Does the official visit order actually matter?

With class of 2021 defensive lineman JT Tuimoloau on campus at Ohio State going through his official visit, there has been a lot of lamenting about Ohio State drawing the third of his five visits with the belief that having the last spot means the world in recruiting.

If not the last visit, then the first visit seems to be the move.

Right?

Well, maybe that is not always the case.

Just as much as we talk about ‘Hat Science’ (a term that I first heard coined by fellow Ohio State writer Tony Gerdeman) and the location of a hat during a press conference leading to who is eventually picked, all the way down to is the recruit right-handed or left-handed, or which hat looks broken in or a multitude of different other theories, the order of official visits has been something that has been talked about at length through the years.

If you get first crack, you set the bar, you have your program in the recruit’s mind for every visit, constantly comparing the other school(s) to yours the whole process.

If you get the last crack, you make that final impression, especially when you get the last spot only a few days before National Signing Day.

And if you are in the middle? Do you just get lost in the shuffle? Are you as they say, ‘Just another hat on the table’ at that point?

It got us thinking, what is the ‘hit rate’ on each of these visits positions?

Now, we couldn’t go through and just chronicle every official visit, across college football. We couldn’t look at just the class of 2021, there were no official visits to speak of, save for Tuimoloau’s visits that are taking place now.

We ended up settling on some criteria just to get enough of a sample size to truly discuss, 18 prospects in all.

In order to be included the prospect needed to take at least three known official visits (yes, sometimes OVs occur that nobody is aware of, it just happens) during the process. The recruit needed to be at least a RR 6.0, meaning that they are either a five-star or a high four-star. And we set the time limit back to around 2013, the early stages of the Urban Meyer-era, when Ohio State broadened its approach and would not have 29 official visits for just 25 spots in a class, as was done under Jim Tressel.

And as a final reminder, Tuimoloau’s visits have gone in the following order:

1. Washington, 2. USC, 3. Ohio State, 4. Oregon, 5. Alabama.