Ohio State football: What would have happened if Urban didn’t retire from Florida?

Ohio State has had an excellent run of coaches over the past 10 years or so. Even so, the Buckeyes lucked into hiring Urban Meyer. What would have happened if he didn’t retire from Florida?

Ohio State didn’t think they were going to need a coach for years to come. Back in 2010, Jim Tressel was still riding high and keeping the Buckeyes in the BCS conversation every single year. He was in no danger of losing his job at the beginning of that season.

Then the whole tattoo-gate scandal happened with Terrelle Pryor, Devier Posey, Mike Adams, and others. Tressel had to be fired and was given a show-cause penalty that forced him out of college football even to this day. The Buckeyes suddenly needed a head coach quickly.

As we know, they ended up turning to Luke Fickell for a year in 2011 before hiring Urban Meyer in 2012. Meyer was taking time off and calling college football games for ESPN after retiring from Florida a year earlier. He seemed to fall right into Ohio State’s lap.

But what would have happened if Meyer hadn’t retired from Florida? What if he would have stayed there in 2011. What would the Buckeyes have done in the coaching search? It would have affected the entire fabric of the program, even to this very day.

Let’s say Urban doesn’t retire and he stays at Florida in 2011. There is a chance that Meyer still leaves Florida for Ohio State. After all, it was one of his dream jobs in his home state. Conceivably, nothing changes in that scenario because he still comes to Columbus.

That scenario isn’t far-fetched, but it also isn’t as likely as it sounds. Florida was having an immense amount of success in the SEC at the time. Meyer was still regarded as the best or second-best coach in the country. Florida was a great place to be at that time.

If he stayed at Florida, Ohio State would have had to of looked elsewhere. Would they have taken a look at Mike Leach? Leach got hired to be the new coach at Wazzou that season. How about Kevin Sumlin? He was the new guy at Texas A&M that year.

No matter who they would have hired, it certainly wouldn’t have led to Ryan Day being the head coach today. Day was brought in by Meyer. He wouldn’t have any connection to a non-Meyer coaching staff and would not have come to Columbus at all.

It’s an interesting scenario to think about, but also one that we have no way of knowing what the final answers would have been. Buckeye fans are just grateful to have everything work out the way that it did.