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Just like Utah, only more powerful.
Urban Meyer won a third national championship with a second school Monday night, 10 years after coaching the University of Utah to an unbeaten season.
Meyer's Ohio State Buckeyes dominated Pac-12 champion Oregon with a punishing ground game in the second half of the College Football Playoff's title game, claiming a 42-20 victory at Arlington, Texas.
The victory completed a fifth phenomenal season for Meyer in his 13 years as a head coach at four schools. In addition to his two championships with Florida and one with the Buckeyes, he has gone 12-0 with Utah and OSU.
In this episode, Meyer's team overcame four turnovers by asserting themselves with the running of Ezekiel Elliott, who posted 246 yards and four touchdowns. That performance reflects the often overlooked aspect of Meyer's spread offense, the ability to run the football.
The Buckeyes did so against an Oregon defense that held Utah's talented Devontae Booker to 65 rushing yards in a 51-27 win in November. Monday's outcome means Utah fans can't say they witnessed a title team play at Rice-Eccles Stadium, and now the Utes won't be facing a defending national champion when they visit Oregon in September. That's probably just as well, in terms of having to compete with the Ducks in the Pac-12.
And the Utes can claim a strong connection to Meyer, who markedly raised expectations for the program during his two seasons on the campus that produced a 22-2 record. In a Tribune interview last summer, Meyer said he learned "the incredible, intangible value of the unity of the team" from the '04 Utes.
Those Utes became the first team from outside of the power conferences to play in a Bowl Championship Series game. Ten years later, Meyer coached the Buckeyes in the first championship game that concluded the College Football Playoff. In an ESPN postgame interview, Meyer also cited OSU's close-knit nature, labeling the Buckeyes "one of the great stories of college football history."
This inaugural set of playoff games was good stuff, especially for the No. 4-seeded Buckeyes. OSU crushed former Ute assistant coach Gary Andersen's Wisconsin team in the Big Ten title contest, then took down Alabama and Oregon in the CFP. The Buckeyes beat all three Heisman Trophy finalists in that sequence.
Oregon scored on its opening drive, but the Ducks otherwise were not their usual, productive selves in the first half as they fell behind 21-10. Wide-open receivers dropped two third down passes and Oregon was stopped on a fourth-and-goal play.
The Ducks trailed by 14 points midway through the second quarter. Of course, they would have gone down 14-0 to Utah in November, but Ute receiver Kaelin Clay infamously dropped the ball short of the goal line. Prior to the title game, Clay good-naturedly tweeted about how the Ducks should be thankful for his mistake, enabling them to reach the championship game.
We'll never know how Oregon may have responded to a 14-point deficit at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota and the rest of the Ducks battled back against OSU, but couldn't finish the job.
The Ducks cut the lead to 21-20, thanks partly to forcing four turnovers in the first three quarters. But Oregon's run defense, which was surprisingly tough against Utah, clearly wore down. A long touchdown drive pushed Ohio State's lead to 28-20 entering the fourth quarter, and Elliott added two more TDs in the fourth quarter.
Meyer's latest triumph was complete. At age 50, he's now in the conversation about the best coaches in college football history. Nobody who watched him work at Utah should be surprised.
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