COLUMBUS, Ohio - What Urban Meyer touches keeps turning to gold.
Take this week, for example.
A few days after Meyer's latest contract extension was finalized, almost 100,000 fans came to Ohio State's spring game on a sun-splashed afternoon to celebrate last year's national title and get their only glimpse of the next Buckeyes team until September.
Meyer's run started here started with 24 straight wins. He's now at 13 and counting with the last three being trophy games piloted by a guy who not long ago was the third-string quarterback but had to tell the NFL no this winter. Meyer got two more recruits to commit Saturday, has the deepest stable of quarterbacks of any college team in recent memory and has studs at almost every other position, too. NFL-type studs. Not just horses. Thoroughbreds.
This thing is just revving up.
Meyer knows it, too. He coyly said the spring game crowd -- it would be hard to argue with the announced 99,391 -- "must be some sort of record."
He knew that it was -- an unofficial national record.
He knows competition on his roster is stronger than ever, too, and not just at quarterback. After what he admitted "was not, at times, a very pleasant scrimmage" he rattled off the names of seven or eight young players who are earning their way. He said he'll soon call the parents of a couple of them and say their son has earned the right to be a starter at Ohio State.
He's raising the bar, turning it to gold in the process.
A big decision awaits, and though Meyer always prefers to set a depth chart coming out of the spring so he can spend August trying to win in September, he knows this Cardale Jones-J.T. Barrett-Braxton Miller quarterback contest is unprecedented. He said he'll chart everything the quarterbacks do, in every drill, when fall camp begins. He knows that information will be valuable not just for his staff but for the players themselves -- "and for the familes," Meyer said.
Everybody's watching. Meyer likes that. He's used to it.
He knew the spring game wouldn't be pretty so he added some bells and whistles. At the end of a halftime quarterback competition, Jones launched a pass 74 yards. Afterwards, Jones said his arm "was a little tired" and that he could have thrown it further.
He probably was not exaggerating.
Jones has never started a real game in Ohio Stadium. He threw 42 passes in the spring game, most of them deep and some of them lazily. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't supposed to be. Meyer said that an overall grade on the work Jones did this spring would be very good.
Like the Buckeyes. Like the health of this Meyer-driven machine.
Before the spring game, Meyer put Jones in the circle drill against freshman quarterback Stephen Collier. He likes to keep guys on their toes. Late in the first quarter, Tyvis Powell intercepted a badly telegraphed Jones throw and got about 30 yards up the sideline before he got blasted by Jones, his roommate. The two hugged and joked when Powell got up.
That and a couple bombs to Corey Smith were the highlights. It was a day for work, for evaluation, for recruits and for fans.
Early Saturday morning, Ohio State set up a tent on campus to sell helmets and jerseys and shoes and other assorted gear that's been worn in past seasons. In about 30 minutes, almost everything was gone. The newer jerseys went for $100. The helmets went for $1,500.
People bought them. Then, almost 100,000 of them came to a scrimmage.
Meyer has things rolling -- and perhaps even faster than he thought possible.
