COLUMBUS, Ohio – It was about a year ago when we looked at the state of Ohio State recruiting and determined that the Buckeyes were on the verge of putting together a Class for the Ages.

Those beliefs were later confirmed as Ohio State secured the nation's No. 2 recruiting class according to Rivals.com team recruiting rankings, but more importantly, it was the highest rated class for Ohio State in the Rivals.com era.

Fast forward to today and the Buckeyes are on the brink of maybe even besting last year's mark. Currently, the Buckeyes have one of the nation's top recruiting classes with an average star rating of four, a mark that is hard to maintain, especially once a class gets into double-digit commit territory.

Over the next several days, we are going to look at Ohio State recruiting in the big picture and not just focus on the class of 2018. We will talk about the rise in decommitments through the world of recruiting and look at how Ohio State has not been immune to that phenomena, but also may be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the decommitment. We will look again at the balance of recruiting in-state and nationally for the Buckeyes. Has Urban Meyer forced the rest of the Big Ten to rethink its recruiting strategies and upped the game of the league? And of course, we will spend a day putting the 2018 class so far into perspective against other Meyer recruiting classes.

We start off the series today by looking at where the class of 2018 stacks up already against some of the previous classes in Ohio State history during the Rivals.com era.