Blue White Illustrated

you could have gotten an "A." It's taking notes in every single meeting – every single meeting. Not because the coaches told you to do it, but because you want to be great. It's the coaches making sure that that's the standard. That we don't settle, we don't make excuses, we don't allow it to happen. There is a way to be unbelievably suc- cessful in life, in football. That's what we're going to do. And we have let little things slip by. That isn't happening [anymore], be- cause those little things that have slipped by [add up to] one point last year and one point this year. It's not happening anymore. You guys thought I was a psychopath in the past? You have no idea. And I don't want you to take it the wrong way. I'm not saying that from a negative standpoint. I'm not a negative guy, but I am going to make sure that, in our program, that we do everything right, and that we grow every single day and we challenge our- selves every single day and we get un- comfortable. We get comfortable being uncomfortable and break out of "great" to get to that next phase. ON POSTGAME EMOTIONS I'm an emotional guy. I've been really angry about losses in the past. Listen, obvi- ously, I'm not mad at [reporters]. I'm upset with myself, because I know those guys in that locker room are hurting – our assistant coaches and our players. We should have 9nished that game and, like I said, it's not about the fourth-and-1. It's not about the fourth-and-5 and whether we punted it or not. It's getting everybody to commit to waking up every single day and trying to be the best you possibly can be, and we haven't done that. We've gotten to a point where we are great, and we're comfortable with being great. That's the issue. We haven't broken through with these types of programs yet. That's everything. Every sin- gle thing matters. I'm going to be all over all of it. Myself, the coaches, the players, the trainers, the doctors, the fa- cilities, the administration – all of it. Because no one's happy with this. Our fans aren't happy. I'm not happy with it. I could sit here and say it's a moral victory and all that because we lost to a higher-ranked team by one point. No. It's not good enough. So, if I drove everybody crazy the last four years, we're going to take it to a whole other level. ■ T H E 2 0 1 8 S E A S O N F O L L O W I N G T H E O H I O S T A T E G A M E Penn State, 63-14, at Ohio Stadium. The only moment from the second half of that game that was even remotely mem- orable was when Meyer, his team leading by 49 points, opted to challenge the spot on a fourth-down conversion attempt by Penn State. He won the challenge, and the Buckeyes kept pouring it on. Their 63 points were the most Penn State had sur- rendered in a game since 1899. If you had told me heading out of the Horseshoe that night that four of the next five meetings between the two teams would be decided by a touchdown or less, I would have thought you were crazy. The gulf that separated the Big Ten's best pro- gram from the sanction-riddled Nittany Lions seemed unbridgeable in the short term, and there were real concerns at the time that it might take a decade or more to build Penn State back into a contender. Just getting back into the Top 25 seemed like it would be a big lift. A lot has changed since that miserable night in Columbus, and the Lions are in a better place than a lot of us thought they would be. They've had two consec- utive top-10 finishes, won a couple of bowl games, including their first New Year's Six victory in 12 years, and pro- duced a No. 2 overall NFL Draft pick, with more first-rounders undoubtedly on the way. They've raised hopes and expectations to the point where it's no longer feasible to cite the sanction era as the baseline against which their progress should be measured. To many people, the NCAA's bowl ban and scholarship restrictions have already receded into the dimly remembered past, a past that shouldn't impinge in any way on the current state of the program. But it bears mentioning that since Meyer arrived at Ohio State in 2012 as the permanent successor to Jim Tres- sel, six of his seven recruiting classes have finished among the nation's top five as rated by Rivals.com. The Buck- JAMES FRANKLIN Steve Manuel

• Cover