COLUMBUS, Ohio – Southern Swing Seven is in the books and while we still have some more stories to still tell from the recruiting road, it is time to do our annual look at some of the numbers from the road.
This 2019 edition of the swing was by far the most ambitious (and expensive) edition yet as we opened up the state of Arizona to the travel roster and had by far the highest number of flights during any swing trip before.
Sure, there may be a new head coach in town with Ryan Day, but that does not mean that the recruiting focus is any less national for the Buckeyes and we took to the road to bring exclusive content that you cannot get anywhere else.
We have traveled through more than 20 states during the run of this tour, talked to players in almost all of them, had our fair share of McDonald’s, talks about Game of Thrones on the road and met countless members who were kind enough to share a meal with us, drink a beer with us or put us up for a night along the way.
As we start to put a bow on this year’s tour with our final stories, we are going to run one of the favorite pieces of the journey, our ‘by the numbers’ piece to put things into a little perspective about how far we traveled, where we went and just the overall scope of how big the Southern Swing has become through the years.
When it comes time to look at the driving map, there really is only the need to look at week one of the two-week journey as that was the only week that we really put the miles on the car. While only hitting four states in that first week, it was done all entirely by car as the tour got its start in Raleigh (N.C.) and ended in Atlanta.
The second week was much more straight forward as we would land in a city and while we would drive to a secondary city on two of the stops (Dallas to Houston, Phoenix to Tucson), the mileage in the second week would only be a fraction of the first week.
There was some good news this year as we did not travel to Oklahoma and Kansas and avoided the spring storms that almost led to some serious ramifications in SS6. All-in-all this year, there were very few hiccups along the way in terms of weather (we did have to deal with some rain) or travel delays (we did have one flight that was subject to a prolonged delay, but we will have more on that late in the week in our ‘Tales from the Road’ piece).
7,103: These were the total number of miles traveled by Kevin on this trip and you can throw in an additional 376 miles for Marc. We made the decision to meet in Raleigh-Durham to start the trip but Marc flew from Columbus to Newark to take part in the N.J. Rivals Camp Series stop while Kevin flew to Atlanta and drove to RDU so the rental car could be returned back to Atlanta and avoid the charges for a dreaded one-way rental.
This eclipses the previous single-year high mileage number set in any other Southern Swing by a healthy amount as we traveled just shy of 6,400 miles in SS6. We have come a long way from the first couple of years when the Southern Swing was just a one-week affair and only focused on the Southeast.
32,162: These are the total miles traveled during the seven swings combined. The circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles, meaning that we have made a lap of the Earth and gone another 29.16-percent around for good measure. That would also mean that we have gone a little bit more than 13.4-percent of the way from the Earth to the Moon. Thankfully, we don’t have to go quite that far to cover recruits, but on some of the long travel days, it feels like we are on our way there.
452: This was the longest drive of the trip, a fraction of some of the long drives that we have had to do in the past. The drive from the greater Tampa area to Atlanta is not a new drive for us, we have made the boring drive through Florida and South Georgia many times, but fortunately it was the longest drive we had to endure on this trip. It is a far cry from the time that we had to drive from Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) to just north of Atlanta or the time that we had to drive from Tampa to Houston. The next two longest drives on this trip were just in the same range of mileage with drives from Atlanta to Raleigh (N.C.) at 406 miles and Kingsland (Ga.) to Fort Lauderdale at 362 miles.
26: This is the number of players that we did video interviews with on the trip, not including any of the Rivals Camp Series stops either on the front-end or back-end of the trip. In this number we spoke with a pair of Ohio State class of 2019 signees with Jaden McKenzie and Harry Miller as well as Ohio State class of 2020 commits Jack Miller, Lejond Cavazos and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. One player that we spoke with during the tour has already committed elsewhere when tight end Jonathan Odom committed to Florida.
12: We spoke to 12 players who are part of either the Rivals100 or Rivals250 of their respective classes on video. While that number may seem low, this year we also spoke to 12 players who were parts of classes that are not ranked as of yet (classes of 2021 and beyond), bringing that number up to 24, meaning that only two players that we spoke to were not part of one list or the other.
TBD: We still have several stories to publish from the Swing. We just needed a day or two to get back into the swing of things upon returning to central Ohio (lawns still need to be mowed, chores still need to be done). We still have our ‘Five Questions’ video stories yet to run as well as stories from the road and maybe a couple more pieces from the St. Louis RCS stop. The number of stories will top 40 stories by the time it is all said and done. Another successful trip into the field.
396: This is the amount we spent on gasoline during the trip. We often our asked with the amount of ground that we cover, just how much we pay at the pump. We had to stop for gas 14 different times, but that also includes topping off rental cars before returning them along with gas stops in the middle of nowhere. For those who know Kevin, we did stop at a Buc-ees while we were in Texas, it is kind of a tradition.
5: The number of times we were able to hang out with members from the site for a drink or meal. We won’t list the names here of everyone that took part, but we want to issue a big thank you to everyone that took time out of their evening to spend a little of time with us. Things did get a little out of control in Scottsdale (Ariz.) as the night became a bit of a blur (too many Deep Eddy Ruby Red and sodas for Kevin) and there was not enough time to tell all the stories that we wanted to at the dinner table in Houston, but every opportunity to speak in-person with our membership means the world to us and we enjoyed every stop.
