COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio State’s 2021 football recruiting course provided an incredible way for Ryan Day to begin his tenure as head coach.
Day’s first class built from the ground up features 12 top 100 players with five players rated five stars, including top wide receiver, running back and guard. It also allowed him to stop Ohio with six commits, five of which were among the top six players in the state. The class even went abroad to find an Australian gambler.
The leadership the class built after a series of commits in the spring changed the conversation from being the best in the present to how it could be the best historically. However, somehow, the huge advantage was not enough to keep Alabama away and eventually saw Tide take the top spot.
If this class was not enough to give Ohio State its first national recruiting championship, what will it take to make that happen?
The Buckeyes never had class number 1 in the country, but they finished second on three occasions. In fact, only six times a non-SEC school has claimed this title, with the last occurring in 2008, when Miami (Florida) was the only team to exceed the 300-point limit. The other schools to accomplish this feat are Florida State (twice), Texas (2002) and USC (three times).
Nick Saban and his team have dominated the ranking since 2010, winning all but two recruiting titles in that period. Alabama kept the Buckeyes ‘stellar classes in first place twice, with Georgia claiming another one in 2018 – although the Bulldogs’ most valuable engagement in that cycle, Justin Fields, ended in Columbus a year later.
The state of Ohio will probably never beat Alabama – or a SEC school – when it comes to the number of players in a class. This is a difference in the philosophy of the conference, as the Big Ten usually tries to make it past 25. That’s probably why Day and recruiting coordinator Mark Pantoni are not so determined to have the top class.
“I’m not really interested in that because it’s just someone’s opinion,” said Day during the initial hiring period. “I understand, I respect everything. But in the end, you have to find the right guys for the state of Ohio, the right fit. It’s not 100%, but the guys we hire are right for us. This is the No. 1 recruitment class for us. “
The Buckeyes’ path to first place will depend on the idea of quality rather than quantity, just as it would when the idea of having the best class in history was still on the table.
They won the fight in 2017 with an average rating of 94.59 stars compared to 93.76 in Alabama. The same can be said in 2018, when Georgia took first place – it came in third place in 2017 and 2021 – with a 94.29-94.23 victory. Crimson Tide holds a 0.40 lead in 2021, but landing linebacker Raesjon Daivs on Wednesday or possibly profiting from the momentum behind defensive tip JT Tuimoloau in April will put OSU back on top.
That would be 3 to 3 when it comes to recruiting classes that finished second in the ranking, despite having more quality players from the standpoint of classification.
The other way is to continue the Day philosophy, and Pantoni already seems to be applying it. You meet a highly regarded guy from the state (Jack Sawyer) and a national guy who can serve as your equal (Kyle McCord), and then crown them as leaders. You let these guys be the water that makes the class grow, resulting in initial commits that give you the chance to be demanding to close a cycle.
It worked in 2021 with Sawyer and McCord, and the same approach is already in place in 2022, thanks to CJ Hicks and Quinn Ewers. Hicks brought the best that Ohio had to offer while planting the seeds for OSU to become national. The moment Ewers appeared, the rest of the country started paying attention, even though not everyone ended up pulling the trigger.
Once again, the state of Ohio got off to a strong start, and with a period of silence in recruiting potentially underway, this team may receive additional resources to help it repeat last spring’s success. We may very well enter the summer with most of the 2022 class already intact again.
The Ohio state formula is enough to eliminate Alabama and be the first school north of the Mason-Dixon Line to win a recruiting crown. You just need to run perfectly for it to happen.
Otherwise, there will always be laughter last on the NFL Draft Day, which is probably just as rewarding.
“We had classes in the past that were probably four or five and probably had more NFL draft choices in the first two rounds than some of those other classes,” said Pantoni. “The way I classify recruitment classes is how they end. (The) NFL being a big part, but also being important contributors, beginners too. We are going to look back three or four years from now and that is how we will evaluate. “
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