**Days Of Our Buckeyes … We had been waiting until after signing day to tell you this story for two reasons: One, our source asked us to hold the information until the 2014 recruiting class was all signed up. And two, even if he didn’t make that request, we wouldn’t have wanted to rock the OSU recruiting boat so close to signing day.
Well, leave it to a Bucknuts subscriber to spill the beans. Front Row message board member “tOSUHook” posted yesterday that there was a serious altercation between Mike Vrabel and Urban Meyer. Some fans questioned the validity of the post. You shouldn’t. It happened and we’re about to tell you all about it.
The incident occurred in early December -- the week before the contest against Michigan State in the Big Ten Championship game. Ohio State had just given up 603 yards and 41 points to a porous Michigan offense and barely escaped with a one-point victory.
Well, strength coach Mickey Marotti – who is absolutely Meyer’s right-hand man, was ribbing Luke Fickell about “not getting his guys juiced up enough” before games. No, he wasn’t making a Jose Canseco reference. Marotti was suggesting that Fickell didn’t get his guys fired up enough.
Then Meyer walked in and joined in on the banter. And while we’re told Marotti’s criticism of Fickell was somewhat light-hearted, Meyer was a bit more serious. He told Fickell that he needs to do a better job of getting the defensive players emotionally ready to go before kickoff.
Well, just then Mike Vrabel walks in and hears this conversation. According to an impeccable source, Vrabel went off. He felt that Marotti and Meyer were going after Fickell unfairly and Vrabel screamed at both of them. The shouting match escalated and it got to the point where Vrabel actually put his hands on Meyer. Didn’t punch him, but did put his hands on him. (We’ve heard varying stories from two different sources: One says Vrabel put his hand around Meyer’s neck and pinned him up against a wall; the other source says Vrabel grabbed the shirt collar and it wasn’t quite as violent as the other source is making it seem.)
We’re told it didn’t happen right away since OSU was still undefeated at the time and very much in the national championship race, but eventually Vrabel was told he needed to find a new job. They decided they were going to try and keep everything in-house and make it look like an amicable split.
One major difference in what we’ve been told by sources regarding the incident and the post from “tOSUHook” is that the altercation between Meyer and Vrabel did not happen just days before Vrabel left for the Houston Texans. In fact, it happened over a month before Vrabel joined Bill O’Brien’s staff. Like we said, the incident happened the week between the Michigan and Michigan State games. Vrabel didn’t leave for the Texans’ gig until Jan. 9.
So, there you go. We would apologize to you for not telling you about this earlier, but we can’t burn sources. Especially really good ones. We were asked to hold the information until after signing day and that’s what we did.
