Meyer quickly spins OSU’s latest No. 1 ranking

If recruiting is the gasoline that fuels college football, then Ohio State coach Urban Meyer is the John D. Rockefeller of his sport.

Meyer has not cornered the market — Nick Saban has made Alabama filthy rich in talent, too — but OSU’s football CEO has turned recruiting into a lucrative business for the Buckeyes by accentuating positives about his program, even when the positives are subjective. No matter, Meyer and his staff make them objective.

The latest bit of recruiting savvy arrived on Friday when College Factual, a website that ranks colleges by categories to help prospective students make more informed choices, named Ohio State No. 1 when combining football and education.

The Buckeyes wasted no time getting the news out. Meyer — or more likely someone on his staff tasked with overseeing his Twitter account — tweeted: “The Ohio State University — #1 for great football AND education! No place like it!!!” (Note: The person responsible for tweeting Buckeyes news should demand to be paid by the exclamation mark, which would enable early retirement.)

Is Ohio State really the best school for football and academics? When it comes to recruiting, who cares? College Factual reported it, so the Buckeyes go with it.

“Ohio State is on top of everything,” recruiting analyst Bill Kurelic said. “When a third party comes out with a story like that, the (coaches) want to promote it. You have

to give a lot of credit to (director of player personnel) Mark Pantoni, too. He always pushes the right buttons.”

Meyer and Pantoni know that tweeting positive news is like dropping a boulder in a pond; the splash and resulting ripples spread rapidly as recruits and fans retweet the information.

And wow was this particular information positively juicy. College Factual evaluated 125 schools by such weighted criteria as win/loss percentage for the most recently completed season, academic progress rate, athletic aid per student, revenues and expenses per team and something called “Overall College Quality,” which considers the quality of a school as a whole, including educational resources, degree completion metrics and post-graduation earnings.

Ohio State came out on top. Texas Christian, Duke, Notre Dame and

Alabama rounded out the top five. Wisconsin, Baylor, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Southern California filled out the top 10.

Where was Michigan? No. 20, behind academic stalwarts Northwestern (14) and Stanford (16).

“I kept going down the list wondering, ‘Where is Michigan?’ ” Kurelic said.

Fans of the Maize and Blue undoubtedly wondered the same, knowing that rival coaches would mention the rankings to parents of recruits.

Is it negative recruiting if you’re showing a recruit’s mom and dad a list of the top football/ education schools, and your index finger just happens to land and twitch on Michigan way down at No. 20?

Of course, two can play this game. When singling out Overall College Quality, the College Factual rankings put Michigan No. 58 and Ohio State No. 166; OSU is not even

the highest-ranked school in Columbus. The Pontifical College Josephinum came in No. 153. Meyer won’t be mentioning that the next time he visits a recruit’s living room. Rather, he will reach into his pocket and pull out the following, written by David Klenda of College Factual and appearing on the USA Today College website:

“In addition to having a tremendous football team, Ohio State offers a great education to students at a reasonable price. The school has an average graduation rate of over 80 percent, which puts it well above the U.S. average. Some of the most popular majors are psychology, communications, and finance.”

Psychology, communications and finance. Meyer uses the first by way of the second to create the third. Ohio State recruiting keeps getting richer.