Urban Meyer Offseason Scandal Helped Committee Decide Against OSU

Many are talking about how #5 Georgia remained ahead of OSU despite losing to Alabama in the SEC title game. What few are talking about is how the committee was never going to take OSU unless they were forced to because of the Urban Meyer offseason scandal. While some may claim this is hogwash or OSU bias, the reaction of the national media over the summer’s events supports this idea.

Both directly and indirectly, the Buckeyes had an uphill battle to climb to the national championship. The Ohio State football team began the season on an apparently good note despite not having Urban Meyer at the helm but concerns became evident as OSU was clearly suffering the effects of the Urban Meyer offseason scandal. In other words, the events of the offseason were too much of a tool for the team to weather. It is quite a testament to both the resolve of the coaching staff and players and the stability of the program that the only game OSU lost was to Purdue. Purdue was fighting for the only thing they had to play for, an upset. It also maybe helped that Tyler Trent was fighting for his life and seemed to galvanize the Boilermakers to fight for him.

Indirectly the question of how the Buckeyes could make the playoffs was ultimately answered by the committee with a resounding “you wont”. The committee was aided in their desire to keep OSU out of the national spotlight by an impressive Oklahoma offense that was able to revenge its only loss. This conference champion provided the easy out from putting Ohio State or UCF into the top 4.

If you are beginning to question this argument just follow the way that OSU didn’t move up in the rankings despite opponents in front of them losing and was instead leap-frogged twice. The Purdue loss was all the committee needed to argue for keeping a team out that they thought shouldn’t be in the playoff.  Let’s consider Georgia being placed ahead of OSU. Putting Georgia ahead of OSU demonstrates that the committee would have preferred to put a 2-loss non-conference champion over a 1-loss conference champion. Given that the apparent precedent was that two losses would remove a team from consideration, the committee was apparently willing to break that precedent in order to keep OSU out had Oklahoma lost.

With the recent news of Urban Meyer’s retirement, a variety of factors may have contributed to him leaving, but it appeared that this black mark on his record was going to prohibit the team he loves from advancing to the national stage so he decided to call it quits.  This will allow him to leave after coaching in the Rose Bowl and winning a BIG 10 championship, the two main goals for OSU coaches of yesteryear. While the Urban Meyer era has concluded leaving many to speculate about the future of Ohio State, it;s finally time to turn the page on a small dark paragraph in the book of OSU football.