It was May 2013 when Alabama head coach Nick Saban took his first shot at Urban Meyer and Ohio State.
The Crimson Tide were coming off their second consecutive national championship after throttling Notre Dame 42-14 in the BCS title game. The Buckeyes, who posted an undefeated 2012 season but were banned from postseason play, never had a chance to prove themselves on college football's biggest stage.
When asked about whether it should have been Ohio State playing for that title, Saban openly wondered about the true strength of the Buckeyes.
"How many would they have won against those top six (in the SEC) last year," Saban asked, according to Cecil Hurt of TideSportsExtra.com. "Would they have won three? I don't know."
There it was. The perception that Ohio State couldn't hang with the SEC—let alone the conference's Goliath in Alabama—was enhanced by the man who had built what appeared to be an unbreakable empire.
Six-hundred miles north in Columbus, the Buckeyes were listening. Meyer hung a banner in the team's practice facility emblazoned with their new mantra, "The Chase," serving as a constant reminder of where they were headed and what they were trying to do.
Meyer wanted the Buckeyes to climb college football's mountain, and there was no doubt who they would meet once they reached the pinnacle.
"Any time [we talk about] the top of the mountain, I've used [Alabama]," Meyer said, according to Bleacher Report's Ben Axelrod.
And so they climbed. It took Meyer three years to pull his team to the peak, and when they finally got there, they were strong enough to beat college football's top dog.
It wasn't an easy ascension.
First, Meyer had to recruit the kind of players he had success with in the past—guys who have the strength, speed and natural leadership to hold up in his system. It was a formula he used to win at every stop in his coaching career, and he had no intention of changing that.
“We have a plan to win that has been successful, that has won championships,” Meyer said of his recruiting, according to Matt Hayes of Sporting News. “I don’t think you veer from that.”
That strategy led the Buckeyes to rarely visited places on the recruiting trail, like Wichita Falls, Texas, to recruit players like J.T. Barrett.
It was that type of player which fueled Ohio State's climb to the top.
Barrett was rated a 4-star prospect and the No. 3 dual-threat quarterback for 2013, but Meyer saw past that and identified something his team needed: leadership.
That's what Barrett brought to the Buckeyes.
He immediately showcased that ability with an unexpected and passionate recruiting pitch to two highly coveted Buckeye recruits—Dontre Wilson and James Clark—both of whom wound up at Ohio State. Later, Barrett defied his age and earned a spot on Ohio State's leadership committee as a true freshman in 2013 despite being the team's fourth-string quarterback.
A year later, after starting quarterback and Heisman Trophy candidate Braxton Miller was lost for the season, Barrett was ready to step up and lead the Buckeyes on a championship run.
But Barrett was just a microcosm of something much bigger developing at Ohio State. Across the board, the Buckeyes were improving as they gave way to the culture and attitude that Meyer demanded.
Four to six seconds. "A" to "B." Everything you've got.
It's a simple philosophy. The average football play lasts between four and six seconds. When the ball is snapped, Meyer expects his guys to give their complete effort until the whistle sounds.
"It's so easy to be average," Meyer said during one of the Buckeyes' first practices in the fall of 2012, via ESPN's all-access feature (h/t RenegadeBuckeye on YouTube). "It takes something special to be a great player. We're going to push your ass like it's never been pushed."
It's a philosophy that also serves as a challenge. If you're not prepared to give everything, then you're not prepared to play.
That mentality got the whole team to buy in. Players who weren't logging big-time stats or grabbing the headlines were putting their nose to the ground and grinding for the team.
The perfect embodiment of that came in the form of wide receiver Evan Spencer.
He came to Ohio State as a highly rated 4-star recruit, but he never broke out during his four-year career in Columbus. In fact, his best season statistically was in 2013, when he hauled in 22 passes for 216 yards and three touchdowns.
Despite his meager numbers, he was one of the most important cogs in Meyer's machine.
“He’s unbelievable,” Meyer said of Spencer, according to Austin Ward of ESPN.com. “He's the MVP of our team. He's the leader of our team."
Not Ezekiel Elliott, Devin Smith, Joey Bosa or any of the other stat-stuffing Buckeyes. It was Spencer and a host of other selfless players who made the difference.
The stars aligned to pin Ohio State against Alabama.
Meyer knew when he started "The Chase" that it would lead to a matchup with the Tide. While it took a historic thrashing of Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game to vault the Buckeyes into the first ever College Football Playoff, the road to face Alabama was actually a journey three years in the making.
And it was that journey that prepared Ohio State to overcome a daunting wave of adversity.
Beating Alabama at full strength is hard enough, but the Buckeyes were down their top two quarterbacks when they invaded New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl.
Very few experts liked the Buckeyes' chances of advancing past the Tide to the national title. And through 22 minutes of the first half, those experts appeared to be right.
The Buckeyes got off to a sloppy start, spoiling two red-zone opportunities to settle for field goals. A pair of turnovers helped Alabama build what looked like an insurmountable 21-6 lead.
But Meyer and Ohio State bounced back. Spencer, the Buckeyes' unsung hero, did what he'd been doing his entire collegiate career. He was the one who delivered the perfectly placed pass to Michael Thomas at the end of the first half to cut Alabama's lead to one. And he was the one who made the deciding block on Elliott's game-clinching, 85-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter.
Four to six seconds. "A" to "B." Everything you've got.
That's why the Buckeyes were ready for Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. That's why they were able to rally from a 15-point deficit that would have broken a lesser team. With the culture Meyer built, Ohio State didn't need its best or second-best quarterback behind center.
In the end, it was the Crimson Tide who failed to keep pace, giving chase to the runaway Buckeyes.
All recruiting rankings and information via 247Sports.
David Regimbal is the Ohio State football Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @davidreg412.
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