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Vo. 1, No. 23
This week in Ohio State football, we are still talking about recruiting.
Hey, National Signing Day was this week even if that meant almost nothing really happened for the Buckeyes.
It works out well, though, because the early signing period came and went the first week of December, which happened to be the same time we were much more preoccupied with the Buckeyes’ pursuit of back-to-back national championships.
The results of that week — Ohio State lost to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship — and subsequent weeks — Indiana went on to win it all, as you may have heard — do give us more information from which to view recruiting, roster construction and all that.
My thoughts after the ad break:
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As mentioned in Thursday’s newsletter, Ohio State signed 28 players in December (and added a kicker in January).
That was an unusually large number, and the ranks were swelled by the addition of a handful of lower-ranked prospects the Buckeyes offered after evaluating their senior film.
Ryan Day said in December they took some extra guys in anticipation of losing a lot in the portal, and that turned out to be prescient.
While Day backfilled the roster with more than a dozen incoming transfers, they still ended up with a significant trade deficit (which may not be bad, as we have previously discussed) when all was said and done.
Some attrition has been the norm in college football for some time now. The transfer portal increased it exponentially, of course, but even before that many more players transferred in the 2010s than in the 1990s and early 2000s.
What made this past portal cycle different was a handful of highly rated guys that Ohio State surely wanted to keep were among those to fly the coop without ever playing much, if at all, for the Buckeyes — even players who it seemed would have a good shot at starting this fall.
That kicked off a lot of panic among those who follow recruiting and led some to conclude Ohio State needs to change its approach and cut back significantly on high school signees from now on.
Why sign players who are just going to use your platform to build their name then leave for somewhere else in a year or two?
While I get the sentiment, I don’t really agree, though some adjustment is obviously necessary.
Of course, my opinion really doesn’t matter.
Day’s does, and we learned last week (thanks to his radio show because we haven’t gotten the chance to interview him since the Cotton Bowl flop) how he views it now.
Spoiler alert: Not much has changed.
“I think philosophically when you look at it, it's important to still make sure that we're recruiting really good high school prospects and getting them into the program and making sure we're developing them at a high level. I think anytime you want to sustain a certain level of play, you need to have a culture that carries over year to year. It can't be a year-to-year roster at Ohio State, in my opinion.”
He is open to reevaluating, of course, if necessary:
“Now, maybe it gets to that point somewhere along the line, but I think for a lot of reasons, it's important to bring in young men and develop them. So although the landscape's changed, we're going to try to make sure that we do that for a lot of reasons. I think it's important to carry over our culture, so that we don't just start from scratch completely.”
This is the right way to play it in my opinion.
In fact, it might end up being better in the long run for Ohio State, which is in a unique position as a recruiting powerhouse in a state that still produces a lot of good college prospects and NFL players — including many who are not blue chip recruits when they are 16 or 17 years old.
Ohio State clearly needs to continue to recruit elite players from all over the country, but the time they could stack them three deep at every position is probably over for two reasons:
1.) It’s just going to be harder to get as many top prospects out of high school when there are more serious suitors thanks to name, image and likeness payments that are not supposed to be used for recruiting but obviously are (which is fine with me).
2.) Even when you get them they are probably going to be less patient and could be out the door in just a year or two before you get any return on investment.
On top of that, the portal offers the opportunity to pretty much never have to go into a season with a big hole anywhere. At the least, you should be able to find a solid, experienced player to plug a spot if you don’t have any non-freshmen or sophomores ready to replace your exiting seniors and early draft entries — or to provide competition even if you do.
But much like baseball, you still need to fill the roster even if not everyone is a “first round pick” caliber talent when they are 18. And some of those guys who are late developers or just slip through the evaluation cracks are going to turn out to be good players, too, especially when you’re able to tap into the talent in your backyard.
They’re not just holding a roster spot, but it might still be worth it even if they were since you can still use the portal to upgrade as needed.
Consider this: Of the 57 Ohio natives on NFL rosters in Week 1 of the 2025 season, only 18 went to Ohio State (19 if you include Joe Burrow).
Cincinnati had eight while Kentucky had three. One went to Notre Dame, and another nine went to a Big Ten school.
Looking at the whole list, I believe the only guy who had an Ohio State offer coming out of high school was James Daniels, an offensive lineman from Warren (whose father played at Ohio State ironically) who chose Iowa.
Some of them everyone missed on, but I can guarantee more than a couple were guys OSU saw in camps and thought, “Well maybe they can play, but we don’t have room.”
So what if in the future Ohio State did have room for Joe Thuney and Coby Bryant and Michael Dieter? What about Travis Kelce? Mitchell Evans? Kaleb Johnson?
My vote is to keep signing 20-25 high schoolers every year, but instead of 20 “first round picks” narrow that to about 10 and use the other 10 slots on guys who will either be good starters after three years or transfer to Cincinnati or Ohio U. (Is that better than paying a premium for a four- or five-star prospect who transfers to Penn State or Oregon after a year or two? I think so.)
Even the guys who don’t pan out can be culture setters for you, and some will turn out to be diamonds in the rough like who become good starters or more.
But I’m just a guy who spends too much time thinking about this stuff for someone who is not on the payroll at Ohio State.
What do normal people (that’s you) think?
I’m always looking for feedback! Feel free to comment here or send me an email.
As always, thanks for reading and please remember to share the newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it. (You can forward it, yes, but I’d rather you send them a link to sign up.) And also don’t forget clicking the ads helps me. I get compensation, while you don’t have to do anything else.
Hope you have a great weekend (though if you’re looking for more to read, keep scrolling)!
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Check that out here.
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