Boo-frickety-hoo.
All season long the Buckeye faithful have been carping about how Urban has run out of ideas for the offense, how the team has stagnated after a fast start, how he can't develop a quarterback, how the Bucks will never really be special again until we get Tom Herman back. It's startlingly reminiscent of the chatter in the 2013-14 offseason, when, after a 24-game winning streak came to an end, way, way too many Buckeye fans said that Urban left his best years behind him at Florida, and why did he pick up this bum offensive coordinator from Iowa State of all places?
Then Urban won a national championship after he and Herman made a freshman QB into a Heisman candidate and his playoff replacement into an offensive juggernaut. I thought that might buy him the benefit of the doubt. It did. For 11 months. Now the Buckeyes have lost in back-to-back years to top ten and possible playoff teams, and suddenly the sky is falling again.
Urban Meyer is 61-5 at Ohio State. That's a .924 winning percentage. Better than Knute Rockne at Notre Dame. Better than Bear Bryant at Alabama. Better than Barry Switzer at Oklahoma. Better than Fielding Yost at Michigan. Better than Saban. Better than Bo. Better than Woody. Buckeye Nation is truly in a true golden age.
Big deal, you say. This is Ohio State. We win a lot because we should win. That's how it happens at the elite programs around the country.
Is it? Let's take a look at the top 11 programs in the nation and how they've fared in recent years.
Per Winsipedia, the following 11 real programs are the tops in all-time winning percentage (there's a sizable drop-off after #11).
1. Michigan
2.
3. Notre Dame
4. Alabama
5. Oklahoma
6. Texas
7. USC
8. Nebraska
9. Penn State
10. Florida State
11. Tennessee
1. Michigan
I don't need to tell you what happened here, do I? After opening the 2007 season with the most embarrassing loss in program history (App State), the program decided to move on from Lloyd Carr and kicked off a 46-42 stretch from 2008-2014, including six losses to Ohio State, six losses to Michigan State, three losing seasons, and zero conference championships. Jim Harbaugh seems to have righted the ship (still waiting for that win over Ohio State), but the Bucks haven't had such a stretch of futility in about 100 years.
2. Ohio State
3. Notre Dame
On January 1, 1994, Notre Dame beat 10-1 Texas A&M to cap an 11-1 season and a #2 final ranking. The Irish didn't post another double-digit win season until 2002, and they didn't win a bowl game until the 6-6 2008 team beat Hawai'i in the Hawai'i Bowl. The one time Notre Dame sniffed a national title, they got pasted by Alabama 42-14 (and then the rest of their wins from that season got vacated, but who cares). They went 5-7 in 1999, 5-6 in 2001, 5-7 in 2003, 6-6 in 2004, 3-9 in 2007, 6-6 in 2009, and just finished a 4-8 turd this year. Oh, and the Golden Domers have played Ohio State 4 times during that span, and the Silver Bullets have drilled them 4 times. The once - gold standard in college football is no more.
4. Alabama
SEE? you scream. Alabama gets the same level of recruits as Ohio State and they actually do something with them! 4 national titles in 7 years! OK, sure. There's no denying that we've all been living in Alabama's world since Nick Saban took over (except this guy). But do you remember the coaching carousel that preceded this tyranny? After national championship-winning coach Gene Stallings resigned in disgrace in 1996 having crippled the program by falsifying the eligibility of one of the Tide's players, Alabama endured 24-23 under Mike DuBose (including a 3-8 season in 2000 in which the Tide were preseason #3, and more violations and sanctions), 17-8 under Dennis Franchione (before promptly spurning the Tide for Texas A&M of all places), 0-0 under Mike Price (whoops), and 26-23 under Mike Shula (16 of those wins went bye-bye after, you guessed it, more violations). Kinda makes Tatgate, 6-7, and a bowl ban look like no biggie.
5. Oklahoma
Yeah, not much to criticize here. Oklahoma's probably the second steadiest hand in the nation after the Scarlet and Gray. The Sooners have won at least 7 games every year under Big Game Bob and have won at least 10 games 14 times, but before (and after) Ohio State was ESPN's trendy championship choker, it was Oklahoma that was faceplanting on the big stage. The Sooners won the title in 2000, then proceeded to get run out of the building by USC* in 2004* and Clemson in 2015, and lost tough battles to LSU in 2003 and Florida in 2008. And with a couple more upsets next week, the Sooners might get the chance to blow it again. Also, before Stoops's arrival the Sooners did suffer the following five year streak from 1994-1998 while Ohio State fans were whining about top 5 finishes under John Cooper: 6-6, 5-5-1, 3-8, 4-8, and 5-6. Yikes.
6. Texas
Now we're getting into the more obvious tales of failure. The Longhorns haven't been to a bowl since getting backhanded by Oregon in the 2013 Alamo Bowl, and they haven't won 10 games in a season since Colt McCoy was sacrificed to secure Alabama's unholy rise to power in 2009. They just closed the door on an abject failure of a coaching stint (for real, though, Charlie Strong seems like a great guy and I hope he lands on his feet). Texas was as steady as anyone from 2001-2009, but that must feel like an eternity ago to the Burnt Orange faithful. We'll see if Tom Herman is the panacea Buckeye Nation believes him to be.
7. USC
After the death of Da U, and before the rise of the Saban Death Squad, a little private school from Los Angeles ruled college football. Except, no, they really didn't. Their BCS title from 2004 has been vacated along with Reggie Bush's Heisman, leaving the Trojans with a big fat zero consensus championships from the BCS era. (Nice everybody-gets-a-trophy prize from 2003, USC. Have a seat next to 2012 Ohio State.) But vacated titles aside, people forget how bad USC sucked before Pete Carroll showed up. The kings of Pasadena went to a total of one Rose Bowl from 1990-2002 and had two losing seasons and two .500 seasons in that period. And after Carroll bolted to the NFL and his house of cards collapsed on the program he left behind, they've had to endure Lane Kiffin, the drunken antics of Steve Sarkisian (get well soon, Sark), and two interim coaches, one of whom they jerked around and the other they're now pretending to take seriously. Remember when USC was preseason #1 in 2012 and then finished 7-6? Remember when they got drilled by Alabama 52-6 just 3 months ago? We haven't seen a complete season out of this team in 8 years.
8. Nebraska
Now we're starting to get to the teams that may never recapture their former glory. From 1969 until Tom Osborne's retirement in 1997, the Huskers never lost more than 3 games in a season and never finished unranked. Then Frank Solich went 7-7 in 2002 and everybody panicked and fired him after going 10-3 the next year. Since then, the Huskers haven't cracked the top 10 in the final rankings and haven't lost fewer than 4 games in a season (remember to mark your calendars now for a Nebraska bowl loss). I guess you could consider it a kind of consistency; other than last year's transitional debacle, Nebraska has won at least 9 games every year since 2008. But would you be happy with 9-4 as the new normal and no conference titles this millennium?
9. Penn State
Amazing what joining a conference can do to a paper tiger. The Lions entered the B1G (then the B11G) in 1993 and were expected to dominate. Then they won 1 conference title in their first 12 tries. You may recognize that as 2 less than John Cooper over that same period. As the century turned, Penn State enjoyed 4 losing seasons in 5 years before more or less pulling out of the nosedive to close out JoePa's career. And that's about all that needs to be said. For crying out loud, you haven't woken up any day in the last 5 years and said, "Gee, I wish I were a Penn State fan," have you?
10. Florida State
Uhhhhh...hmmmm...well, in the 1990's, when all the teams I talked about above were busy sucking, the Noles finished in the top 5 fourteen years in a row. But since losing to Oklahoma in the 2001 Orange Bowl, they've done so just twice, coinciding with the Famous Jameis era. No losing seasons, no disasters, but FSU did go from 2004 to 2009 without winning 10 games, and there's no guarantee they'll do so this season (I bet they do).
11. Tennessee
Welcome to the real tragedy on this list. In 1998, Tennessee won the national title after finally being rid of Peyton Manning. Since then, they've won zero SEC championships and have endured 6 losing seasons, including 5 of 6 from 2008-2013. Before last year, they hadn't lost fewer than 6 games in a season since Fulmer was still coaching in 2007, which is also still the last time they won 10 games. With the wide-open SEC East title in front of them this season, they crapped the bed hard against South Carolina and Vanderbilt to return to obscurity for yet another season. I'm sure Rocky Top longs for the days when they would always be #2 in the SEC. But now, they're languishing behind Florida, Georgia, and the entire SEC West.
Back to 2. Ohio State
Back to the Buckeyes. Do you feel a little better about your team now? You know, the one that, other than one season where our coach was forced out 3 months before the season started, has lost more than two games exactly once in the last 11 years? The one that closed out Jim Tressel's career with 6 straight Big Ten titles and 7 straight wins over Michigan? And then, after the aforementioned hiccup, did not lose a single game until two full regular seasons had pased? And then won the national championship with a third-string quarterback? And, but for the 2011 blip, hasn't lost to the Wolverines since 2003? The Navy-Notre Dame rivalry isn't even this one-sided anymore!
Ohio State is the most consistently dominant team in the history of college football, and NOW is its greatest era. No, we're not going to win every single game. Yes, we're going to win the vast, vast majority of them. We may even win another national title or two by the time Urban is done. It might even happen this year, which would be nothing short of miraculous after we sent approximately our entire starting lineup from last year's team to the NFL. But good grief, people, on the heels of Thanksgiving weekend, take a step back and be thankful for where we are right now and what this team has accomplished over the last year, or 4, or 16, or 127. Just about every other team in the NCAA has had it much, much worse.
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