Crimson Red Sports

“Dreams and Nightmares” explores Ohio State’s journey to the inaugural CFP championship with former Buckeyes Perry and Evan Spencer and host Chris Caldwell.

Meyer got a close look at Alabama at the BCS championship game for the 2012 season, in which the Crimson Tide defeated Notre Dame 42-14. Working on the TV coverage of the game, the coach watched Alabama warm up and, just from that, considered the Tide the best team in the country, even though his Ohio State team was 12-0 that season but ineligible for postseason play.

“He became obsessed with the hand placement,” Perry said of Meyer. “He came back, and he said, ‘I was down there on the field watching them in pregame, and I watched their D-line warm up, and those guys, they strike better than anybody and their hands are quicker and their hands are always inside. They got perfect technique, and their thumbs are up and their elbows are in.’ And he said, ‘We don’t have a guy who can strike like that.’”

But the Buckeyes would.

“We came out in that offseason, and before we could do contact and really put our hands on each other, we had two-by-fours that were taped together to practice the hand position,” Perry said. “Just the inside hands, like your hands were on the outside of the two-by-fours. That’s how tight your hands are supposed to be. Elbows in. And then we start doing that every day in practice with our pads on. (Meyer) would go down the line, and he would basically watch all the skill-position guys strike one another, and it was like a competition to see who could get their hands inside and who could re-set their hands.

“And then coach Anthony Schlegel developed an actual apparatus that you can attach to a weight rack in the weight room to practice what we called ‘The Difference.’ It was such a point of obsession that (Meyer) named it ‘The Difference.’ The difference between Alabama and Ohio State was how the (expletive) we struck each other, how our hands worked.