“Urban’s up here,” Bill O’Brien was saying one night exactly two years ago.
For emphasis, he raised his right hand even with his rather-formidable brow.
“And the rest of us,” O’Brien continued, his left hand more than a foot lower, “are down here.”
That was the highest praise, both literal and figurative, that O’Brien could give the head coach of his archest of rivals, Ohio State.
O’Brien’s pronouncement came in the warm glow of a four-overtime 43-40 victory over Michigan, just four days after the fact. Bill and a pair of buddies were enjoying a few Coors Lights at a neighborhood spot, off the beaten path away from both town and campus.
That night was two years ago from today, to the day.
And Ohio State was still 10 days away.
That night, Penn State and O’Brien were between a Michigan rock and an Ohio State hard place, playing with one sanctioned hand behind their back. The only solace entering the 2013 season was that there was a week off between the two games.
As it turned out, the bye week provided extra time to savor Penn State’s huge come-from-behind victory over the Wolverines in Beaver Stadium. Freshman quarterback Christian Hackenberg threw for 305 yards and three touchdowns on 23 of 44 passing, with Allen Robinson grabbing five of them for 84 yards, including a leaping 36-yarder at the Michigan 1 to set up an overtime-sending QB TD sneak by Hackenberg.
After that bye week came a trip to The Horseshoe against Urban Meyer and the No. 4 Buckeyes, an overwhelming favorite. For Penn State, Oct. 26, 2013 was a disaster. Ohio State jumped out to a 42-7 halftime lead, scoring touchdowns on six of its first seven possessions. Hackenberg’s first-quarter line read 4 for 9 for 47 yards, with two interceptions. Meyer piled it on, calling timeout to challenge the spot of Penn State completion on a fourth-and-5 near the end of the third quarter — despite being ahead 56-7.
Meyer won the challenge and Ohio State won its 20th consecutive game, 63-14. Meyer also won the lifelong enmity of one William James O’Brien.
Meyer already wasn’t exactly a popular guy in Happy Valley entering the game. In his first season at Ohio State in 2012, he had beaten Penn State 35-23 at Beaver Stadium. And he had also turned in Penn State twice for rules violations.
With that as a backdrop, O’Brien had to bite his lip – hard and often – in his 2013 post-game press conference in Ohio Stadium after Penn State’s worst loss since a 64-5 drubbing by the Duquesne Athletic Club in 1899. (Click here to watch the presser.)
“We’ll remember some things,” O’Brien said 110 seconds into the press conference, “and we’ll get ready to play Illinois.”
Near the end of the session, O’Brien was asked about Meyer’s decision to use a timeout to challenge the official’s spot even though the Buckeyes were up 49 points. (The exchange begins at 6:26.)
“The timeout to challenge the spot?” asked O’Brien, full well knowing the answer.
Three-second pause.
He flicked his right hand, then shook his head.
“He didn’t think we had the first down so he called a timeout to challenge it,” O’Brien said flatly, refusing to mention Urban by name. “I had no thoughts on that.”
Silence. Awkward.
O’Brien literally bit both his upper and lower lips for the next six seconds until a question finally came his way.
The next week, O’Brien’s fighters beat Tim Beckman’s Illini 24-17 in Beaver Stadium. In overtime.
JOE AND URBAN
It was Dec. 28, 2010, and Penn State was getting ready to face Florida in the Outback Bowl on New Year’s Day. At the dais was a 46-year-old head coach with two national titles, and to his left was a 84-year-old head coach with two national titles.
The questions that day were mostly about the impending retirement of one of the coaches. The 46-year-old – Urban Meyer of Florida.
Joe Paterno, the Penn State coach, lamented the loss of Meyer to the profession — at the 1:15 mark; see it by clicking here.
“Ohhh….,” grumbled Paterno, slouching a bit, wearing a grey sweatshirt and collared shirt, and speaking in bits of sentences. “I have said this privately and publicly that he is one of the … that’s why I hate to see him go … I think Urban has been one of the innovators … the way with some of things they’re done on the field.
“I’ve not been to his practice, but some of my coaches have some experience with him. My son (Jay) worships the guy. I keep telling him, ‘Your old man’s a coach, too, you know.’ Urban’s been great for this game, he really has. I’m not happy to see him go. I’ve told him that, but he has to what he has to do.”
A few minutes later (at the 3:56 mark), Paterno again addressed Meyer’s departure, which was coming just a few seasons removed from Florida winning national titles in 2006 and 2008.
“I’m different than Urban,” Paterno cracked. “I’ve got people who call up and say, ‘When the hell are you getting out?’ ”
Three days later, Florida won 37-24 and Meyer did, indeed, take the next season off. Later in January, Paterno approached a few Penn State leaders and said the 2011 was going to be his last. Over the course of the next several months, Paterno campaigned heavily for Meyer to be his successor, a plan that might have come to fruition had the Sanduskly scandal not hit. Just 18 days after Paterno was fired and with the future of Penn State football in severe doubt, Meyer was announced as the next head football coach at Ohio State.
Earlier this year, it was reported that in December 2014 Jay Paterno wrote a letter to Meyer, congratulating the Buckeye coach on his success and asking for a job.
JAMES AND URBAN
James Franklin has come closer to beating Urban Meyer than either O’Brien or Paterno. After trailing 17-0 at halftime to Ohio State on Oct. 25, 2014, in Beaver Stadium, Penn State roared back on an 18-play, 63-yard drive that set up a 31-yard field goal by Sam Ficken to send the game into overtime tied at 17.
The Buckeyes pulled it out, 31-24, in double overtime before a Whiteout crowd of 107,895. Even in defeat, it might have been Franklin’s finest hour of his 19-game tenure at Penn State.
For his part, Franklin has said only good things publicly about Meyer. The two of them narrowly missed coaching against each in the SEC. Meyer’s last season at Florida was 2010, Franklin’s first season at Vanderbilt was in 2011.
At Franklin’s first appearance at Big Ten media days in Chicago in July 2014, he was hit with a characteristically goofy question from Ari Wasserman of the Northeast Ohio Media Group. It’s important to know that ever since getting into some hot water at Vanderbilt with comments about assistant coaches with attractive wives having proven their ability to recruit, Franklin is much more careful with his public utterances – whether there are two or 102 reporters present.
So it’s interesting to see which way he went last year, seven months into the Penn State job, when asked by Wasserman, “Do you have a little Urban Meyer in you?”
To which Franklin responded: “I’m not even sure what you’re asking or how you even expect me to answer that question. I am very comfortable in my own skin and who I am and how we run our program, and so are my coaches.
“And all we’re trying to do is be the best James Franklin or the best Herb Hand in representing Penn State and representing the Big Ten. And I’m not trying to be anybody else but James Franklin. I’m very comfortable doing that, and I want Mike Hull to be the same way and I want Ficken to be the same way and I want Bill Belton to be the same way. That’s it. This is who I am, this is who I’ve always been. I may not have this, I may not have that, but I do not lack for energy. That’s one thing I have.”
SCRAP (NO URBAN) AND THIS SATURDAY NIGHT
On Saturday night, Franklin will take that energy to The Horseshoe, thus becoming – somewhat stunningly, if you think about it — the fourth different head coach for Penn State in its last four games at Ohio Stadium.
In 2010, under Paterno the Nittany Lions lost 38-14. (Two years earlier, due to an injury the coach watched Penn State’s 13-6 victory from the press box.)
In 2011, interim head coach Tom Bradley took the Nittany Lions to Ohio Stadium and – smartly springing the Wildcat on offense and producing inspired play across the board – won, 20-14. (It was Bradley’s only victory as a PSU head coach, and a fine one, at that.)
In 2012, there was the 63-14 thumping.
(Fourteen current Penn State players appeared in that game, according to the contest’s official stat sheet: Brandon Bell, Ben Kline, Malik Golden, Hackenberg, Austin Johnson, Geno Lewis, Jordan Lucas, Akeel Lynch, Carl Nassib, Evan Schwan, Jordan Smith, Von Walker, Trevor Williams and Anthony Zettel.)
Now, it’s 2015 and the hands that O’Brien was flashing to show Urban at top and everyone else way below, could be changing.
Jim Harbaugh is at Michigan, Mark Dantonio is rising even higher at Michigan State and Franklin is at Penn State. Saturday, Franklin meets Urban on his home turf for the first time.
Let the lip-biting begin.
