In his short time on Ohio State’s coaching staff, Justin Frye has already put in work on the recruiting trail.
The Buckeyes’ new associate head coach for the offense and offensive line coach has secured commitments from two in-state linemen — Luke Montgomery and Austin Siereveld — and has turned his focus outward to national targets, along with looking at options to join the 2024 and 2025 classes.
In other words, Frye’s nowhere close to being done recruiting.
“It never stops,” he said. “Recruiting is like brushing your teeth: you got to get up and do it every day.”
That’s why this stretch of recruiting has been so different for the Ohio State coaching staff.
With the emergence of NIL allowing college athletes to earn financial compensation through their name, image and likeness through promotional and marketing means, recruiters inside the program are seeing a space without much regulation or clear-cut rules, something head coach Ryan Day continues to search for.
“I think we all do much better when it’s black and white. And it’s gray,” he said. “I think the easy thing to do is throw up your hands and complain, but we’re going to adapt and figure out a way to make it work for Ohio State.”
Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith called NIL the “Wild, Wild West” in January, saying that the program is still trying to find that competitive advantage while also protecting the athletes, allowing them to benefit in the right way.
Day’s already seen on the recruiting trail that addressing NIL and the benefits athletes are receiving is tricky and risky without rules being enforced.
It’s not something Tony Alford has concrete answers to, trying instead to work around the parameters put in place while on the recruiting trail despite no concrete answers on how to address NIL and what compensation players could be enticed by elsewhere, including boosters and booster-led collectives.
“I know I’m not going backdoor,” the Ohio State running backs coach said. “That’s not how we do our business. It goes back to, again, relationships. It goes back to, again, the belief system and development of young men and players.”
To Brian Hartline, this change in college football is inevitable.
The Ohio State wide receivers coach feels NIL is speeding up the time clock, taking parts of an NFL model he was a part of after his time with the Buckeyes and throwing it into college football, which he thinks is a good thing. But guardrails, like on roads, are there to minimize catastrophe.
To him, what’s happening in college football is not what NIL was intended for.
“I think NIL was created to have Outback Steakhouse and Bose headphones reach out and let you market with young athletes, not for collectives to go out there and like buy players,” Hartline said. “I think that’s what NIL was created for.
“Why can’t Homage create a shirt with Jaxon (Smith-Njigba) and C.J. (Stroud) on it, right? That's what it was created for. And then I think, as adults, we found ways to corrupt that.”
It’s something Hartline says he wants from his players, seeing them maximize everything in their college experience, from their development to their earning potential. Right now, the Ohio State wide receiver coach said, college programs are being judged in a scale in which the success rate is undefined, is unprecedented.
There’s too much gray.
And in a world where recruiting never stops, it’s something members of the Ohio State coaching staff are navigating through day in and day out.
“I think there was a time in which we don’t know what’s legal and what’s not,” Hartline said. “I just think there’s a lot of gray out there. All I’m saying is like whatever they are, I think they need to be guardrail at least until we know… where’s right and wrong.
“I don’t think anyone really knows.”
