Urban Meyer shares greatest advice Lou Holtz gave him ahead Ohio State vs. Oregon in Rose Bowl

Ohio State and Oregon are slated for a rematch of a regular season showdown when the two face off in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal. But don’t expect the Buckeyes or Ducks to do much different than the first time around.

That is, at least, if former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer were in charge. The multiple-time national championship-winning coach shared a bit of advice he got from legendary coach Lou Holtz that paid dividends during his own run, and that could be put to good use by both Ryan Day and Dan Lanning.

“Lou Holtz gave me the greatest advice. He’s like a walking encyclopedia. I would call him nonstop. And he would spit out answers, Mark. He was phenomenal,” Meyer said. “My first time, we beat Arkansas in the SEC championship game in ’06. We have a month to get ready for the national title game, ironically against Ohio State. First guy I call: Lou Holtz. Here’s his advice, two things: He said, ‘No. 1, remember, that game is not played until Jan. 8 at 7 p.m.’ He reminded me for the next four weeks, he said, ‘You don’t want your players to apex until January 8, at 8 p.m.’ So I would put that in bold letters, right in front of my office, on a big whiteboard in Sharpie: January 8, 8 p.m. Because you don’t want to get them too high or too low. The second thing is, your team is in a routine, keep them in that routine.”

Meyer continued, harping on how he’d keep the week-to-week schedule consistent for his program in the layoff between postseason games.

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“So that’s exactly what I did for three weeks,” Meyer said. “We did a Tuesday hard practice, full pads, much less than what we did during the season. Wednesday was the third down, red zone. Thursday was the scripted series. Friday was a walkthrough. And then Saturday had them get up in the morning and we just quick, but we went through a game day routine, because players are routine. They love a routine, coaches love routine. So every week, obviously it was much — we didn’t beat ’em up at all. So our players told me to the day, the reason they played so well in those national championship games, we stayed on a routine for the next three weeks.”

The layoff for Ohio State isn’t quite as excessive as the old BCS layoffs, but Oregon will be taking the field in Pasadena for the first time since winning the Big Ten title on Dec. 7. But outside of keeping the prep consistent week to week, Meyer doesn’t think there’s a ton to change based on having played a team prior. Oregon beat Ohio State, 32-31, in Eugene during the regular season.

While there is some inevitable increased familiarity, Meyer shared that playing a team a second time in a season doesn’t really change how he’d go about prep.

“I’ve been asked a lot, ‘Is it hard to beat a team twice in a season?’ You don’t really know,” Meyer said. “That’s happened only a handful of times. I think get used to it, though. With this 12-team playoff, there’s a chance you could play a team three times in a season. So we’re about to find out how hard it is. Because sure it’s hard, but does it change the way you game plan? No. You try to win the game. The only thing that it does, give you a little familiarity. For example, Ohio State will have a better feel of the juice at the wide receiver for Oregon.”