ACOIDE TO BULLFALOS AFTER WINING THEIR FIRST MATCH THEIR HEAD COACH WAS SUSPENDED BECAUSE OF …….

Now’s the time, right? It seems coach Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan Wolverines have never had a better chance to get over the hump than they do in 2019. Ohio State is finally not employing Harbaugh conqueror Urban Meyer anymore. Penn State has a new quarterback. Michigan State could still be hopeless offensively. The dominoes are all lined up and ready to be tipped.

Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State are also all potential top-15 teams. The Buckeyes still have all the talent in the world. Penn State could have its best defense yet under coach James Franklin, and said new quarterback Sean Clifford is pretty well-regarded. And hey, Sparty has beaten Michigan and won tons of games without an offense before. This still will be a heavyweight division in 2019. Michigan’s not going to be able to back into a breakthrough.

In 1996, Sonny Lubick’s Colorado State offense dramatically improved its passing. Moses Moreno, in his first full season as a starter, threw for 2,921 yards with a 141.4 passer rating (CSU had managed just a 118.5 the year before), and a receiver trio of Geoff Turner, Jeremy Calhoun and Ronald Antoine combined for 2,093 yards and 13 scores.

It’s obviously difficult, 20-something years later, to divvy up credit for such an improvement, but you figure receivers coach Dan Hammerschmidt, in his first season in Fort Collins, had a role to play in it.

You could also say that this was the last time someone both succeeded and truly topped Urban Meyer.

Meyer had left to become Lou Holtz’s receivers coach at Notre Dame that March. It was his last stop before embarking on a remarkably successful head-coaching career. And be it Joker Phillips at Notre Dame, Gregg Brandon at Bowling Green, Kyle Whittingham at Utah, or Will Muschamp at Florida, no one since Hammerschmidt has been able to top Meyer’s high moments at each stop. (Whittingham admittedly has matched the achievements but hasn’t topped them.)

Now, Ohio State isn’t Bowling Green, Utah or even Florida, historically. The Buckeyes have enjoyed 27 top-5 finishes, and Meyer was responsible only for five of them. The bar is almost always astronomical for the Buckeyes, Meyer or no Meyer.

Still, in seven years with Meyer at the helm, Ohio State won 91 percent of its games and, yes, finished in the top 5 five times. Jim Tressel (0.828 win percentage and seven top 5s in 10 years) and Woody Hayes (.761 win percentage and 10 top 5s in 28 years) couldn’t match those rates.