PASADENA, Calif. — Had Ryan Day not emerged as such a capable replacement, Urban Meyer said it would have been tough to walk away from his job as the head coach at Ohio State.
“Yeah, I don’t think I could,” Meyer said at Rose Bowl media day. “Because there’s too many — there’s head coaches here but you also have these teammates, support staff and everyone has made — I dare to say one of the best, if not the best, top-to-bottom program.”
For Meyer, it was important that his decision had a limited impact on the people he has surrounded himself with in Columbus for the past several years. He saw how Bob Stoops went out at Oklahoma, by leaving the program in the hands of a rising coaching star, Lincoln Riley, and wanted to implement a similar transition at Ohio State.
“[Stoops] was the model; he handed it off,” Meyer said. “Support staff and everybody never lost their jobs, the program is extremely strong. And more than that, you’re handing off to a guy that can make it stronger. And so I’m very much at peace about that.”
Dating back to their year together at Florida in 2005, where Day was a graduate assistant on his staff, Meyer figured it was only a matter of time before Day would become a head coach.
That belief was strengthened in 2015, when Meyer visited Chip Kelly’s Philadelphia Eagles staff. Day was the quarterbacks coach on that team, which featured former Florida star Tim Tebow, and Meyer sat in on meetings.
“I walked away and took a lot of notes on how he ran the meeting,” Meyer said. “I watched them on the field, and obviously it was much different being a quarterback coach at the Eagles than GA at Florida, and I just saw you could tell right then.”
For another few days, though, it’s still Meyer’s show. And the preparation leading up to Tuesday’s Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual has remained the same.
Meyer said he and Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith have not discussed a timeline for determining what his new role, as an assistant athletic director, will consist of — only that they’ll sort it all out once they get through the game against Washington.