Recruiting keeps rolling through uncertain times

The Ohio State Buckeyes are putting together a recruiting class for the ages and it is all the more remarkable when you look at some of the limitations that all schools are currently facing as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic that has closed the country and sent nearly everyone home as the world tries to stay ahead of things.

Five of Ohio State’s 15 commits in its No. 1 rated class according to the Rivals.com team recruiting rankings have come in since things have been shut down and the WHAC has been closed. Everyone is now working remotely from home but that does not mean that anyone is putting in any less work.

Ohio State’s Assistant Athletic Director of Player Personnel, Mark Pantoni and his staff have been hard at work staying on top of the Buckeye recruiting effort. Obviously, it has paid off with work in the near-term as well as things that have long been in the works.

It certainly does not hurt that Ohio State had the chance to turn the page to the class of 2021 earlier than most with 24 of 25 commits signing early in the class of 2020 and not having to expend as much energy at the end of the last cycle to 2020 and instead really dive into 2021.

“I think the December signing day has been great for that, letting the month January be full focus on recruiting the class if 2021,” Pantoni said during a Friday conference call with Ohio State media. “It gives our coaches a head start. If our department does a great job in the fall during the season breaking down all the film and identifying who our top targets should be, I think that helps the coaches a heads up on targeting and not wasting a lot of time fishing all over the country.”

Of Ohio State’s current class of 2021, who at this point won’t have an opportunity to sign until December of 2020 at the earliest, seven of the 15 are from the state of Ohio while the remaining eight reside in seven different states. The Buckeyes really expanded their national recruiting footprint under Urban Meyer and that has not changed under Ryan Day.

But recruiting national requires a plan instead of just wasted efforts of trying to recruit 50 states from coast-to-coast, and the Buckeyes put in as much work as anyone in making sure their efforts are focused.

“If we can narrow that big net of guys and get that big list of guys shrunken way down, and say, ‘here are our top five running backs’ and ‘our top five DBs’, let’s do everything that we can do laser-focus on those guys and get them committed,” Pantoni said.

It has worked in a big way.

Some will be quick to point out how a player like TreVeyon Henderson, who has never visited the Ohio State campus, could commit sight unseen. It was the same for JK Dobbins in the class of 2017.

Things seemed to work out there.

Dobbins made it to campus after committing and the rest, as they say, is history. Once things open up, Henderson should have a chance to make that long-awaited trip to the Ohio State campus as well and the hope is everything can follow along a similar path.

The constant contact, even in what is called a recruiting dead period, between the staff and these players really leaves little unknown however when it comes to getting to know about a school.

“We built those relationships over a long period of time and it did not just start in January, it starts September 1st of their junior year where we have gone very hard at a lot of guys that are already part of the class,” Pantoni added.

Some of the players who came on board recently were prime candidates to commit either during a spring visit or at Ohio State’s spring game. Without the backdrop of either, sometimes things have to change. The one thing that did not change was their desire to be part of the Ohio State class.

But there are changes on the horizon. With on-campus camps appearing to be in jeopardy of having, the spring evaluation period already scuttled and the uncertainty of knowing when campus will re-open and life will start to return to a familiar normal, we are going into some great unknowns.

Obviously, this means a lot for the class of 2022 but also for the class of 2021 when you ask how will we see a ‘camp offer’ with the very real potential of no camps.

“If the camps disappear, that is a significant loss,” Pantoni said. “And our coaches going on the road and watching these guys practice. That is a significant loss, that is another checkmark in the full evaluation process.”

With no practice evaluations on the horizon or players coming on campus, where does that leave coaches?

“We are going to have to really trust our eyes on the film,” Pantoni added. “Some of these ‘21 kids that we were hoping to make final decisions on either by watching them practice live or having them in at camp, that may be in jeopardy now. The film is going to take a lot of weight now and hopefully getting these kids on campus once it opens up and spend more time around them.”

This of course opens up the question about the state of the recruiting calendar. Does it make sense to have an early signing period with two, three or more months of the calendar essentially a dead period? Is there time to have a late-summer evaluation period? That certainly could be difficult if teams are scrambling to get ready for a September start to the season.

Pantoni said that he is not advocating for any changes to the calendar at this point but as with everyone else in the world, there is a great unknown as to when things are going to return to a shadow of the old normal.

One thing that should be comforting to Ohio State football fans however is knowing that the recruiting effort is in more than capable hands.