CHICAGO — Everyone associated with the Ohio State football team has a Coach Mick story. If you don't, you will soon before you leave Columbus.
"We were doing quadri-pads or whatever they’re called, and he tells you to squeeze your butt cheek or whatever. He told me one time I wasn’t doing it hard enough," Buckeye senior defensive tackle Adolphus Washington recalled Thursday. "He said, ‘If you do it hard enough, you’ll blow all the windows off in the building’ or something like that. Everybody in the weight room just died laughing for like five minutes."
Discussing the effort of someone's butt cheeks during a workout is sure to instill some laughter among whoever can hear it, but Mickey Marotti's impact on Urban Meyer's football program is perhaps greater than any other.
"I learned over the years, Coach Marotti is my right-hand man," Meyer said Thursday. "While I'm here, he's with the team. When I'm doing stuff, whatever I have to do, he's with the team. So I really rely on him for the pulse of our team."
"You definitely got that love and respect for Coach Mick because he’s always there for you and he pushes you when you don’t think you can go anymore."– Adolphus Washington
Any successful strength coach has to be a little insane — getting your guys up each and every day at 5 a.m. for miserable workouts to build steel-worthy bodies makes you hated and loved among those under your tutelage.
"Coach Mick is basically Coach Meyer when Coach Meyer's not around," senior linebacker Joshua Perry said Thursday. "He handles a lot of stuff, he's with us all the time, he gets to know the players really well. Everything he does with us is imperative to our success. He takes care of so much stuff."
Taylor Decker recalls getting spit on by Marotti while he "talks" to the Ohio State players, just a normal thing in a day in the life.
"Even this morning, we were doing our Team Up North period at the end of the workout and he’s just sitting there, just yelling," Decker said Thursday. "We’re there laying underneath him and just getting rained on and he knows it. He’s like, ‘If you’re in the front two rows you’re gonna get spit on.’ He does that all the time."
Marotti leads the Ohio Stadium student section in "quick cals" on game days, brief calisthenics intended to create focus amid his whistle blowing.
He's the man Meyer turns to in the immediate moments following a game — win or loss — to determine the next day's activities. After Ohio State topped Alabama, 42-35, in the Sugar Bowl New Year's Day, Meyer could be seen outside a raucous locker room in the bowels of the Louisiana Superdome discussing when its next weightlifting session would be with high-flying Oregon waiting less than two weeks later.
"Anyone who touches our players reports to Mick," Meyer said. "That means nutrition, equipment, doctors, trainers, (physical trainers), discipline. He's such a big picture guy and just spends an incredible amount of time. If you don't trust that person, it's a bad spot to be in. I know some coaches that are in some tough spots, that's the most valuable guy in a football guy."
Perry's body progression since he was a 19-year-old freshman to July 2014 under Marotti was captured by his Instagram last summer. There are numerous videos posted to Meyer's — and the other coaches — Twitter accounts documenting the ferocity of a daily workout.
They look terrible, but clearly pay dividends with how Ohio State improbably ran the table in 2014 after a loss to Virginia Tech to win the first ever College Football Playoff.
"It's just been a blessing for me to have the opportunity to be at Ohio State and train with Coach Mick because he's brought a lot of really good out of me," Perry said.
The linebacker says another photo of how his body looks following the summer workouts is coming soon — they were snapped right before media days this past week. It's just a small chapter, however, of the amount of time he invests in the players every single day.
"The coaches take vacations during the summer times, so Coach Mick is just that one guy that’s with you at all times," Washington said. "You definitely got that love and respect for Coach Mick because he’s always there for you and he pushes you when you don’t think you can go anymore. He definitely can find it inside of you and he’ll pull it out of you."
Meyer said he's the biggest reason outside of his own immediate family that he can achieve balance in his personal life, something he struggled with after winning a pair of national titles at Florida in 2006 and 2008.
Perry credits Marotti with morphing him into a college football player. Washington says he never goes on vacation because the team needs him.
Everyone has a story, a memory of hate or his saliva-based speeches. But Marotti is one of the few people who can get away with being brutally honest with Meyer — because he knows the head coach trusts him with everything.
"He's probably the one that ... when Steve Addazio worked with me, Kyle Wittingham, those are the kind of guys that 'this is my thought,'" Meyer said. 'And Mick's there. It's an honest, I don't always agree, but that's it: Utmost trust."
