I thought this was ready to go but checked out the news one more time, and I’m glad I did because I stumbled across this bit from College Football Talk regarding something interesting Urban Meyer said recently.

The former Florida head coach and Ohio State grad assistant told an Indianapolis radio station a potential roadblock to his getting back into coaching is “the off-the-field, the agent issues, the violation issues and all the garbage that is out there right now”.

He expressed, let’s say, mild optimism some of the problems can be weeded out in the coming years.

Of course the media attention genie is never going back in the bottle, but with the NFL looking into doing something about illicit agent contact and the NCAA seemingly going through a makeover as far as enforcement goes (confusing now but perhaps more productive when the feeling-out process is over), I think there is a chance a few of the problems that marred the previous season and offseason will be scrubbed or at least minimized. The system will never be perfect – far from it – but perhaps some streamlining can be accomplished.

But there is another layer to the story that interests me, and that is the potential of a Meyer return. As I tweeted the first time he retired in 2009, I could see the Ashtabula native returning to his home state to lead the flagship university some day.

This latest bit of info does nothing to dissuade me from thinking that way.

Jim Tressel has said multiple times he does not see himself coaching into old age like Joe Paterno. The 58-year-old Tressel signed a contract extension last year that takes him only through the 2014 season, and it included a new provision requiring the university to create an administrative position for him if he requests it before the contract runs out.

He wasn’t real anxious to talk about why they settled on the length of the deal other than to say he liked having the contract run through the end of the careers of the guys he was recruiting at the time, so I guess we’ll see if another year gets added in the next few months, but in the mean time I still think the potential exists for Meyer to recharge his batteries then step in at Ohio State when Tressel is finished…

Meanwhile, Dr. Saturday wonders why Rich Rodriguez thinks he made progress at Michigan.

I find this question quite valid.

From my perspective, Rodriguez’s Shawshank metaphor actually has a much better chance of applying to Brady Hoke in a few years than it does to what Rodriguez faced at the end.

Rodriguez made the program worse, not better, than he found it, and Hoke must undo that. He is probably equipped to do the grunt work. Whether he can get it beyond “consistently respectable” remains a different question.

Any progress Rodriguez might have claimed was directly related to his own work in tearing everything down the previous two seasons, when he could have had a less painful transition than he did if he had only been less stubbornly attached to everything he has done that somewhat worked at a lesser school once the better schools left the woefully poor conference.

The bottom line is Rodriguez’s record the past two seasons – the one-game-below-.500-record – was even worse than its mediocre winning percentage would indicate.

The Wolverines not only scored zero quality wins, they were hardly even competitive in games against the top half of the league…

Other randomness:

• Speaking of Hoke, here’s a good sign for him: His new recruiting coordinator, Jeff Hecklinski, identified Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois as priority recruiting areas before worrying about the national side of things. Good for Ohio State: Hecklinski is from Illinois, played at Western Illinois and has coached at Arizona, Ball State and San Diego State, so he has no clear Ohio ties…
• Chris at SmartFootball put together an awesome look at the zone blitz in honor of the defensive coordinators – former Ohio State halfback Dick LeBeau of Pittsburgh and former Ohio State assistant coach Dom Capers of Green Bay – facing off in the Super Bowl. Pittsburgh’s one-gap 3-4 defense shares many similarities to Ohio State’s 4-3 Under base, and zone pressure has been a big part of the Buckeyes’ defense since Jim Tressel came to town in 2001.
• Portsmouth used to be home to the NFL’s Spartans before they moved to Detroit and became the Lions. The Dispatch profiled the city’s fading fortunes on Super Bowl Sunday and Bob Hunter mused in his blog about Dayton or Portsmouth being in Green Bay’s place if those Ohio cities had been able to hang onto their teams a bit longer. (Dayton, with a population about 50 percent greater than Green Bay now, fits the comparison much better than Portsmouth)
• SI.com talked to Mike Mayock about Mike Mayock, the best in the draft guru biz
• Football junkies such as myself lament the passing of Emory Ballard, the former Texas Longhorns assistant who took the old split-back veer and turned it into the Wishbone triple option
• Read this from ESBS for the awesome video embedded (farms rule)
• Some folks seemed to be confused on this issue, but the Buckeyes have won a men’s basketball game at the Kohl Center in Wisconsin before. Here’s the one I remember most vividly: link
• Just because it’s MJ – Jordan practices with Bobcats