From Bucknuts site: Uncertainty hurting Day, Ohio State on recruiting trail

Not so sure we’ll see an impact right away but losing Meyer can’t help OSU in the least.

I was hoping to open this up and read: Hello Zach Harrison!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m holding my judgment until I see the jersey sales numbers in Ohio. 

You have to give Meyer credit.  He is a LEG-EN-DARY Wolverine killer.  And I'm glad he's gone.  Things are not going to be the same.

I think most everyone is just in wait and see mode with OSU right now. How OSU progresses next season without Meyer will tell us a lot about how they’ll be over the next 3-5 years. There’s no shortage of talent in Columbus and it doesn’t sound like there will be a mass exodus of transfers. If Day comes in and kills it next season, this high speed train is right back on the rails and chugging along.

Will there be a drop Off? Yes, there will be, if for no other reason than by default. Meyer is one of the best to ever coach the game. The question is how much of a drop-off. I’m not convinced there will be a big drop off though. They will still be our toughest opponent for the foreseeable future.

There may be some hesitation with some of the recruits at this time but if Day goes into UM and wins next season their recruiting train will keep rolling. If JH can get a win then UM might be able to start wrestling some power away from OSU. 

Anybody remember when tressell left and everything was still fine.  I fully expect them to do just fine on the recruiting trail. It’s also expected that they may lose some guys this year and next that may have had a relationship with Meyer but so they end up ranked 12th this year instead of 5? Point is with all the crap that when on this year with them they still will have a good class and I assume will be right back to normal by next year.  We just have to beat them at some point for these things to change.

This opens a big opportunity for Harbaugh. If he can beat Day there's a chance to get ahead in the recruiting wars. 

I read that title initially as, “Fuck bucknuts site:...” and I wondered what those pooper-coolers had done now.

Oh well, fuck them anyway, just because.

Meyer had the charisma also. His sales approach had to be second to none almost, with the way he could talk. 

If a recruit was on the fence - send Zach in with "extras" to close the deal. 

Then...the whole thing come crashing down.

“Hurting”. Really?  

OHMIGOD WE DONT HAVE A TOP TEN CLASS FULL OF STARZZZZ!!! WE ARE CONCERNED WE MIGHT ONLY BE GREAT!!

Fuck Ohio and their Meyer loving fans. 

Day better take the Lying 101 class from Meyer

Folks,  all he has to do is show he can use talent.  He's got a boat load of it. Have his offense score 45 a game this year and he'll keep recruiting at the highest level. Osu is a national brand now.  This year is the determining factor if they stay that way or not. 

I don't think the Riley and Day comparison is as legit as it seems on the surface.  Everyone knew Stoops was looking to retire, and when he named Riley as the heir it was a feel good story all around.  There was no animosity, no national tension, no story about any wrongdoings - just a good, wholesome story of the new, hand-picked guy being groomed by the legend.  Contrast that to OSU's situation and its a stark difference.

Time will tell if Riley can keep that offense humming, and also improve the defense.  He hasn't been on his own long enough to see how well he recruits without the Stoops flavored team he still runs.  I don't really know why Dax Hill tossed OU out of the running so early on, but I think there's something there that he doesn't see the long term benefit of OU.  If that's a trend - where OU is not fully on with the top of the elites, they'll start to drop off.

Same goes with OSU.  Aside from the fact that OSU is overdue for the 'replace a legend fall from grace' that all but a couple of teams have gone through.

What made Meyer the recruiting force he is? Winning as a HC at a historic clip everywhere he’s been, starting with Bowling Green and Utah, where he didn’t have top-rated recruiting classes. Obviously Meyer is an excellent in-person salesman, but If he had just a middling coaching record, his recruiting wouldn’t be nearly what it is.

Day has never been a head coach before. The last time OSU hired a HC with so little experience was Paul Bixler, who lasted one season in 1946. 

Maybe Day will be great, but football at the college and pro ranks is littered with guys who were considered great assistants but were failures as HC. Right now, Day doesn’t have a fraction of the credibility on the recruiting trail that Meyer did—the only thing that will change that are lots of victories. He’s got big shoes to fill.

Not very complicated.

With only a very, very few exceptions, every time an elite program replaces their best ever coach (who is also among the ten best ever in all CFB), the next guy is not as good.

Meyer won 90% of his games at OSU.  Almost impossible that Day will do that. 

For people posting OSU will be the same under Day as they were under Meyer, what you are really saying is that you believe that Day will be as good as one of the best coaches ever in the history of CFB.

Think about it.  It makes no sense.  There is absolutely no rational reason to think that Day will turn out to be one of the best coaches in the history of CFB.

We need to take advantage of this period of uncertainty with Day taking the HC job and leadership of their program.  The 2019 version of The Game will be even bigger for Harbaugh.  Start the Day regime with a win and that will plant more seeds of doubt and be a big boost for Michigan.

This year’s game is going to be critical for the future. 

I call bullshit 

That win % at Osu isn't that hard to achieve imo. They recruit themselves to an extent ...& a lot of good players from Ohio to pick from.

Maybe one hard out of conference game. Only a couple B10 teams that will challenge an average Osu squad. 

Nothing will change until we start getting similar or better level of recruits as Ohio.

If Day can't recruit, he won't be here long. It's an underwhelming hire, but if he can recruit at Harbaugh's level instead of Meyer's level, he'll make it. 

i was always confused by the day hire. I mean, ya could be real good, but what a gamble especially with the recruits they had in line.  Anyway, I’ll tske any possible bad news for those shameless sum b’s

if there is an opening and it’s real, take advantage.   Gotta close on our remaining big targets.  

BS

Day & the OSU will still recruit very well, but Urban was a force on the recruiting trail since FL... and losing Urbz will be greatly missed by the Buck-holes

Tressel was considered a rather low-key hire - and look what he did

One weakness of Urban was offensive game plan stubbornness (running JT a million times) and some poor OC choices (Tim Beck etc.). So it's possible that the next couple years of Urban's recruits and Day's more open-minded offensive mind might be rough. Hope for the best...

A lot of good comments/points made in this thread.  My grab-bag of observations reenforcing & adding to some of them:

• Definitely in modern college football, being an excellent recruiter almost always equates to being an "excellent coach."  Coaches now are more CEOs & recruiters, (and to a lesser extent in-game play callers if they want to be more hands-on) than they are the innovative X's & O's innovators.  Many top HCs climbed the LADDER by being innovative X's & O's guys at some point, but eventually the game passes them up to some extent.  The savvy CEO/recruiter types inherently know this & over time import fresh blood for the X's & O's innovation.

• I agree the Lincoln Riley comparisons are not great.  First, it's too early to determine that Riley is really that incredible.  Stoops I think was on the down-swing in terms of innovation/recruiting but they did a great job lining up Riley in a more comprehensive way.  The transition was basically on their terms & super smooth.  I get the feeling that in terms of recruiting & being a HC, Meyer was still on top of his game, but kind of got run out of town due to administrative/scandal stuff.  The hand-off to Day just doesn't feel the same.

• Also agree that comparisons to the Tressell/Meyer transition isn't great either.  OSU definitely sucked for that one year, so at least OSU suffered *a bit* and they knew an elite coach was on the way.  That isn't the case this time.

• It defies logic that OSU won't slide back at least *a little*.  Meyer was an historically great coach. Even if Day turns out to be an excellent one, we're talking about at least a marginal slip.  Going from the 99 percentile for example to the 95th percentile.  Even then, there is a difference between the two men in a vaccuum versus Day benefiting from program momentum/roster talent.

• Since the OSU fanbase is incredibly spoiled and since this wasn't some closely tracked national coaching hire where they are bringing in some known elite coach from outside, I think that Day will get a shorter "honeymoon" period than one might expect.  He isn't come into a desperate fan base who just wants to get back up to "good."  He isn't coming with a ton of hype as a nationaly elite coach where people can point to his stops at prior turn-around efforts as HC and decide to be patient for 4-5 years as he sorts it all out.  As others have said, if he manages to lose 2 in a row to Michigan and/or slip and go 10-2 or god forbid 9-3 in the next season, I could see the OSU faithful hitting the panic button pretty quickly.  If that happens, the entire program could start to destabalize & go into that coaching death spiral--fan base is worried, Day has a hard time holding on to top recruits/assitants-->OSU loses a half step more due to this---> repeat.

• Even if Day manages to pretty much keep marching to the OSU beat, due to the historically elite nature of Meyer as both a recruiter & a coach, I still think Day would drop a half a step back.  So instead of winning 90% of his games & totally owning Michigan like Meyer did, maybe winning 85% and dropping one to Michigan every 3rd year or so.  And again, due to the point I made above about the state of the OSU fan base right now, you wonder if they'd be crazy enough to dump him overboard if he ends up being "merely very good" as opposed to being historically elite.

Final overall point outside of the OSU coaching change----

What a lot of folks don't consider often enough is that a good % (maybe 30% or even 50%) of Michigan's standing within the Big Ten doesn't relate directly to Michigan at all, but it relates to the relative health of other programs--both relative to Michigan currently, and also as it relates to THOSE program's historical health/performance over the years. 

Michigan created a ton of self-inflicted wounds from the late Carr Era when we didn't recruit that well & didn't cultivate that coaching tree--all the way through RR, Hoke & maybe even some of the OL recruiting/coaching issues we had under Drevno in the early Harbaugh Era.  And when those self-inflicted wounds happened MSU had a very good coach in Dantonio who was able to step into the vaccuum & build MSU off of Michigan's failures.  Similarly, PSU pretty much recovered as best as any reasonable person might expect from the Sandusky scandal.  OSU gets that tripple-rainbow back-to-back home-run coaching hires in Tressel & Meyer.  It also didn't help that Stanford (who we dont' play but certainly compete against for 2-3 recruits each year) was built up to become a very solid team (by Harbaugh of course) from maybe 2009-2017 as well.  

So what hurt us wasn't only our own downfall/self-inflicted wounds from 2007-2014, but it was also that these other programs took up the oxygen that Michigan historically had, which made it harder for us to claw our way back. 

Now we are starting to see the reverse happen.  Maybe OSU slips up just 5% or so.  But Michigan doesn't grow merely with a zero-sum-gain measured against how much OSU slips back.  What's also happening is that those other programs that were siphoning energy/recruits away from us SEEM to be falling back as well--MSU, Stanford, PSU. 

Yes, Michigan can be excellently coached & help accellerate that process.  Basically take a very slim opening & make sure we absolutely smash through it.  Essentially be a catalyst for their downfall.  But it seems to me that at some point most programs regress back to their historical means naturally.  And what I'm starting to see is that brutal 10 year era where our chief rivals (on field & recruiting) of OSU/PSU/MSU/Stanford (not to mention Wisconsin & Notre Dame) all COLLECTIVELY having one of the strongest eras ever is starting to come to an end.  There is more oxygen in the room generally, and Michigan needs to make damned sure we are the ones who are grabbing as much of that new-found oxygen as possible.