And yet — and yet! — amid an Ohio State season that stands at 10-1 but hasn’t felt like it, and amid all the strange and disturbing baggage strewn along it and before it, here’s a belief that won’t budge: If Urban Meyer does leave college football anytime soon or even somewhat later than soon, college football as a sport will spend awhile as diminished.
It will lose a reference point, a looming presence, a Rushmore figure, a rare sort and a mainstay hovering above Columbus. A chunk of its identity will go missing, and it takes time to reconstruct such chunks.