Monday morning brought Columbus its first snowfall of the season and blanketed the trees of red, yellow and orange hues outside outside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center in white.
As fall turns to winter, it was a reminder of regular season that’s nearing an end and how it will soon birth college football’s first-ever postseason playoff.
In that conversation is eighth-ranked Ohio State, who is perhaps playing as well as any team in the country.
Ever since a loss to Virginia Tech, the Buckeyes have rallied back into the thick of the national picture. With a chance to secure a return to the Big Ten title game this weekend against Indiana, the next month is a final push for a chance to contend for a national championship.
These are strategic and fragile times for Urban Meyer — who is as calculated as head coaches come.
He endorsed quarterback J.T. Barrett as a Heisman candidate, but wouldn’t offer further comment about a potential position battle between him and Braxton Miller. He opened up about the state of the Big Ten, but wouldn’t address how a win over the Hoosiers — no matter how big or small — wouldn’t do much to impress an all-seeing selection committee watching their every move.
“That's not even going to be addressed,” Meyer said.
It’s not by accident. There are subjects Meyer will entertain to his team’s benefit and others he avoids like the plague.
Like how he’ll tell you Ohio State’s the most improved team he’s ever coached: “We are lights out a much better football team than we were at the beginning of the season."
But he declined an opportunity to anoint it as one of the top four teams in the country.
“Not right now, no,” Meyer said. “Because I don't want to make ignorant comments. I just don't know. I'd make the comment that we're one win away from representing the East in the Big Ten Championship game, because I do know that.”
For those teams jockeying on the national stage, this is campaigning season. But Meyer has his coaches and players trumpeting cliches of taking the home stretch of the season one game at a time. This week's mantra is "Beat Indiana," a team the Buckeyes are expected to demolish at home Saturday.
“We wake up every November or we wake up every day to compete for championships in November. It's at the doorstep now,” Meyer said. “They've done a good job getting us there. If you'd have told us after week two that this would all start to materialize, I think we just keep doing what we're doing, and that's get better, get better each week.”
Talking about hypotheticals is forbidden.
“Those kind of conversations I think take place in here,” Meyer said before a roomful of reporters and cameras. “They certainly don't take place within locker rooms, not that I'm aware of.”
While it doesn't erase the urge to metaphorically look up and see a developing scenario where the Buckeyes can return to Indianapolis to potentially avenge a devastating loss that snapped a 24-game winning streak and dashed a berth in the national title, it's meant to temper it.
“That thought's there, but you can’ do that,” redshirt sophomore guard Pat Elflein said.
“You can’t think about that because Indiana, they’re in our way. You don’t want to overlook them because it’s a Big Ten football team, you know? If someone slips up, you can’t do that. You gotta focus on what’s important now, which is Indiana. Beat Indiana. That’s what we gotta focus on.”
Added defensive line coach Larry Johnson: “We’re taking it one game at a time. I wasn’t here for the Big Ten Championship Game, I was just watching from afar. I think our guys got it in the back of our minds, but that doesn’t happen if we don’t take care of business on Saturday.”
After all, that is within Ohio State's sway. The Buckeyes are just part of the fray in the big picture.
"Win the Big Ten — that’s what we can control is winning that conference. So that’s what we gotta do," Elflein said, "but we gotta beat Indiana first."
