Coach Urban Meyer has the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes 8-0 and ranked No. 1 amid a 21-game win streak. It is Meyer’s fourth 20-game win streak as a college head coach, a career that has included stops at Bowling Green, Utah and Florida, where he won two national titles. No other top-level college football coach has had more than two such streaks.
In a 30-minute phone call with The New York Times last week, Meyer discussed how he has changed as a coach, what went wrong for him at Florida, and why he recently decided to name J.T. Barrett Ohio State’s starting quarterback as the team chases a second straight national championship.
Q: In your new book, “Above the Line,” you write that only minutes after winning the national title at Florida in early 2009, you went into an office and began to email recruits.
A: I locked the door.
Q: Wow. What did you do after the championship game victory with Ohio State in January?
A: I certainly didn’t email any recruits. I went right to my family and friends, enjoyed it, and went to sleep.
Q: In your final season at Florida, you were 8-5 and the program was, to use your own word, “broken.” Do you think things would have gone differently had you been introduced to the way of thinking you outline in your book, and had that kind of culture at Florida?
A: I certainly believe that. I’d be the first one to tell you that there were some mistakes made. Florida went from a team that had gone 26-2 the two previous years, including a national championship and a 13-1 season following that, to a team that lost, I think, five juniors to the NFL draft. We just weren’t very good. It just wasn’t the same culture within the locker room that it was the year before. There are so many great things about college football. One of the negatives is you lose incredible leaders. I lost Tim Tebow, Ryan Stamper — who’s on my staff now — Maurkice Pouncey.
Q: Who are the leaders on this year’s Ohio State team?
A: Josh Perry, J.T. Barrett, Taylor Decker, Pat Elflein. Those are some names.
Q: There are many military metaphors in your book. You describe your team’s goal as being “Nine Units Strong”; before one game, you tell your players to “hold your point.” Why do you think football lends itself to military metaphors?
A: You have to be extremely careful, which I am, every time you talk about it, because what we do is a game, and what they do is real. But there are so many similarities — and this is not coming from me, but I have great friends who are in the military.
I think one of the great story lines — and I show this video clip quite often to our team — is the one in “Black Hawk Down.” They ask: “Why do you do it? Are you some kind of war junkie?” And he says: “No, you don’t get it, do you? You do it ’cause of the man next to you.” That’s the same thing with football. Why do you really do it? Do you really do it for Ohio State? That sounds admirable, but it’s not real. You realize you do it because of all the work you do, the blood, sweat and tears, with your brother. You can’t let your brother down. If it’s because of that, you have a good team. If it’s because of something else, it’s not a good team.
Q: You also emphasize “alignment” — a leader who sets goals and a tone, and deputies who follow. It can seem like the college sports establishment is designed the opposite way, with multiple centers of power. What are your thoughts on the administration of college football and whether it would be improved if it were organized differently?
A: I do have strong opinions. I think any organization that has one supreme leader that can really lead ... our president of the NCAA actually works for the member institutions, so it’s amazing to me when people start criticizing the NCAA or start criticizing our president. He works for us. It’s a very complicated system. I think the member institutions — they’re the ones making or not being able to enforce some of these rules.
Q: You’ve said quarterback J.T. Barrett is one of your top leaders. Your players voted him a captain before the season, even though he is a redshirt sophomore. Did J.T.’s abilities as a leader influence your decision last week to name him as the starter over Cardale Jones?
A: Oh, sure. I’d heard about his reputation, but he came here, he had a bad knee, he did not play. He could walk by me in the hallway and I wasn’t quite sure who he was when I first got here. But my quarterback coach, Tom Herman, who really had a good relationship with him and recruited him, kept telling me about his leadership skills. And, boy, did that surface last year. He’s one of the best leaders I’ve ever been around.
Q: What distinguishes him?
A: He has one of the qualities in the sport of football that a leader has to have — he’s incredibly tough. He’s as tough a guy as there is. The Penn State game last year, double-overtime, when he had a second-degree (medial collateral ligament) sprain, and the doctor said, “I’m not sure if he can go,” and (J.T.) looked right at me and said, “There’s no discussion on this, I am playing, I’m not letting my team down.” Me and my strength coach looked at each other — you know, you have to shoot him to keep him out.
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