Urban Meyer never seemed to bask in the infatuation and idol worship that came from face-painted adults who lived and died with his offense’s third down conversion rate. Any sort of rah-rah hysterics were muted by his professional demeanor that conveyed a desire for respect, a discomfort with being a deity. 

He wanted to coach well and stick to football. When Ohio State levied the three game suspension last year against him for how he handled Zach Smith, it became more than football. More than football and Meyer don’t mix. 

He’s a football coach to the core, someone skilled at distilling the nuances of the game to comprehensible ideas while he lived by a personal set of ethics he expected his coaches to emulate. He was the blue print, hands-on from sideline-to-sideline, lead by example off the field. 

When they failed to do so it came back on him. Someone trampled on his own moral code in the midst of his efforts to keep a steady course in pursuit of a national championship. The scourge from it attached to his reputation. He’s doing his best to shake it this season and bring back the respect he lost in 2018.

In an illuminating piece on ohio.com, Doug Lesmerises delves into the wins Meyer chases each day in his new capacity. Still defined by either a win or a loss, Meyer asks how can he become a better studio analyst for FOX, a better instructor at Ohio State. By my scorecard he’s earned some early season victories. 

Meyer’s work on both the Big Ten Network and FOX is concise and informative. While his desk mates on the Fox show try to sling one-liners and trash talk in measured yet frothy banter, Meyer cuts to the heart better than any other analyst in the sport. 

Take his breakdown of LSU quarterback Joe Burrow from Saturday’s “Big Noon Kickoff.” Meyer hit on the themes of movement key passing, progression passing, and isolation passing as principles of the LSU offense and the quarterback’s improved numbers. In each of the three Meyer reiterated points and explained what Burrow did with the football without getting into too many terms that loses a casual viewer. When he dips into that lexicon he explains the terminology without wasting words. 

BNK is a condensed version of Meyer’s depth and ability to detail a formation. His work on the Big Ten Network in the “Urban Analysis” segment is a perfect balance with Meyer as the instructor and Gerry DiNardo the advanced pupil who asks the sort of questions to explain a formation or a player’s skill set. 

Meyer teaches the game on both shows with a simplicity and an alarming amount of recall for what worked and what didn’t on the field in his time at Columbus. Yes, that recall is in contrast to Meyer’s memory loss, an ailment that came to light during the press conference to announce his suspension last season, but Meyer is so all-consumed by football that I don’t doubt claims about memory loss to other parts of his life because it held little interest to him. When you define yourself by your job the excruciating details of a loss maintain residency much longer than social interactions. Meyer’s never defined himself by anything other than his record as a football coach. He’s lived a black-and-white, win or lose existence right up until the end of last season. 

Things just seem a little different this year. With his reputation in the midst of being rejuvenated, no job seems big enough to capture his interest in the immediacy nor should he look to bail on his gig as an analyst.

Meyer is reshaping the public perception of him. I cannot see him jumping into coaching next year out of the goodwill he’s built up in the short term as an informative and (more in the segments with DiNardo) engaging analyst. A move to USC, long considered the front runner to woo him back onto the field long before the 2019 season began, extinguishes the good will he’s slowly accruing and validates claims that Meyer jumps ship when the spotlight on his program goes beyond the year in review specials for his team’s conference championship. Meyer needs to give it time, but if not next year, when?

There’s no specific time frame for Meyer to wait it out for the ideal job. He’ll have his pick of any opening and even without a program is the third best college football coach breathing after Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney. Personally, I think it’s Notre Dame as his final frontier. There’s still a reverence in his tone regarding the university and its prominence in the fabric of college football. The longer he waits it out the better he’ll be received. Whether it’s two years or four years makes little difference. He’s an all-engrossed consumer of the sport. No worry about the game advancing beyond his wisdom. The image rehabilitation tour is going well. Why halt it for a chance to bring back the headaches in the immediacy when he hasn’t secured the first major win of 2019?

Meyer is getting closer to earning it, but a willingness to jump back into the sport after one year away will be a loss to end the season and a loss to television viewers who want to learn the game.