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Urban Meyer's thoughts over the last 48 hours.

The Messiah has descended in Ann Arbor & he is wearing Khakis.

Jim Harbaugh is 58-27 in his college coaching career and is just coming off of a 49'ers gig where the team crumbled to a shell of itself near the end. Meyer is 140-26 in his college coaching career and he's yet to lose a Big 10 regular season game in three years. Considering that people are already anticipating how long Harbaugh will be at Michigan and what pro team he'll take over next when he returns to the NFL I can't imagine the quaking is that severe in Columbus today.

GannonFan wrote:Jim Harbaugh is 58-27 in his college coaching career and is just coming off of a 49'ers gig where the team crumbled to a shell of itself near the end. Meyer is 140-26 in his college coaching career and he's yet to lose a Big 10 regular season game in three years. Considering that people are already anticipating how long Harbaugh will be at Michigan and what pro team he'll take over next when he returns to the NFL I can't imagine the quaking is that severe in Columbus today.

Harbaugh took over a San Diego program 42-38 in the 7 seasons prior to him starting. In his 3 seasons he was 29-6 and 22-2 in his final two seasons...the only two double digit win seasons in USD history.

Stanford was 30-49 in the 7 seasons before Harbaugh...and 6 of those were losing seasons...and 16-40 in the 5 leading up to Harbaugh...and 1-11 the season before he started. He had them at 12-1 in 4 seasons.


Urban Meyere took over a Florida program that was 62-26 in the 7 seasons prior to his arrival...and had at least 8 wins every year between 1990 and the year before he took over...with 9 of those being double digit win seasons.

He then took over an Ohio State team that was 72-18 (including the vacated seasons) in the 7 seasons before him...with 6 of those double digit win seasons.

It's not like he's ever really jumped into a tough spot to win.

Clenz-

Don't take GF's bait - he's a Maize & Blue hater. He's just thanking his lucky stars that his irish don't play Michigan anymore...

If I'm an Ohio State fan, I'm not too worried. The fact that Rich Rodriguez can win at West Virginia and Arizona but not win at Michigan is telling. Michigan's problems might go beyond coaching.

bluehenbillk wrote:Clenz-

Don't take GF's bait - he's a Maize & Blue hater. He's just thanking his lucky stars that his irish don't play Michigan anymore...

Huh? I hate Michigan now? When did that happen? I remember distinctly you rooting against UM for most of your life as your UCLA-lovefest was going on. Granted, I never rooted much for OSU before, but I started to like them more after coming back from a UD/YSU game and only being able to listen to the OSU postgame conference on twenty different radio stations.

Yes, Harbaugh's going to make Michigan better. After this year, could they be much worse? I just don't seem him doing it (i.e. winning conferences) right away and I don't see him staying more than 3-5 years. Besides, he's like a Mike Keenan from hockey or a Ray Rhodes (NFL) type persona - really effective in the short term but burns out eventually. He needs to job hop to stay effective. Not that there's anything wrong about that.

Pwns wrote:If I'm an Ohio State fan, I'm not too worried. The fact that Rich Rodriguez can win at West Virginia and Arizona but not win at Michigan is telling. Michigan's problems might go beyond coaching.

Rich Rodriguez had a top 5-10 offense...he insisted on staying with a DC that ran a 115+ ranked defense.

Brady came in with a good DC and with those same players was able to get a Sugar Bowl victory.

Brady has the opposite problem. Defense was pretty good (I believe top 20 this year) but couldn't get an offense worth a damn.

Hoke's defense with Rodriguez's offense would be killer.


There was an issue beyond football, though. His name was Dave Brandon. He was a cancer. He is gone.

The interim tag needs to be pulled off of Hackett pretty much now.

Michigan will look like a shooting star over the next 3-4 years. Get REAL bright, and then flame out in years 4-5 with Harbaugh at the helm.

Book it.

bluehenbillk wrote:Clenz-

Don't take GF's bait - he's a Maize & Blue hater. He's just thanking his lucky stars that his irish don't play Michigan anymore...

Hey, how about that Irish team winning a bowl game yesterday, against a ranked SEC team in SEC territory? Not too shabby!

Wow. Notre Dame beat an LSU team that was .500 in their conference, 5th in their division, and 7th in their conference. Meh.


(and, Notre Dame is closer to Nashville than Baton Rouge is, btw)

How 'bout Ole Miss!

Meyer should be alright. Yes Harbaugh being at Michigan means the Wolverines will get tougher but Ohio State is arguably in the best situation in the country in terms of State talent base, competition (or lack thereof) for talent in that base, and name brand. If you look at the map below, generated from a survey conducted early in the 2014 season, you'll see that Ohio was 5th in total player production at 78. But Ohio State is the only "Big 5" football school in Ohio while the 1st through 4th States all have multiple "Big 5" institutions. California has 4, Florida has 3, Texas has 5, and Georgia has 2. If you rank States in descending order by number of NFL players produced per "Big 5" school in the State this is what the top 10 looks like:

Ohio 78
Louisiana 69
Florida 62
California 56
New Jersey 51
Illinois 47
Georgia 45.5
New York 45
Pennsylvania 30
Texas 29.4

And Ohio State has shown in the past that it has the "brand" to assemble stratospheric talent levels by supplementing the "in state" foundation with national recruits. For example, the school that holds the record for having the most players drafted in a single year since the draft went to 7 rounds isn't Miami, Alabama, LSU, USC, Florida, or anybody like that. It's Ohio State with 14, including three first rounders, taken in 2004. The public perception was that Ohio State was way outmatched talent wise against Miami in that controversial 2002-2003 BCS championship game. But it wasn't a talent mismatch at all. If you look at the two NFL drafts following that game to get an idea as to talent levels you find that Ohio State actually had more players drafted during those drafts (19) than Miami did (17). Maybe you'd give Miami a slight edge because they had 10 first rounders over the two drafts while Ohio State "only" had 3. But it was not the talent mismatch I think most people thought it was.

I think Meyer is in a better situation in terms of potential now than he was at Florida. He's got the top level talent in a State that's got more talent than any other State in the Big 10 footprint does pretty much to himself and Ohio State has more money than Florida does. He should sleep fine.

From http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2208 ... leges-more" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Urban Meyere took over a Florida program that was 62-26 in the 7 seasons prior to his arrival...and had at least 8 wins every year between 1990 and the year before he took over...with 9 of those being double digit win seasons.

He then took over an Ohio State team that was 72-18 (including the vacated seasons) in the 7 seasons before him...with 6 of those double digit win seasons.

It's not like he's ever really jumped into a tough spot to win.

He did do what he did at Bowling Green and Utah.

Bowling Green was 2-9 in 2000. Meyer took his first head coaching job there and went 8-3 in 2001 then 9-3 in 2002.

Then he went to Utah. Utah had gone 5-6 in 2002. Meyer's Utes went 10-2 in 2003 then 12-0 including a BCS blowout bowl win over Pittsburg in 2004.

So yes he has been associated with some dramatic program turnarounds.