Urban Meyer responds to thought that Ohio State already played its national championship matchup

After a riveting round of the College Football Playoffs in the semifinals, there’s one question at least some people are asking about Ohio State. Did the Buckeyes already effectively play their national championship game?

Many went into the semifinals viewing the winner of the Ohio State-Texas contest as the heavy favorite to win it all.

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That jives with the spread in Las Vegas, where the Buckeyes opened up as a 9.5-point favorite. And at least one major college football analyst knows what it feels like to have everyone talking about you as if you’ve already won a national title.

“I’m going to share. So the two guys on this podcast, Mark Ingram and myself, we dealt with that,” former Florida and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said on The Triple Option podcast. “When we played each other in ’08, ’09 that was the de-facto national championship game. When we played Alabama in ’14, we played Oregon next. I didn’t say that, but everyone was saying that was the national championship game.”

That can obviously present some challenges for coaches.

It can be difficult to motivate a team that already feels like it’s over the hump. So Ryan Day will have his work cut out for him.

Urban Meyer shared one way he overcome that feeling in the postseason with his teams, perhaps something Ohio State can use.

“I’m going to take a quick talk. Billy Donovan, the incredible basketball coach of the Florida Gators, was my neighbor at Florida,” Meyer revealed. “I had him speak to our team, and to this day some of our players still talk about the speech he gave. He called it ‘the white rope.’ And you know what happens in a basketball game, I watched it when Billy Donovan won the national championship. What do the ushers do right as the game ends? They lift up a white rope, because they keep the riff raff from doing what? Coming on the court. You want to celebrate with the people that got you there, cut the net down and all that.”

It’s a simple metaphor that works well to create an image in the minds of players. There’s a separation that needs to occur: what’s outside the rope vs. what’s inside.

“Watch what happens in championship atmospheres,” the former Ohio State coach said. “Those yellow coats or whatever they are, the ushers, what do they do? A lot of times they lift a rope. Why? To keep the outsiders from going in. There will be time. That includes, I hate to say it, your family and girlfriends and all that other stuff.

“We’ll have a hell of a time in about a week or so, but I used to do that all the time with our players, pull up that white rope. Do not listen. And it’s so hard now. It was a little easier back then because you didn’t have all the social media stuff. But whichever team pulls up that rope, that’s what they’re doing right now. Every coach right now is somehow finding a way to take their team on an island somewhere.”

Does Urban Meyer see either team in this year’s national title game having an edge with that? Not really.

Despite the fact that Notre Dame will presumably be under a little less pressure as a big underdog, Meyer doesn’t necessarily think either side has an advantage.

“The thing is these coaches are elite, and I’m going to say this: I think these two locker rooms, either one of them, just from the way they play, once again I’m getting chills because I love these freaking guys like that,” Meyer said. “They’re all about it. So I think you’re going to see two focused (teams). There’s no nonsense here. This is two focused teams. Excellent coaching staffs and I’d say two of the best locker rooms I’ve heard about.”