COLUMBUS, Ohio — A half-decade before Baylor dominated this past weekend’s news cycle with a barrage of firings and hirings, Ohio State was responsible for college football’s seemingly annual Memorial Day news dump.
And the five years that have followed the forced resignation of former Buckeyes head coach Jim Tressel have only brought clarity to the ramifications of the de facto firing.
Recruiting in Columbus has changed—as have on-field results—as the future of one of college football’s most prominent programs finds itself with a new trajectory moving forward. Nothing at Ohio State has been the same since Tressel’s firing—only not necessarily in the way many would have expected in late May of 2011.
As crazy as it would have sounded at the time, the Buckeyes now find themselves better off because of their program-altering Memorial Day morning five years ago.
The transformation has been quick and drastic since Ohio State fired its Hall of Fame coach. What it hasn’t been, however, is expected for a team that was engulfed in scandal and without an apparent exit strategy when it added the need for a new head coach to its growing list of problems in May 2011.
A 50-4 record, the first-ever College Football Playoff National Championship and a recruiting revolution can’t all be directly attributed to Tressel’s firing. But following a 6-7 season under interim coach Luke Fickell in 2011, Urban Meyer has ushered in a new era of…
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