Urban Meyer had some truly historic rosters during his two decades as a college football head coach. But while he won national titles with three of them, he feels that his best team ever didn’t even win a title.
On the latest episode of The Triple Option, Meyer recalled that his 2015 Ohio State Buckeyes may have been the greatest team to never win a national title. He feels that it was even better than his 2006 and 2008 Florida Gators, and his 2014 Ohio State Buckeyes that won the title a year before. However, the Buckeyes lost to Michigan State 17-14 in late-November, allowing the Spartans to win the Big Ten title and take their place in the College Football Playoff. Ohio State would be relegated to the Fiesta Bowl, where they crushed Notre Dame.
Meyer recalled that he was so “despondent” from losing to Michigan State that he set out to make a statement against Michigan and Notre Dame in the weeks that followed. But he made it clear that he feels his Buckeyes that year were a national title team.
“We lost in 2015 to Michigan State. I still think that’s one of the great teams in college football (history) that didn’t win a title. Probably the best team I ever had, including the three national title games,” Meyer said. “We lost that game in a rainstorm to Michigan State. I was non-functional. I mean, I was despondent. I remember going out to the practice field and my captain, Pat Elflein, who was my center, and Michael Thomas kind of grabbed me and said, ‘Hey we got to go!’ We went on to beat the (Michigan) Wolverines and ran for almost 400 yards – and beat the mess out of them. And then we went on to beat Notre Dame badly in the Fiesta Bowl. That was a national championship team.”
Had the Buckeyes reached the College Football Playoff, they would have stood a pretty good chance against any combination of Alabama, Clemson and Oklahoma. For all we know, they would have become back-to-back national champions for the first time ever.
In terms of the talent, he’s certainly right that his team was loaded with it. Multiple players on that team would go on to be NFL players, Pro Bowlers, All-Pros and even Super Bowl champions.
Were the 2015 Buckeyes the best team that didn’t win a championship?
Related: Joel Klatt Says Ohio State Could’ve Won 2015 College Football Playoff