I normally don't count JT Barrett in this sort of conversation because he's not really a first-year starter in the same way as 2018 Haskins, 2019 Fields, and 2021 Stroud. Barrett was recruited by the previous OC for his ability to perform in a very different offensive system, had already had 30-whatever games of starting experience, and already had three years of development (or non-development, thanks Beck/Warinner) under his belt. Barrett improved noticeably as a passer in his last year and that's a credit to Day, but I also don't really think he's a good analogy for what to expect from McCord/Brown either.

Personally, there's one very simple stat I keep coming back to: Three QB's have been first-year starters under Day (Haskins, Fields, Stroud). All three of them performed well enough to be Heisman finalists in that first year and were firmly established as "this guy is a future first round draft pick". 

And that's basically what I'm expecting from McCord/Brown. Maybe there's some growing pains early in the season with McCord/Brown. Maybe the Bucks even lose a game because he's not ready to pull out a last second drive or makes a key mistake or etc. Maybe the run of Heisman finalists ends due to quirks in voting or whatever. But I do expect by mid-season, the QB will be a star and at least at the level where you can reasonably say "yeah, he should get Heisman consideration" and "this is a future pro".

That's an interesting parallel and comparison. Hadn't considered that, but it's a really good thought exercise.

I think the 2022 Buckeyes can either be 1992 Kentucky - who lost an epic game but went on a nice run of success or the 1992 Basketball buckeyes who saw the end of an era in that loss 

I don't see any way we're 1992 Buckeye basketball in this analogy. That team was really built on one incredible player without a sustainable core to keep it going after he left. It may have looked like they were building something with the continued improving success, but there was already a shaky foundation underneath. Jim Jackson left for the NBA and everything fell apart.

By comparison, while there are some questions about 2023, I don't see any fundamental flaws; if anything, there's an obvious path for 2023 to have a similar or even better team than 2022 despite the loss of Stroud to the NFL.

Kind of surprised there's 11 different names and none of them is Kyle McCord. Yes, he hasn't won the job, but it seems very possible for McCord to basically replicate 2018 Haskins - win the job in spring, have a monster season in the fall, be a Heisman finalist, and leave as a first rounder.

It'd be a gutsy swing to take in your Very Very Very Early mock draft, but it seems like a very plausible swing to take.

I can't pretend to know anything about the technical details of offensive line play and certainly not at a G5 school...but the fact he's willing and versatile enough to compete at center after being left tackle seems like a pretty good sign that he has a good chance of carving out some kind of role - starters, swing backup, who knows, but something.

Especially since if you look at the scholarship grid, there's a number of guys from the 2020 and 2021 classes who haven't yet sniffed the field and are potentially at risk of getting jumped by younger guys. Not going to name specific names of course because that's not really fair, but like...you can look at the scholarship grid and see some names where you go "hmmm, haven't heard much about him" or which seem to still be blocked by guys ahead/behind.

I wonder about that philosophy when it comes to the transfer portal. That's been their stance on players who renege on their commitments in recruiting and think about re-changing their mind a couple months later, but I think it might be different for a transfer portal player years later if he seems like he's recognized he made a mistake, maybe admits he didn't handle things right, has changed/grown a little bit, etc.

Not applicable to this case (as others note, Singletary did not like his visit and just didn't click), but big picture, I think there might be some flexibility for players who decommit as 17-year old high schoolers but then are interested again as 20-year old college sophs or whatever.

Thanks for adding in the numbers. Financially, Ohio State can absolutely afford a $5 mil buyout. They make well over $200 million a year AND the TV revenue is about to jump - and as you noted, there's also a fiscal cost to losing money due to fan disinterest/lowered attendance/etc. 

But this isn't about the money. Some schools, even at the well-funded P5 level, have kept their football or basketball coaches an extra year for financial reasons. But $5 million for Ohio State isn't nearly at the level where it comes into play for the decision. This isn't a school like Georgia Tech that's secretly drowning in red ink or FSU staring down an ungodly $80 million to dump Jimbo; Ohio State athletics wouldn't be held back by the cost to replace Holtmann IF they thought it necessary.

Instead, it's going to come down to whether or not Gene Smith still believes Chris Holtmann is the right guy for the role...and given how consistently adamant Gene Smith was about Holtmann being the right guy, I just don't see that flipping in a single season, even if this year's team ends up firmly in the NIT. 

Thanks for answering the questions, hope you guys keep this going as a Monday tradition!

It seems like some fans have lost faith on Jim Knowles with how the season ended - or at the very least aren't quite as all-in as they were last year. Fans being fans, they often go way overboard with these things, so wondering your take on two questions:

1.) Do you think anybody within the building has been shaken as well? Or is everybody still firmly in belief and just accepting that hey defenses get beat sometimes?

2.) Where are you at with this? Did the end of the year gives you some pause on Knowles-as-DC?

I agree, though it's not really about the money. Ohio State *could* find the funds to pay the contract if they needed to through a mix of offsets from Holtmann's next job, spreading out the financial hit, asking boosters, etc. 

But I don't think Gene Smith *would* fire him this year.  Every single time Gene has gotten any question about Holtmann, Gene has been firm and steadfast in praising Holtmann - we have the right guy in place, he's building the program for the long haul, he's doing everything right, there have just been some unlucky circumstances, etc. Barring scandal, I just don't see any way Gene Smith gets all the way to "we have the wrong guy, pull the ripcord" in one season. 

They were also far from perfect against Alabama. They turned the ball over twice in the first half and were down 21-6 midway in the second quarter.

A bunch of empty possessions in the second half prior to 85 Yards Through the Heart of the South, then immediately after that play produced a two-score lead, the defense gave a TD right back to bring it right back to a one score game.

And then there was the all-timer of a coaching brain-fart on Ohio State's last offensive possession. Get the ball back with 2 minutes to play and call three straight plays that only use up <30 seconds of clock, none of which involved handing the ball to Zeke. Alabama gets the ball back with 1:30 left and manages to drive all the way to the Buckeye 40.

Ohio State was the better team and both sides made mistakes so it balanced out, but they certainly weren't perfect.

They might not work that late, but it doesn't matter. The way these rules work is that you just need to have submitted the paperwork by the end of the required day - even if nobody is at the office to read your paperwork at 11:55 pm tonight, as long as the transmittal date on your emailed paperwork is "January 16th", it still counts.

Basically akin to how Tax Day works if you're doing a hard copy - if you deliver it to the post office and get it postmarked on April 15th, your taxes are considered on time, even though obviously the IRS themselves won't get it until after the deadline.

Now, I would expect nobody's waiting till 11:55 pm because that'd be a really dumb gamble to take with your career that you won't, idk, suddenly have Internet issues for that last few minutes and end up missing the deadline...but you could. IIRC, there was an NBA player a few years ago who *did* wait until the very last minute to send in his "I want to exercise my contract option" paperwork, something happened to cause his agent to not be able to submit the paperwork in that very last minute, so they ended up missing the paperwork deadline and it became a bit of a mess.

Financially, that doesn't have to be the case - the contract was extended in years but the buyout is still an extremely reasonable $2.5 million; that's absolutely feasible for Ohio State (and their $200 million plus annual revenues for athletics ) to just pay if they want to.

Do you mean someone who's involved in college sports just not the Big Ten? Or an outsider from a different walk of business?

Because I'm just going to note that the latter has been tried three times recently and it's produced Larry Scott, Kevin Warren, and George Kliakoff. That's not exactly the kind of results I'd like to see from the next B1G Commissioner.

I don't know if Ohio State's collectives have anything like this set up yet, but I know other schools' collectives do have these sort of perks. Typically, it's done with a tiered system - the more money you provide, the more perks you get (if you've ever donated to a Kickstarter, same sort of deal with the different "tiers" of support). So you can imagine the general concept as something like:

• If you donate only a few bucks, you get a form email thanking you for your support.
• If you donate in the $100 tier, you also get a t-shirt and a slightly more personalized letter of thanks.
• If you donate to the $1,000 tier, you additionally get a short Zoom call from a player of your choice
• If you donate to the $10,000 tier, you get all of the above plus you're invited to a special offseason banquet with the players

Might have gotten fixed in the last 10 minutes, but just followed your link and it's working just fine for me.

I assume the thread was originally (incorrectly) put in the College Sports forum rather than the correct Recruiting Forum, had to get moved by the mods, and something broke as part of that process.

Under NCAA rules, schools aren't allowed to donate directly to NIL. You might (very reasonably) laugh at NCAA enforcement, the real problem is that paying the players directly (i.e., moving money from the school coffers to the athletes) might turn them into employees and open a whole can of legal worms with employment law. 

For the idea that "other schools are already doing it", I haven't heard/read any reports of schools themselves actively giving money to their NIL collectives. Maybe it's happening behind the scenes and just hasn't broken yet, I don't know. But what I *do* know is that Ohio State is never going to play the game of "lead the way in explicitly breaking NCAA rules and dare them to do something about it". That's simply not how Gene Smith operates and it never has been.

On the heels of two straight losses, an "important week" is on the horizon for Ohio State men's basketball.

Yes, it definitely is. It feels strange to say this when it's only early January and there's still half the season left, but the record is already looking worrying. Every loss thus far has been a quality Quadrant 1 losses that are completely forgivable from a committee standpoint. But even though every individual loss is respectable, five losses in early January is still a lot of losses to have already on the record when you're barely into B1G play. 

Ruggles has the leg to hit a 50 yarder if that's what you're asking. His previous career long was a 49 yarder, but that 48 yarder cleared the crossbar by plenty to have made it from 50. And I've read from a few reporters that said he was hitting a few 50+ yarders pre-game too.

The unlimited coaches rule hasn't yet been approved. There's a lot of reporting and expectations out there that it might get approved this offseason, but there's no firm deadline and it'd be far from the first revision to get entangled in NCAA bureaucracy. That said, they wouldn't want to pass it in mid-year and have everybody scramble to start hiring away assistants from other schools, so if we don't see it pass relatively soon (next month or two), it might be a rule that gets passed but doesn't take effect till after the 2023 season.

As for the latter, I don't see them getting rid of our cornerbacks coach (Walton) to add an offensive coordinator. Even if you're not happy with Walton's performance this year, there's no way they're replacing him with yet another offensive coach. It'd be absolutely bonkers to have six offensive assistant coaches with only three defensive assistants coaches, especially when the head coach himself is an offensive guy...and when your biggest problem for three years running has been defense. 

I don't see how they'd get someone outside the program.

Remember that right now they've got the full complement of 10 assistant coaches (by promoting Keenan Bailey to full assistant). So if you're thinking about someone outside the program coming in to be OC, they're going to need to have another offensive assistant leave.  But how does that happen? If they were going to fire someone, they would have done it last week. The coaching carousel is mostly completed and those new head coaches have mostly filled out their staffs, so there aren't really many remaining options to have an assistant hired away. None of the offensive guys seems ready to retire. 

And if you follow that logic, "taking so long to identify our new OC" doesn't seem like a big deal - if the replacement is already on the staff, there's no hurry. The season is over, there's two full months before the next practice, and the overall offensive strategizing is a very collaborative effort anyways. Does it matter if you announce "our current assistant X is being elevated to offensive coordinator" in early January or a few weeks later? Not really. 

I might have misinterpreted your post. I thought your point was the NBA suffers because of how much player movement there is in the NBA and stars forcing their way out of town - which is an issue that gets discussed all the time with regards to the NBA and is a real concern...but also a lot of the discussion focuses on late career guys while ignoring that you get a nice window early in their rookie contract plus first extension.

But yes, if you choose your NBA team only based on who you liked in college/who went to Ohio State (totally your right, though I do think that's probably much less common than "I grew up in Cleveland so I'm a Cavs fan" or "always loved the Hornets since I was a kid in the 90's" or whatever)? Then yeah, I can definitely see how not being able to ever establish a link with guys in college would affect your NBA fandom because few-if-any NBA-caliber guys would stick around long enough in Columbus long enough for you to really get attached.

I like Blackledge, he does a pretty good job of handling the game without dominating the broadcast or overshadowing anything.

I have zero opinion whatsoever on Noah Eagle. I didn't recognize the name at all, then reading the linked article, the only thing he's ever called where I might have heard his voice is this year on FoxSports CFB coverage. Any commenters out there watch his previous efforts in play-by-play and have thoughts on Eagle?

Hard to pick any, so I'm just going to give some random thoughts:

-Fields had every single thing you'd want, all at an elite level - if we broke things down into like, 20 different aspects of "being a collegiate QB", he's in the top 2-3 in every single one of them. 

-Haskins carried that 2018 team as much as I've ever seen any Ohio State team be carried by a QB. With the garbage defense and shaky running game, that should have been a 9-4 disaster, not a 13-1 B1G and Rose Bowl champion.

-Going to pass on evaluating Stroud right now because it's all too fresh to really judge - need some time and perspective first I think.

-Cardale was absolutely perfect for that 2014 title run with how his arm and willingness to throw deep matched Zeke and the running game. 

-Pryor remains an open question. There's another universe where he's Cam Newton or a years-early Lamar Jackson. Instead, we got this universe where Joe Daniels unfortunately got cancer, Pryor effectively had no QB coach in his college career, and then he got  involved in a scandal that seems laughable in a post-NIL world. 

-To a lesser extent, you can say that about JT too. His freshmen game against Sparty remains a masterpiece, but then a combination of his injury, the loss of Tom Herman, and the 2015 weirdness basically messed up two years of his development as a passer. For all of JT's running, his 2017 season was also pretty solid as a passer (except for one half against Iowa) - what if that was JT's soph season and he'd had two more years with Ryan Day? JT's ceiling as a player was likely lower than Pryor's because he didn't have the same crazy physical tools, but we could absolutely have gotten a much better version of JT if not for wasting two years with Beck/Warinner.

-Braxton was just untouchable in space. He never developed as a passer and unlike JT/Pryor, I'm not quite sure he ever would have even if he'd been healthy in 2014, but he just could do some absolutely breathtaking things on the move.

I am not at all worried about the QB. Day has had three first-year starting QB's in his system (Haskins, Fields, Stroud) and all of them were Heisman finalists. There might be some inconsistency early, it might even cost OSU a game in September (at Notre Dame?), but by the middle of the year, I fully expect he'll be excellent. Not flawless, but plenty good enough to win with.

What I am worried about is the offensive tackle. Losing two Top 50-ish draft picks at tackle is rough no matter what, but it's especially worrying when you note that there isn't really a very clear planned answer - Fryar seems to be the answer to one spot, but the other is a complete question mark. And even if the answer is Michalski, you're still one tweaked ankle away from a crisis. Hopefully they can use the portal to bring in a guy, but if not (or if they do and the guy flops), there's potentially a huge hole.