Is Ohio State Losing Their In-State Juice For Future Buckeyes?

Buckeye Nation is in a state of unrest for the 2010 version of National Signing Day. This is nothing new to the Buckeyes as over the years they have waited up to the last minute to receive commitments from a few of their biggest stars. But this signing day brings a different sense of worry.

Only 4 of the top 17 players from the fertile football breeding ground of Ohio are currently committed to The State University. But when you look deeper into the Buckeyes’ class they gathered necessities from in-state and ultimately searched for dynamic athletes from the outside.

If this continues to happen year after year, it would be a troubling trend but for one recruiting season it may be exactly what the program needs; new blood from diverse areas to shake up a stagnant program that is desperately trying to shake the label of ‘slow Big Ten style’ system.

Ohio’s top recruits were as talented as any other state in the union and because of this they were given the opportunity to chase their big college dreams at other powerhouse programs. While it was a foregone conclusion in past years if you were a top five players out of the state of Ohio you would become a Buckeye, the trend broke this year and other national powerhouses got involved.

Programs such as Texas, LSU, West Virginia, Nebraska and Pittsburgh all realized that the Buckeyes have been doing something right by recruiting in-state talent and reached out to those players, pilfering many of the top playing in the state. The usual suspects - Michigan, Iowa and Notre Dame - also got their kids which made an even bigger dent into the Buckeyes’ class.

If Coach Jim Tressel was not replacing these top notch athletes with dynamic players from outside the state, there would be riots on the streets of Columbus. But Tressel did a great job of grabbing one of the nation’s best running backs from Indiana - ESPNU’s #7 Roderick Smith - and a couple dynamic wide receivers from Florida and Pennsylvania -

RODERICK SMITH

#12 James Louis and #20 Corey Brown - to go along with a stable of defensive studs from PA, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan and a versatile athlete - #41 ATH Bradley Roby - from Georgia.

Ohio State’s football success has largely been built on the football success in the state of Ohio. It is inevitable that programs are going to realize that one of the best football programs in the country gets their players from an area and will, in turn, try to scour that area for players to build their programs around. Programs like LSU or Texas do not want to come in and pilfer all the talent from the Buckeye state. Success to them is stealing one or two premier players away from the Buckeyes in order to strengthen their recruiting roots and weaken those ties built by the Ohio State staff.

All it takes is one Ohio prep player to make an impact at Texas or Florida and there will be the draw to become ‘The Next’ great player from Ohio to represent his state down South. The pill that SEC and Big 12 fans have a hard time swallowing is that the Buckeyes have been doing this for years and it is not an irregularity for a dynamic athlete from Florida to head to the Midwest with the dream of dominating the Big Ten. Floridians Duron Carter, Chimde Chekwa, Michael Brewster and Brian Rolle played pivotal roles in Ohio State’s run to the Rose Bowl this season and the FLA-OH pipeline will continue to run this year, although not as fluid but running nonetheless. The difference is Florida has enough talent to spread around while Ohio only produces a certain amount of top notch D1 athletes every year.

In all, Ohio State’s class contains eight players from Ohio and is currently ranked 13th by ESPN recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill. Whether high school players in Ohio have decided to spread their wings and take their chances in other power programs or the Buckeyes haven’t done their job by keeping kids from their own backyard in state is a debate that could rage until next year’s class is announced, but the bottom line is that Ohio State will be as formidable as ever in 2010 and their ability to go outside the Buckeye state to attract top talent is something they will have success at as long as the wins on the field keep piling up.

Ohio State Loses Out on top Recruits
Rivals Ohio Prospect Rankings (Although these recruits were seen differently by other recruiting sources)
Cleveland.com Article on Loss Of Ohio Recruits
Sharrif Floyd’s Recruiting Story