Urban Meyer explains the talent discrepancy between the SEC, Big Ten

Former Florida and Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer made a recent appearance on Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich and discussed the differences between the talent level in the SEC and the Big Ten. Meyer had success in both conferences, winning National Championships in each, and pulled back the curtain the the recruiting process between the two.

“Oh yeah, immediately in 2012 I started watching film getting ready to play and it was night and day. And the Big Ten really didn’t nationally recruit very well, it was more everybody was in their footprint. And there were great players, just wasn’t the quality and the depth that you had and I like to think that our staff was really one of the first ones. We went to Georgia, we went to Texas, we went all over the country. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t great players in Ohio, there are certainly great players, just the reality that there’s fewer now than there was,” Meyer said.

Meyer definitely helped ignite national recruiting during his time at Ohio State, signing players from Florida like brothers Joey and Nick Bosa, California like Michael Thomas, and Jeff Okudah from Texas. Meyer elaborated on how times have changed in regards to recruiting in the Big Ten in the past versus the present.

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“There was a time 25 years ago where you can fill a team with Ohio and western Pennsylvania players, reality is that just doesn’t happen now. There’s times where you can get five, six, seven Ohio players on your team, there’s other times you get two. So yeah the reality is that the Big Ten in 2012 if you look where they are nationally recruiting, I think it’s much different,” Meyer said.

In today’s college football landscape, it is a lot more common to see top talent go to schools that aren’t as close to home for them, Ohio State’s current quarterback and receiver duo of CJ Stroud and Jaxon Smith-Njigba are California and Texas high school products.

Recruiting was a lot more simple during Meyer’s college coaching days, but now with conference realignment moves in the near future, the presence of of the transfer portal, and NIL, recruiting has changed drastically. The recruiting landscape will only continue to grow and evolve, becoming a lot more national and borderless as schools across the nation will be able to acquire the nation’s top talent regardless of their distance from that school’s campus.