My source was solid. What scares me is that he may have turned us down.
That does not bode well for Ohio in the big picture.
We can speculate all we want. If McCollough did turn it down, his loss is our gain. But we can be sure of one fact. These jobs don't grow on trees.
Urban Meyer has told the story about leaving an assistant's job at Notre Dame for the HC position at BG, which at that point was nowhere near the opportunity that the job in Athens presents. He talked to former Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz about it. After saying the situation at BG didn't look very promising, Holtz almost exploded. "Of COURSE it's not a great job! If it was, they wouldn't be offering it to you." Meyer took the job.
John Groce wasn't sure about the Bobcat basketball HC position, and needed some persuasion from Thad Matta: "Why not? Why WOULDN'T you take it?"
Every HC job has its drawbacks, but the Ohio position, this year, had to be one of the better ones on the mid major landscape. If it were offered, and I was looking for a promising HC job, there would have had to be a whole bunch of negatives before I turned it down.