Over the weekend, Kentucky signee Landon Young had some rather pointed words for how he was recruited by Ohio State, saving some of his sharpest barbs for the Buckeyes’ head coach.
“I was at Ohio State having a private meeting with Urban Meyer. I had gone up to camp there, and they had treated me like a piece of meat, just treated me like crap,” Young told SECCountry.com in an interview, adding that Meyer tossed around the word “insubstantial” when it came to the recruit as a player and the offer he received from Kentucky.
Fast-forward a couple of days, and Meyer has publicly responded to the teenager’s harsh criticism. And, surprisingly, he largely took his coaching staff to task for how the then-recruit was treated during the process while also lamenting how his program has been portrayed because of the criticisms.
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:Sure I can (comment), they’re signed,” Meyer said. “I did read it. We had a lot of respect for him as a player. A lot. I was very disappointed in our staff that we didn’t offer him earlier.
“About the treating him bad, we don’t do that on purpose. If that’s his feelings. I went back and talked to our staff about it, because I don’t want that to be out there.
“But when you have one out of 650 that say someone is treated bad, you know? We didn’t offer him earlier, but we did want to offer him. Afterward, he really grew on me. He’s a great player and I think we missed on him early on, and I was very upset with our coaching staff, the recruiter and that area and the position coach.
“That’s the way we do our business here. We do address that. I don’t want that out there.Collier’s comments were certainly a bad look for Meyer and his OSU staff, at least for the short-term, but here’s to guessing there’s no long-term damage to the recruiting juggernaut the coach has created in Columbus.