Meyer savoring his second chance

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There will be time for Meyer to take the Buckeyes' win in the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship and parlay it into signing the nation's top recruits, a lot more of whom are suddenly interested in Ohio State after its 42-20 defeat of Oregon on Monday night.

There will be time for Meyer to draw on his two previous national championships and devise a strategy to prevent Ohio State from sailing down the sliding board of complacency. But first, the Buckeyes will celebrate the school's sixth national championship in the modern era.

"The word 'repeat'? We'll have that conversation, certainly not today," Meyer said Tuesday. "It's about enjoying it."

Meyer's plan for dealing with the excesses of success derives from the plan he teaches his players to use in dealing with football.

"It's been driven into them for about a year," Meyer said. "Elite warriors, when they accomplish their mission, they celebrate. The next thing they do is learn from it, and then the final thing is they look forward to the next mission, next assignment.

"Right now, we're in the celebration phase. Eventually, we're going to get to the learn-from-it phase, and then the next guys like this ..." Meyer looked to his left at quarterback Cardale Jones and safety Tyvis Powell, "wait for the next mission."

This Urban Meyer is different from the Meyer who won two national championships at Florida (2006, 2008). His longtime strength coach, Mickey Marotti, said Meyer "has definitely changed. He has been a little bit calmer as he has gotten older."

Meyer's health problems at Florida derived from his tunnel vision, his lack of perspective regarding the relationship of football to the rest of his life. He is still a competitor whose right foot knows only how to stomp on the accelerator. Meyer demonstrated as much Monday night.

When Oregon committed the 10th and final penalty of its disappointing night and gave Ohio State a first down at the Ducks' 2-yard line with 1:43 to play, many coaches would have made what they refer to as their favorite call -- the victory formation. Take a knee, let 40 seconds run off, repeat as necessary until the clock reads 0:00. Not Meyer.

"I didn't even think about taking a knee," he said Tuesday. "I can't even tell you the situation. I'm trying to even visualize what happened. But we play to win and we play to be aggressive in what we do, so that didn't even -- I didn't hear it over the headsets, and I certainly didn't think about it at that time."

But Meyer has maintained his grip on that perspective in the second chance of his coaching career. He is 50 years old, and after running his body off the road at Florida, he has returned to the top with a different attitude, even as he keeps what he called "a very complicated machine" running at top form.

"Everybody knows that he's a great coach," Powell said. "But you know, coming and learning the things that he taught us about just being selfless and playing for each other, I mean, that's just something that I'm going to take for the rest of my life, because when you play for somebody else, it's like you play even harder, and that's what I think helped this team get to where we're at."

So what to do about Jones, Braxton Miller and J.T. Barrett will wait. Recruiting, which resumes in 48 hours, will wait, and that's a hard thing for a coach like Meyer to swallow.

"I can't wait to go out recruiting," Meyer said. "[If] you can't recruit to this now, you're officially a bad recruiter, and not just because of the championship. There's just so much going on in our program right now on the positive side, and it's not theory, it's testimony."

Testimony to the power and might of the Buckeyes. They rose from the "last team in" to the "last team standing." That testimony does not have to wait. That's what Meyer wants to shout. Tell it, brother. Tell the world about national champion Ohio State.