Texas Football: Impact of Urban Meyer retirement for Longhorns

Huge news broke early in the month of December, that could impact Texas football, as Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer will retire after the Rose Bowl.

The college football world received some drastic news on Dec. 4, with the retirement of the legendary Ohio State Buckeyes head football coach Urban Meyer. Ohio State had a ton of controversy surrounding the team and coaching staff this fall. The main issue for Meyer and the Buckeyes was the news that was released about the track record of his handling with former assistant Zach Smith. He even got Texas football involved at times this year.

Smith faded off the scene as the season moved along, but the Meyer headlines did not. When news broke about the cyst Meyer has removed from his brain a few years back, his coaching status was called into question beyond the 2018 season.

That cyst that Meyer was dealing with seemed to continue to keep him in pain this fall. He was frequently found on the sideline kneeling in pain with what seemed like unbearable headaches and pains. Reports indicated that the issue Meyer specifically dealt with was an arachnoid.

Sure enough, Meyer announced his retirement from coaching Ohio State football on Dec. 4. This news came as a surprise to some, but was largely expected soon. If the news didn’t come this off-season, he was figured to retire at some point in the next two years.

Meyer is going to go down as one of the better college football head coaches of all-time. He won a national title as recently as 2014 and led Ohio State to be one of the most consistent programs in the nation since the start of the College Football Playoff era. Ohio State also just won its second Big Ten Championship in a row.

In the past four years, Ohio State has either won a Big Ten Championship or made an appearance in the Playoff each time. That is unprecedented success that can only be topped by the Clemson Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide.

It’s hard to argue that any head coach in the nation was more accomplished of late than Alabama’s Nick Saban. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney could put up an argument for that. But, Clemson has only one national title under Swinney, while Meyer brought three in the past 15 years to the Florida Gators and Ohio State.

Moreover, the impact that the retirement of Meyer will have on Texas football is fairly far into the future. Texas football does meet up with the Buckeyes for a home-and-home series in 2025 and 2026. Most didn’t think that Meyer would come even close to making it to that point in his coaching career anyway.

Ohio State could be well into the Ryan Day-coaching era in Columbus by the point that it faces the Texas Longhorns. If all doesn’t workout with Day, Ohio State could already be under the direction of another head coach too.

Another impact that this has on the Horns in just in terms of the national landscape. Ohio State should still be a top tier program under Day, but it could take a few years to get back to that level of consistency it had under Meyer.

Head Texas football coach Tom Herman has the Horns back on the brink of national contention, and Ohio State might not be in that same picture for the next two or three years without Meyer. We’ll have to wait and see what happens to Ohio State football in the immediate future.