I'm completely neutral on Meyer, but in this debate, I tend to side with BT's position. Both sides have a point. I happen to believe that it's tougher to get a team up every week and keep them up when there is no brass ring to reach for at the end of the season. When they are playing for for a conference title or a BCS bowl, there is built-in motivation that wasn't there this season. Just my opinion.
On the other hand Ohio State had nowhere to go after playing Michigan whereas Michigan is going to a bowl game and the Buckeyes also had a perfect record possibility to motivate them.... and Michigan had virtually nothing of a season long accomplishment to shoot for.
Here is the motivation: " OK guys. We are on sanctions through no fault of our own. Coaches and players no longer here are responsible for this. We inherited this mess and we have to pay for it. Fair enough. But don't let them write us off. Go out there and prove to the world that the best team in college football will NOT be playing in a bowl this year. That will give them something to talk about under next September!"
George, I agree that you have a valid point. Like I said earlier, both sides have valid arguments. This appears to be a debate where we will just have to agree to disgree, although I believe we can agree on one thing, that Meyer is an excellent coach. I have no idea where Dave's reasoning comes from. To imply that either team in the OSU-MI game had less than full and equal motivation to win is just plain ludicrous.
The Michigan game was Ohio State's bowl game. The one they have to live with all winter if they fail. I know UM was fired up too... just sayin.
Having nothing to play for has always been a criticism of ND, no conference, no conference title...so if they lose a game early and are out of the Nat'l Champ race they have nothing to play for the rest of the season...well other than pride and hopefully those guys like winning. I'm sure that the Buckeye players like winning just as much as the next guy so that's pretty good motivation right there.
Just thought of something intriguing..... Does the nation like Meyer more/the same/or less now that he is the Buckeyes coach and not the Gators coach? I think in the long run it will be the same..... which is not much.
Developing Talent, that's the real criteria isn't it. Charlie Weis got some good talent but he never really developed much talent, sure he had some guys get better under him. Quinn, Samardzja, Mo Stovall, Jimmy Clausen, and guys like that...but note they are all offensive skill players who arrived with a lot of talent. How about guys who didn't arrive with a lot of fanfare? Here's a good article on Kelly and his development of talent. Now to be fair, there was a fair amount of talent when he took over, not at QB but at other positions he inherited some good raw material, but those guys were soft and weak as evidenced by our annual Nov collapse under Weis and Weis teams rarely physically dominated the opponent, even weaker ones. Now comes Kelly who's spent his whole career building teams out of 1 star and 2 stars and whole lot of no-stars. When he was brought to ND that was something a lot of people worried about, could he handle todays 4 and 5 star players. Turns out he can at least so far. This is a great article for ND fans, probably not so interesting for other fans though. Talent development under Brian Kelly