3 ways the rest of the Big Ten can be more like Ohio State

In the past four decades, the conference had two titles. The first was won by Michigan parlaying a dominating defense and a pedestrian offense into a 12-0 season that ended with Ryan Leaf and Mike Price pleading for one more play at the end of a nip-and-tuck Rose Bowl. The second was won in double overtime by an Ohio State team that made a habit of narrow wins over mediocre opponents before upsetting a Miami team that outgained the Bucks by 1.1 yards per play.

The conference was the last major holdout opposed to the Playoff. It’s not hard for a cynical observer to conclude that Jim Delany knew that Big Ten teams had such a hard time winning titles in the old system that tacking additional layers of competition would reduce the chances of a Midwestern championship even further.

And of all seasons, the Big Ten was going to produce a champion in 2014, a season in which the league was proclaimed to be a national afterthought on September 6, when five Big Ten teams lost non-conference games? How was a Big Ten team supposed to produce a Playoff-worthy resume with so few top teams?

Ohio State produced exactly that sort of resume. It did so by improving over the course of the season (a foreign concept for most teams in the much-ballyhooed SEC West), such that the Bucks laid waste to two good conference opponents in the final weeks of the season. The Buckeyes put up 49 points in East Lansing against a Michigan State brain trust whose defenses have dominated Big Ten offenses for years, then shut out the Wisconsin running game that has consistently trampled Big Ten defenses. Michigan State and Wisconsin had won or shared the last four Big Ten titles, but Urban Meyer’s young Buckeyes brushed both aside.

So what can Big Ten teams learn from their new tree nut overlords?

Despite the fact that they generate filthy amounts of lucre, Big Ten teams have been loathe to spend on top coaches. The usual pattern is to hire whichever coach just had a good season in the MAC. Iowa is wandering through the wilderness because it will not pay the buyout of an underperforming head coach; Wisconsin just hired its third coach in three years in no small part because Barry Alvarez will not pay market rates for assistants.

Urban Meyer would not be coaching Ohio State if Gene Smith took a similar approach to paying top dollar for coaching talent. It’s easy to say that Meyer going to Ohio State was inevitable based on the facts that he had pre-existing connections to the school and was looking to get back into coaching after a one-year sabbatical. However, assuming that Meyer was always going to Ohio State is a classic example of Hindsight Bias.

At the end of 2004, the conventional wisdom was that Meyer was headed to Notre Dame, another school with which he had a connection. Meyer took the Florida job because Jeremy Foley made Meyer a priority, such that Meyer could not pass on the “professional and financial opportunity” to coach the Gators. Two titles later, Meyer’s time at Florida illustrates that, when it comes to hiring coaches, you (usually) get what you pay for.

There are two prerequisites for a program to succeed: money and access to talent. The dilemma for Big Ten teams is that they have the former, but not the latter. Big Ten teams have large fan bases, which the people running the conference have done well to monetize. However, the Midwest does not produce talent like other parts of the country.

Ohio State is less impacted by this dilemma. The State of Ohio produced more top-shelf talent than any other state in the Big Ten footprint and the Bucks do not have a power-conference state rival to siphon off recruits. Nevertheless, one aspect of Meyer’s swift success has been his success at recruiting the Sun Belt. Leaving aside the 2012 bridge class, Meyer’s three full classes -- the 2013 and 2014 classes, along with the Bucks’ current list of verbals -- have produced 22 players from the South and Southwest out of 77 overall signees/verbals, or 28 percent. Jim Tressel’s last six classes contained 27 such players out of 149 commits, or 18 percent.

When the Buckeyes had Michigan State down, they kept scoring. When the Buckeyes led 45-0 against Wisconsin after three quarters, they piled on more in the fourth. When Ohio State had the ball inside the Oregon 20 with a 35-20 lead, they tacked on a final score. As Georgia fans remember from an encounter in 2008, when Meyer has a chance to twist the knife, he will.

Frankly, this is a good mindset. Football should be about scoring lots of points and allowing as few as possible. It’s not about helping the guy on the other sideline avoid embarrassment. Meyer’s tendency towards ruthless competition is good for his program (how important was the 59-0 score to Ohio State getting the last playoff spot?) and his players (they can’t slack off at any point if they know their coach will not do the same).

For years, the models for Big Ten coaches were Lloyd Carr and Tressel. Both favored a defense-first style that produced close games their teams would generally win in grinding fashion. Ask Michigan fans about Lloydball, and they are likely to give you a list of blown leads; ask Ohio State fans about Tresselball, and they are likely to tell you about awesome punts and game-winning field goals.

Assuming that Meyer is the new model, the league has a better lodestar, one who emphasizes being great for 60 minutes. It’s no accident that after only three years, Meyer has produced a team (and a young team, at that) that was better than all but one of Tressel’s 10 Ohio State teams and every Michigan team since 1985.

Fear is often the best motivator. The prospect of losing 59-0 to Urban’s Buckeyes ought to scare Big Ten ADs and coaches into becoming just as ruthless.