It wasn’t even 8 a.m., and Urban Meyer already was switched on.

He had the rapt attention of about 1,000 Ohio high-school football coaches and others on Friday, and he didn’t loosen his grip for more than an hour. From talking about what he wants from a player, to speaking of the demands he puts on his staff, to telling the assembled coaches how much he appreciates their work, his voice never dropped below eight on the 10-point volume scale, and sometimes leaped off that chart in the Easton Hilton ballroom.

Since being hired on Nov. 28, it was his first major appearance in front of those who help provide the lifeblood of the Ohio State program, and he clearly was up for the moment.

“This means everything,” Meyer said afterward. “There’s parts of the job you don’t like; there’s parts that you love. This goes in the love category.”

The audience could tell.

“He was very intense and very passionate,” said Olentangy coach Ed Terwilliger, one of the longtime leaders of the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association.

Meyer gave them a mental glimpse into his locker room, where he said motivational slogans and the like don’t adorn the walls and the bulletin boards because they are just talk. What he seeks, he said, is constant effort toward the goal of “competitive excellence,” a point he referred to often.

“My job as the head coach is to put a plan together,” Meyer said. “The plan is very simplistic. It’s not rocket science. You recruit really good players. If you’re lucky, you recruit great ones. Number two, hire great coaches. Everybody knows that.”

He said coaches don’t have to be masters of the X’s and O’s, though if they are, it’s a nice bonus. He seeks men who leap from bed each morning with the self-charging thoughts of “recruit” and “teach” on their minds — like he does.

“The objective of a teacher is to get the student to retain information and skill, then use the information and skill to increase production,” Meyer said. “Our style at Ohio State is to have an organized, clear objective. My job is to make sure that (assistant) coach is very clear. What are you asking that kid to do and is he getting it done? I want the player on the edge of his seat and scared he’s going to be called upon. That forces stimulation of the brain.”

For example, he repeatedly pointed at different coaches in the crowd for answers to his pop questions, most of which were a review of something he had just covered. Some had the answers and blurted them out. Some sat stone-faced.

“He values the educational teaching aspects of your responsibilities as the coach,” Terwilliger said. “He very much wowed the coaches with his expectations and responsibilities of the staff at OSU.”

Meyer stressed that coaches can’t be lecturers. They must be educators. And anyone who has ever taken a course in school knows the difference between bad teachers, or “presenters” as he called them, and good teachers.

“Presenters present information and they fail people if they don’t get it,” Meyer said. “In our profession, if we get an F, there’s a new staff coming in here. We don’t present. We teach. That means exhausting all means to make sure they get it.”

During practice, he said he wants players giving full effort when thrown into the fray, and taking mental repetitions, “which are the next best thing” when they’re watching others. He wants coaches demanding completion of each drill, and defining winners and losers along the way. And he wants full-pad practices on Tuesdays during the season that are so tough and challenging they leave all involved feeling bad.

“I don’t want to feel good after Tuesday,” Meyer said. “You have to feel bad before you can feel good.”

That’s the way Michael Jordan approached it. Jordan understood the value of practice, and he became the greatest player in basketball history as far as Meyer is concerned because he said, quoting Jordan, “ ‘I practice hard enough that the games are often easier.’ ”

The teaching and learning should never stop, Meyer said. He recalled how he had tears in his eyes when, as part of the ESPN telecast crew for Ohio State’s season opener against Akron last season, he watched the band make its ramp entrance before the game, something he hadn’t seen since he was a graduate assistant at OSU in 1986 and ’87.

But he also recalled the disgust he felt when he noticed freshman quarterback Braxton Miller not wearing a headset during the times senior Joe Bauserman played on the field that day.

“He’s the future of Ohio State football as the quarterback and he’s standing there without a headset on?” Meyer said. “During the play, I caught him a few times not watching the game. You can’t expect a kid to play at a high level if you just say, ‘Kid, you’re in the game now.’ That’s your fault as a coach if he’s not ready.”

A two-time national champion in his six seasons at Florida from 2005 to 2010, Meyer made no apologies for his passion of teaching the game, of demanding it from his coaches and of seeking it in his players. He used a quote from the first great Michigan coach, Fielding Yost, to make his point.

“He said, ‘No lawyer or doctor ever approached the top of the ladder in his profession who did not have a love, and have an enthusiasm, and a self-constant urging him higher,’ ” Meyer said. “ ‘Likewise, no man can be a football player who does not love the game.’ ”

tmay@dispatch.com