On the plane ride back to Columbus from New Orleans this past weekend, Gene Smith spent the duration of the two-hour flight talking to Urban Meyer, his head football coach, whom he saw in a new light after winning the Sugar Bowl, a triumph that is perhaps the pinnacle of Meyer’s three-year tenure at Ohio State.
“You see him in a different way and I wish the rest of the world could see him that way,” Smith, the school's athletic director, said.
“He’s focused when he’s locked in, but when it’s accomplished, it’s really a cool thing to see that he’s got a different perspective on life which is really cool.”
As the fourth-ranked Buckeyes bunker down for a bout against No. 2 Oregon in the first-ever College Football Playoff National Championship Game next week, Meyer, their ultra-intense, tough-love, no-nonsense, relentless, hard-to-please coach, cracked smiles and jokes during the school’s Media Day Tuesday afternoon.
Later this week, Ohio State will hop on a chartered jumbo jet to Dallas and Meyer, accordingly, will return to the meticulous perfectionist that guided his team to a win over top-ranked Alabama last week.
For now, though, in a week and on the stage where Meyer became a superstar in the sport, he is calm, cool and loose. Really loose. Maybe as loose as he’s ever been.
After all, this Meyer — the one who famously had to sign a family contract promising to take care of himself when he accepted the Ohio State job in late 2011 after a one-year hiatus from coaching — would appear to be different than the guy whose deteriorating health gave way to an unexpected departure from Florida, the place where he claimed two national championships and where he fell into his deepest nadir.
But Meyer, who’s been peppered with questions about that transformation for years, grows tired of talking about the past.
“I don't want to keep going back,” he said. “I want to keep pushing forward.”
And while he says he eats, sleeps and exercises like a normal human being compared to the robot he turned into with the Gators, Meyer said there's a misconception he wants to address.
"There are some other things I've changed,” he said, “But the coaching? That's the way we do our business. I don't think that will ever change.”
“We push (our players and coaches) really, really hard and that's never changed. and I don't think you can do it any other way.”
It's why the things that made him successful at Florida, he said, make him successful today. In a year where Ohio State lost two starting quarterbacks among other trials and tribulations, the Buckeyes will play for a national title.
“We push (our players and coaches) really, really hard and that's never changed,” Meyer said, “and I don't think you can do it any other way.”
But he said there is a balance now. The process has been refined and Meyer, who nearly succumbed to his own creation in Gainesville, says he is refocused.
If Meyer’s a changed man, this week — one that offers him an opportunity to regain a lost throne as college football’s alpha male — is as much of a test as it is a testimony. If there’s a week where the coach’s old workaholic ways and sleepless nights are warranted, it’s this one with so much at stake.
"It's a challenge because you get consumed. There is a little consumption right now,” he said. “You're down to the 11th hour.”
But unlike the last time he was in this spotlight, Meyer doesn't appear obsessed and the conversations, he said with a big smile, with his family and close friends are “you need to lose weight now instead of you need to gain weight.”
“He’s got it figured it out,” Smith said. “He knows that I’ve gotta take a break, he knows he has to let his assistants out to take a break, because you’re at your best when you’ve had that break.”
And on this Tuesday afternoon, an upbeat, candid and genuinely happy Meyer seemed at his very best.
Consider this exchange toward the end of his press conference when one reporter asked him, "how much do you live vicariously through how you lead and how much personal satisfaction do you allow yourself at this point in the season?"
To use one of Meyer's favorite sayings, the coach looked at him like he had three heads.
“Vicariously through people?” he asked, laughing.
The reporter said: “In other words, do you take joy out of what other people are feeling at this point of the year because of your accomplishments?”
Meyer flashed a smile that could've stretched from Ohio to AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
“That's a hell of a question," he said. “You got me there. I don't know. You kind of stumped me there. Apologize for not answering."
Here's the part that matters.
“1-0. You're up," he said, still grinning. "I'ma get you back, though.”
It’s a light moment that passes by like any other, but it’s a reminder of the competitive fire that burns deep inside Meyer and how it’s edged with a new perspective that might allow him to actually enjoy the moment that every college football coach dreams of.
