INDIANAPOLIS — For the second straight year, Ohio State left Lucas Oil Stadium with a Big Ten championship and an uncertain College Football Playoff future. This time, the team also isn’t sure what the future holds for coach Urban Meyer.
The sixth-ranked Buckeyes scored three touchdowns in the final 16:21 to pull away from No. 21 Northwestern in a 45-24 win at the Big Ten championship game. Afterward, Meyer and his players advocated for why they should be in the playoff.
“I think we deserve a shot,” Meyer told Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt after receiving the Big Ten championship trophy, though he also said a Rose Bowl appearance would be celebrated, too; it would be Meyer’s first and Ohio State’s first since the 2009 season.
Meyer stood with his wife, Shelley, on the podium at the end of what has been an unusually emotional regular season. Urban Meyer reiterated Saturday night that he plans to coach in the future. He declined to comment Friday when asked about a report on Football Scoop that he doesn’t plan to coach at Ohio State past the 2019 season.
Shelley Meyer said she doesn’t know if her husband plans to coach beyond this season. Meyer has struggled with stress-induced headaches throughout the season, the result of an arachnoid cyst in his brain. Shelley Meyer said she worries about her husband because he has always been an intense person, but that a pair of convincing wins in the past two weeks have raised his spirits.
“He’s feeling really good right now. Winning cures a lot of things,” she said. “All I can say is, he’s been feeling pretty good the last few weeks after getting all the headaches under control and we’re feeling really good today.”
Ohio State assistant and players said Meyer’s future with the team has not been a topic of discussion inside the program during the past couple of weeks. The same Football Scoop report, citing anonymous sources, said offensive coordinator Ryan Day would be tabbed as Meyer’s successor as the Buckeyes’ head coach. Day said Saturday night that no one from the university has approached him about being the next head coach at this point.
“It’s something I’m not even thinking about,” Day said. “All we’ve been thinking about is this game. … Any time things like that happen, it’s usually after the season gets done. Nothing I’m thinking about right now.”
It’s not clear yet when Ohio State’s season will be done. Players and coaches believe they’ve made a strong case to be included in the playoff with convincing wins over rival Michigan, ranked No. 4 at the time, and then Northwestern.
“There’s a lot of great football teams out there, and we’re one of those great football teams,” Urban Meyer said. “There should be a lot of merit to winning your conference, which we did. You look at the road wins we had — at Penn State, at Michigan State, at TCU — and then obviously the way we played against the fourth-ranked team in America [Ohio State beat Michigan 62-39 on Nov. 24], and the way we played tonight. So I don’t know if we’re in a position to start making statements about where we belong, but I know they’ve got a tough decision to make because we’re a heck of a football team.”
Both Meyer and the players cited the adversity the team went through beginning this summer, when Meyer was on administrative leave and then suspended for the final phase of training camp and the first three games.
Ohio State also lost All-America candidate Nick Bosa to a core muscle injury that ultimately caused him to withdraw from school and leave the team to begin preparing for the NFL draft. Meyer called Bosa’s departure “a shot” that “took a while to recover from.”
The Buckeyes had three wins by five points or fewer, including a 52-51 triumph at Maryland on Nov. 17, but also scored 159 in their final three games behind quarterback Dwayne Haskins, a likely Heisman Trophy finalist.
“We lost our coach early in the season,” running back J.K. Dobbins said. “We had to play three games without him. We faced a lot of adversity. Our offense is something crazy. We put up numbers that are ridiculous because we have so many weapons. And our defense is stepping up, so they should put us in there.”
Ohio State’s lone blemish is a 49-20 loss to unranked Purdue on Oct. 20, the most lopsided defeat of any playoff candidate. But much like after last year’s blowout loss to Iowa, the Buckeyes rallied down the stretch to win the Big Ten.
“We’re playing our best ball right now,” senior wide receiver Parris Campbell said. “This team has shown resilience. Obviously, we had a bump in the road against Purdue, but this team never gave up. We got huge on-the-road wins against Top 25 opponents, TCU, Penn State, Michigan State, and I just think this team, we have a lot on our books, a lot to show for.”
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany told ESPN.com after Saturday’s game that he’s proud of Ohio State and all the league’s teams but didn’t want to lobby for playoff inclusion.
“If it’s to be, it’s to be. If it’s not, it’s not,” Delany said. “I’m not making their case, that’s the committee’s job. Each year stands on its own basis. … We’d love to be involved, and if we’re not involved, we’ll go out and have a great bowl season.”
Ohio State was left out of the playoff last season at 11-2, as an Alabama team that didn’t win its division or league earned the No. 4 spot. If this year’s Ohio State team is left out, the Big Ten champion would miss the playoff for the third consecutive year. Ohio State most recently represented the Big Ten after the 2016 season but did not win the league that year.
“The Big Ten should be represented in the college football playoff,” Campbell said. “The Big Ten is the best conference in college football, we believe, so it would be kind of messed up not to see the champion of the Big Ten, one of the best conferences, in the playoff.”
Campbell said Ohio State enters the postseason with “two good options” in the playoff or the Rose Bowl, where Meyer has yet to coach despite an 82-9 record with three Big Ten titles. If the Big Ten champion does not go to the playoff this year, it will automatically go to the Rose Bowl to face Pac-12 champion Washington on Jan. 1.
“It’s amazing,” Meyer said. “I’ve never coached in that game. [ESPN analyst] Kirk Herbstreit and I talk about it all the time. So if that’s where we end up, we’d be so proud to be there. And I know our players would feel the same.”
Campbell said Buckeyes players wouldn’t view the Rose Bowl as a consolation prize.
“Everybody in this room would be happy going to the Rose Bowl, playing in the Rose Bowl and take pictures with roses in our mouth,” he said. “So if we’re not in the playoff, we’ll be more than happy to play in the Rose Bowl.”