Urban Meyer, how he would face the cancellation of the big ten football season if he were still ohio State’s head coach.
“I wouldn’t take good care of that,” Meyer told The Dispatch in an interview for the podcast Buckeyextra.com.
This is no surprise, as no one is satisfied with Buckeyes football in 2020. Meyer’s herbal intensity would make it difficult to swallow.
Meyer remains close to the program he ran for seven years. It hurts players, coaches and face unwanted lost times in the coming months.
“I’m sorry for those players, ” he said. “I’m heartbroken. I’ve talked to a lot of those players because I know their families very well.”
Meyer said some school football observers don’t realize all the paintings players have put on to prepare for a season, in addition to their educational responsibilities.
“You communicate about six hours a day on this thing, and then it all went away,” he said.
Coaches take even longer hours. It’s an endless job, especially considering hiring, which never stops. Meyer said he spoke to his successor, Ryan Day.
“It’s all right, ” said Meyer.
It stems from Day’s close relationship with his players, Meyer said, and the pain everyone feels. Meyer said that when he was a coach, the rector of the university and the athletic director would possibly have been his bosses, however, he still felt very guilty about his players.
“There is no other CareArray … where your employees, or the other people you run, come by the house at 17, kiss their families and promise you’ll take care of their children,” Meyer told me. “In American companies, you don’t do that. You only hire other people. In sports management or even in university management, you don’t do that.
“That’s why you see a strong emotion, a raw emotion, when you start talking about student-athletes. And I know that’s what makes Ryan the wonderful coach he is. He cares a lot about his players.
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Meyer disagrees with Big Ten’s resolve not to play this fall. He understands the severity of the coronavirus and believes that the convention deserves to be accepted as true with experts. But he also questioned whether the resolution was unwelcome and the transparency of ideas was delayed.
“Could we have postponed this for a while, like the SEC, and just stored time and let the players keep training?” Meyer said.
He noted that the state of Ohio was tested twice a week and diligently followed COVID-19 protocols.
Meyer emerged the way Ohio State players behaved during an unbearable period. He said the letter the players had written to help the way the state of Ohio had protected them during the pandemic “made you cry,” especially in the sense that it contrasted with critical letters written through others, especially Pac-12 players.
“It will have to mean that they don’t accept it as true with their doctors,” Meyer said. “They don’t accept the truth with the coaches, they don’t accept the commissioner as truth. And they feel like they’re being exploited. I thought, “Wow, it’s terrible to check in every single day without accepting the truth to who you’re running with “I can’t believe that.”
Ohio State has covered up, from players to parents, athletic director Gene Smith and new President Kristina M. Johnson need to delay the season if necessary, not cancel it. Meyer said Johnson, who officially on Monday, had contacted him.
“I spoke to her on the phone several times and met her once, and I’m very impressed,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Johnson was appointed to the Big Ten task force, formed to continue a replacement season in early 2021. Day needs it to start in January. Meyer thinks that’s the only option.
“Coach Day works very hard, with several other people and Gene about January/February (season),” Meyer said. “I think the more you go, if you’re talking about a genuine spring, there’s no chance of that happening.”
Meyer will run for Fox this season after receiving criticism for his research last year. Big Ten games were a great component of the Fox package. The network will be full of Big 12 games this year.
If Big 12, SEC and CCA play while Big Ten and Pac-12 don’t, Meyer knows how devastating it would be for those on and off Ohio’s state program.
“What will it be like if Ryan Day, Chris Olave, Kerry Coombs and Justin Fields see Alabama play Clemson on national television or watch the bands play all year round and are in their hands in Columbus, Ohio?” Meyer said. “I’m not sure what you’re saying to the players.”
The fact that the Browns and Bengals continue their seasons, as do the Cincinnati Bearcats at the American Athletic Conference (Meyer’s son Nate, joined the team as a passenger) and even the best schools.
Disappointment can become more visceral, he predicts.
“There will be rage, ” said Meyer. “It’s going to be hard.”
The Big Ten has been a unified conference, or at least has presented a public unity front on occasions of conflict. The resolution of not playing in 2020 opened transparent fissures. Meyer thinks it’s temporary.
“I think we’ll be together again,” he says. “There is a grudge. College football is a major concern. I think the Big Ten will be fine. I still think it’s the largest entity there is.
“In one of the exhibitions we broadcast, I said, “Hey, this is a chance to blow up football and start over with school football, ” and I went crazy. I’m so tired that everyone complains and says how bad everything is. In my mind, there’s nothing bigger than college athletics. It’s nothing.”
But the long term does nothing for the players who have worked this year and will no longer play. He spoke of Jonathon Cooper, Gahanna’s last defensive final who chose to play in the playoffs last year to maintain the prestige of the red blouse that allowed him to play in 2020.
“The truth is that Jonathon Cooper probably wouldn’t be playing a graduate year in school football, and that doesn’t suit me,” Meyer said. “It’s devastating.”