When you schedule "The Church of the Little Sisters" each week, it is difficult to face a good team, blame the OSU AD and the coaches for scheduling such a "crimpy" schedule. They will blame the B one G, that's what the logo states, the Big Ten for making them play a quality team. Read below, Meyer is setting a great example for his team, "Cry, sit, sulk, put your head in your hands, when you lose." I personally have little to NO respect for the coach, anymore. Maybe he should go back on TV and dazzle them with his knowledge of the game, he never loses, there. He was a WINNER on TV." He can go and sulk in his little home in Columbus, and he just coaches football, nice place, Urban." I think he's on the 9th at Muirfield, not to bad for a football coach.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Urban Meyer sat in the passenger seat of a golf cart as his players streamed out of the locker room and toward the team bus. In between bites of a small, pepperoni pizza from Papa John's and sips of red Gatorade, Meyer placed his head in his hands. His wife, Shelley, occasionally tried to console him. But mostly, Meyer just stared blankly.
It was a look that no one had seen Meyer wear in a long time. Since Nov. 27, 2010, in fact. That's when he suffered his last loss as a head coach, against Florida State when he still led Florida. His current team, Ohio State, hadn't experienced a defeat since Jan. 2, 2012, in the Gator Bowl.
Allen Kee/ESPN ImagesUrban Meyer suffered his first loss as Ohio State coach in the Big Ten championship game.
Several of the Buckeyes' underclassmen had never even known what it was like to lose a college game. Until Saturday, when Michigan State pulled off the 34-24 win in the Big Ten championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium. Ohio State struggled with how to react to such a foreign concept.
"I’m just at a loss for words," linebacker Ryan Shazier said. "I haven’t lost in a while and it kind of hurts. We worked so hard and it just slipped out of our hands."
Of course, this just wasn't any defeat. It's as if the football gods timed Meyer's first setback just right so as to inflict maximum pain.
Had Ohio State not blown a 24-17 second half lead, had it found a way to pull through as it so often had, then a date with Florida State in the BCS title game almost certainly awaited. The Buckeyes had to sit home and watch the national title game with a 12-0 record last year because of NCAA probation. They'll be watching it from afar again this year and thinking about it long after that. As Meyer put it, losing to the Spartans is "is going to haunt all of us, I imagine, for a little while."
"Man, it hurts," running back Carlos Hyde said. "To be that close to going to a national championship my senior year, that hurts."
What stings even more is the Buckeyes' first Big Ten title game appearance served as the inverse of what fueled much of their success. All season long, Ohio State jumped on opponents with early scores then broke their will with physical play in the second half.
