Urban Meyer addresses how good Michigan is ahead of Big Ten Championship Game vs. Iowa

The regular season is over and Michigan did what it needed to to put itself in commanding position to earn a College Football Playoff berth.

The only thing that remains is to beat Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game this weekend. While Michigan may not have played the strongest schedule, it has earned that right.

“I made many comments about they’re the best first-half team in the country because their schedule was so bad,” FOX analyst Urban Meyer said on Urban’s Take with Tim May. “The players can’t control that, the coaches can’t control that. They beat Penn State at Penn State. They beat them, I mean hammered them.”

Meyer knows a thing or two about having championship-caliber teams. He won two national titles as the head coach at Florida, then won another one at Ohio State. He has fielded playoff teams.

He thinks he sees something a little special in this Michigan squad.

“We won three national championships and I’m not sure all three teams were my most talented teams,” Meyer said. “There’s something special. There’s something very unique about the; I always like to say the team is alive. It’s a living organism. And what makes that heart beat is the locker room, is the leadership within. I’m not in that locker room, but I witnessed the last three weeks, we went from one week where the coach got suspended on the plane, I think. The second week they think there’s going to be an injunction, so they practice all week thinking he’s going to be there. Then the third week, the biggest game of the year, The Game, and he’s not there. He was there all week in practice.

“So you just start scratching your head and the first thing you say is that Sherrone Moore — which we did a little thing on Big Ten Network about him; I don’t know him, I’ve heard of him — he checks all the boxes of what he did.”

Moore has been perfect as the interim head coach this season, and he’s now had a lot of practice at it thanks to various Jim Harbaugh suspensions.

Meyer, though, is impressed with the surrounding cast that made it all possible.

“He had the three hardest jobs on the field,” Meyer said of Moore. “Offensive line coach is the most difficult position to coach. He’s the line coach. Offensive coordinator’s the most difficult position on gameday. He’s the offensive coordinator. Then he’s the game manager, which is a very difficult job in itself. That’s why there’s no other person in the country that does all three. You can’t. It’s too hard. So he can’t do it all, so what’s that tell you? That tells you there’s incredible leadership on that team.”

As the conference championships creep closer, Meyer is watching any number of teams. He believes it’s a wide open field still.

Michigan has done its part so far.

“And I think we all witnessed it, so once again give credit where credit’s due,” Meyer said. “Do I think they can win it all? I do.

“I think this is as much parity as you’ve ever seen in the last 20 years. Any team can win it. There’s I think still five, six. I think Ohio State can still win it. I don’t know if they’ll get in, but the differential between the best team and the sixth team right now is (very thin).”