flirted with, the possibility of coaching the Dallas Cowboys on a recent episode of The Herd, with Colin Cowherd, when asked about Oklahoma's Lincoln Riley succeeding Jason Garrett.

"Pure speculation, because I know (Riley), but I don't know him like that, but that's the one," Meyer said. "That's the New York Yankees, that's the Dallas Cowboys, that's the one. Great city, you got Dak Prescott, you got Zeke Elliott, you got a loaded team.

"I can't speak for (Riley), obviously - I hate to even speculate - because I don't know him; that's really not fair. But to me, that's the one job in professional football that you kind of say, 'I gotta go do that.'"

Cowherd then asked if Meyer would be open to talking to the Cowboys.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," he said. "That one? Yes."

Meyer, of course, won his only national championship at Ohio State with Elliott tearing up the 2015 College Football Playoff at the end of the 2014 season.

He's signed for six more years, so that piece of the puzzle would be in place for Meyer if he's really serious.

Maybe he is.

Maybe he's just winking at an old memory, but wouldn't really act on his urges.

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Bruce Hooley
BRUCE HOOLEY

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