Is Urban Meyer heading to Ohio State?

Urban Meyer

The 1st and possibly beginning question before this years Coaching Carousel starts has already popped up: Has Urban Meyer already taken the Ohio State job?

Well, according to two separate reports and several Ohio State based blogsites, the answer to that question is--Yes.

SportsbyBrooks.com and ElevenWarriors.com are both reporting that Meyer's representatives and the school have agreed in principle for Meyer to take over in Columbus, once the school receives its penalty from the NCAA. That is expected to happen in the next couple of weeks. Indeed, several other Ohio State based blogs, BuckeyeSports.com, Bucknuts.com and BuckeyeGrove.com are all speculating similar stories.

Read the SportsbyBrooks story RIGHT HERE

Read the Eleven Warriors story RIGHT HERE

All emphasize that a contract has not "Officially" been signed, only that there is an agreement for that to happen.

Several of the reports say Meyer has been quietly assembling a staff that would include current LSU offensive coordinator Greg Studwara, interim Ohio St. head coach Luke Fickell, current NC State linebackers coach Jon Tenuta and current ESPN analysts and former Buckeye's Chris Spielman and Kirk Herbstreit.

This is all very interesting and we give it some credibility for this: Brooks, who is very plugged in, used to work in Columbus and has ties there. ElevenWarriors is an Ohio State based site that was well ahead of the curve on the fallout from the Tattoo-gate scandal. And the other sites have all been very plugged in to the comings and goings in Central Ohio.

We know the Ohio State boards and Twitter feeds have been lit up with rumors of this and some going as far to say that Meyer was in Columbus this week, something that was not true. For his part Meyer said he was going to spend the year with family, devoting more time to them, but yet he was spending 3-plus days a week working for ESPN.

And while Meyer going to tOSU makes sense on a lot of levels, we don't get why Herbstreit or Speilman would. Though Speilman we could understand, he is still a football player/coach at heart. Herbstreit has gained immense popularity with his job at ESPN and is regarded as a potential huge crossover star by the network, why would he step away from that?

We'll see how this all plays out, but we think this may very well be the earliest and possibly biggest splash of this years Coaching Carousel.