SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - The question posed to Urban Meyer was not yet complete, but a smile had already overtaken the Ohio State football coach's face. Maybe it was his memories of the topic of this conversation.
"Gordon Gee?" he said here Tuesday before Friday's Fiesta Bowl against Notre Dame. "That's one of my all-time favorite people I've ever been around."
Gee, of course, is West Virginia's president these days, but he was also the president at Ohio State from 2007-13 and one of the people responsible for talking Meyer out of a brief retirement and the broadcast booth to coach the Buckeyes in 2011.
Meyer is 49-4 at Ohio State and 31-1 in Big Ten play with an unbeaten season in his first year in 2012 and a national championship last year in the first year of the College Football Playoff.
That's something that makes Gee smile.
"I think that will go down as one of the greatest stories in college football for decades," Gee said.
The two stay in touch, sending text messages back and forth, frequently about life and family and rarely ever about football, and there's a chance they cross paths this week. The Mountaineers play Arizona State in the Cactus Bowl here Saturday.
They first crossed paths quite innocently in 2011. Meyer cited health problems when he resigned unexpectedly as Florida's coach in December 2010. Then a two-time national champion, Meyer coached the Gators to an Outback Bowl win on New Year's Day. At the end of that month, he joined ESPN as a game and studio analyst.
Some assignments sent him to Ohio State, and it was there where he'd first meet Gee, who spent 2011 dealing with a scandal that eventually cost him his football coach. Gee supported Jim Tressel, who won the 2002 national title, throughout the episode, and once famously said Tressel's job was safe and "I just hope the coach doesn't dismiss me."
Tressel nevertheless resigned in May 2011, and the Buckeyes played the season with an interim coach. Gee said Meyer was the only replacement ever considered, contacted and courted.
"We knew in order to be able to right the ship quickly, we'd need to find a world-class coach and also someone who wanted to coach Ohio State," Gee said.
That was Meyer, who was born in Toledo, Ohio, and raised in Ashtabula. At St. John High, he played football and baseball and was drafted in 1982 by the Atlanta Braves before playing two years of minor league baseball. Meyer then played a season of college football at the University of Cincinnati, graduated in 1986 and spent two years as a graduate assistant under Earl Bruce with the Buckeyes.
But there was more than Meyer's fame and his fondness of Ohio to consider. His retirement was actually his second attempt to step away from the game and take better care of himself and his family life. He first tried in December 2009, announcing he was done after a scare sent him to the hospital earlier in the month. But a day later, Meyer said he'd take a leave of absence, and he returned full-time in March.
"He had experienced health problems, and it was important for us to explore and understand those, and I think it was important for him to feel that he could get back into the coaching business," Gee said.
OSU athletic director Gene Smith did much of the homework, and the Buckeyes were encouraged to go ahead and ask Meyer. Gee and a small group of Ohio State envoys met with Meyer and his wife in a hotel in Atlanta and began to discuss the job.
Everything went well, and the two sides would stay in touch, Smith speaking to Meyer about football matters, Gee handling other areas.
"We never talked football," Gee said. "The reason is I don't know a darn thing about football."
Gee was instead intent on making sure Meyer would be comfortable. Gee understood the culture of Ohio State football and how fans obsess over it and the participants. Meyer grasped all that, and he knew about the tradition he'd be expected to uphold and elevate.
But Meyer also shared with Ohio State a contract he'd signed with his family. If he was going to return to the sideline, he'd have to make promises to improve his health and his relationship with his wife, his two daughters and his son.
Family would come first. He'd take trips with them and keep the lake house. He'd eat three times a day and spend no more than nine hours at the office. He'd find a way to communicate with his kids every day and he'd silence his cell phone when he went to bed.
Gee remembered it as a "powerful" moment, and he'd consistently assure Meyer and his wife he could live that way as Ohio State's coach.
"I remember every word he said, all of our conversations," Meyer said.
Meyer was hired on Nov. 28, 2011. A month later, the NCAA banned the Buckeyes from playing a bowl game after Meyer's first season. The punishment shocked Gee, and he feared Meyer might be mad and think Ohio State hadn't been completely honest throughout the process.
"This is a mark of his character," Gee said. "A lot of coaches would say, 'You hired me under false pretenses. I didn't come here to win games and not be able to go to a bowl.' He walked around the Woody Hayes Center for about an hour to get his head around the thing and came back and said, 'You know what? We're going to turn this into motivation.'
"And they did. They went 12-0 and didn't lose a game with no motivation to go to a bowl."
Meyer never believed he was misled. He instead believed in the Buckeyes and all the people he'd met who worked together to not merely make him their coach, but make sure he could do it the way he needed and wanted to do it. At the front of the line was the president.
"His passion for a student at a university is second to none," Meyer said. "I love him. I miss him. The people at West Virginia are very fortunate to have him."