Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / Is Ohio State Going To Add More Transfers Before The 2024 Season?
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to buck Eyes tomorrow morning for Wednesday, June fifth. I'm your host
- 0:03Tom Moore. The Akron game in eighty seven days, the game he gets
- 0:06Mahiot in one hundred and seventy eight days. We are headed into Ohio state
- 0:10football camp season that starts today and Gerdaman and I will be among those out
- 0:16at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center covering the camp. Should have Kevin and Mark
- 0:20out there with us as well. It'd be a fun day get to get
- 0:24a little in person scouting. We're going to talk about all the stuff we'll
- 0:27get to do at camp, and some of the guys will be at camp
- 0:29and all that stuff. We're going to do that in a minute, but
- 0:31first it starts with some news about Ryan Day. On Tuesday, Day was
- 0:35honored for his work involving mental health. He was out there with Ohio Governor
- 0:40Mike Dwayane. So, yes, the most powerful man in the state of
- 0:43Ohio and also the governor there together and also the second most powerful man in
- 0:47the state of Ohio. Tony Gurdamer was there. Tony, let us know
- 0:51a little bit about the event and what Ryan Day was honored for. Yeah,
- 0:56the event was to the Faces of Resilience fundraising event to raise funds but
- 1:02also to honor Ryan and his wife Nina Day for a one million dollar gift
- 1:07that they gave back in twenty twenty two to help mental health with young people.
- 1:14And the event basically celebrates and supports the planning of planning and development for
- 1:19a comprehensive center for Psychiatry and Resilience at Ohio State. So you had the
- 1:25head doctor there involved as well, So got to have a little presser with
- 1:29the doctor, with the governor and with the Days talking about mental health,
- 1:33the importance of it, how it has impacted the team, how this was
- 1:38something that Nina Day has wanted to do since basically Ryan got the head coaching
- 1:44job. Basically I don't know, it was the day after. So once
- 1:48all that's done, she's like, Okay, well, what are we going
- 1:49to do with this platform? And this is something that they've obviously been close
- 1:55to for years and years, and Nina talked about her own struggles with anxiety
- 1:59and things like that, So something that is obviously near and dear to their
- 2:02hearts and they're helping to do something about it. Yeah, and I'm guessing
- 2:07most people who are listening to this would know this. But the days started
- 2:10the On Our Sleeves Foundation. That is a foundation specifically working on mental health
- 2:16involving children, So you can you can find much more information on that if
- 2:21you want to look that up. They do a lot of work work at
- 2:23Nationwide Children's Hospital and organizations like that. So yeah, there's Ohio State coaches
- 2:29generally will have an issue something that they want to really be a champion of
- 2:32use that platform for good and that they's have certainly done some great work in
- 2:38the area of mental health and especially mental health and children, so they should
- 2:40be should be and were on Tuesday congratulated for that. After that they met
- 2:46with some of the folks, including Tony to talk about some you know,
- 2:50arguably less important stuff like college football, and he was asked, you got
- 2:57a chance to talk to him a little bit about you know, right now,
- 3:00this is a time when it feels like everyone's roster is just in permanent
- 3:04flux. But the transfer portal now is closed, and it sounds like the
- 3:08Ohio State roster as it is set right now is very likely, barring something
- 3:13really really surprising, probably going to be the Ohio State roster heading into the
- 3:16fall YEP, that's what Ryan said. They're done basically, and so now
- 3:24I think there are three or four under the eighty five limits. So they'll
- 3:28elevate some walk ones, give them some scholarships, or maybe just hold them
- 3:32off, you know what, hold it out like a carrot and see how
- 3:36they like that. But yeah, not expecting any more players can in certainly
- 3:39not out there looking and I don't even know who else is out there and
- 3:44left that would be of the caliber that Ohio State would be interested in.
- 3:47So they've got that locked in. They've got summer workouts going on. They
- 3:52just elected their leadership council this past weekend, I believe, so they're moving
- 3:57head first in to the summer workouts and the preparation for fall camp, which
- 4:02is I don't know, maybe like exactly two months from today maybe. Yeah,
- 4:06that's usually first week of first week of August, usually like a Tuesday,
- 4:12right is the first day there? So yeah, that's that's coming coming
- 4:15fast and furious. Something else you got a chance to ask him about.
- 4:18Was you mentioned walk On's there? You mentioned the eighty five scholarship player limit
- 4:23there there is a proposal out there, there's an idea sort of floating around
- 4:26that you know, hey, maybe you need to cut back on the number
- 4:28of players on a roster. Maybe the walk on thing needs to kind of
- 4:31end and it just needs to be eighty five. You get a chance to
- 4:34ask Ryan Day about that. What were his thoughts on that? Yeah,
- 4:39Like, I think he's echoing every single college football coach out there saying that
- 4:44they don't want this rule. They they And I asked Brian Day about it,
- 4:47and he's like, you you have there are a lot of a lot
- 4:50of things to consider now with revenue sharing, and so that's why this has
- 4:56become an issue because the fewer players you have, the fewer that the less
- 5:00is to share. Basically, the more you get to keep, if you
- 5:01will. And it's expensive to have more and more players if you have to
- 5:04share the revenue with them. Or so the story is told. But you
- 5:10know, Day understands the complications, the complexities, but also does not want
- 5:15to lose the walk ons, and so he's hopeful that whatever happens, there
- 5:23will be a way to keep those walk ons. And I know people will
- 5:27say, well, the NFL has a fifty three man roster, but they
- 5:30can go out on the street and get anybody any single week, or go
- 5:32to grab another team's player on the practice squad and bring them in whenever they
- 5:36want. So they have fifty three on a roster, but they really have
- 5:41if you count every single player on all of the practice squads, you can
- 5:46you know that's kind of their player as well if they need them. So
- 5:48it's not just fifty three players and having just eighty five players who are not
- 5:54professionals, who are just you know, eighteen to twenty two year olds,
- 5:59you're asking them a lot. And so the coaches, I have not heard
- 6:02any coach that is in favor of this, and Ryan Day certainly is not
- 6:05in favor of the eighty five and and it may not and maybe maybe it's
- 6:10ninety five whatever, But you're talking about programs like Ohio State, they have
- 6:15well over one hundred players and you know, twenty five to thirty five walk
- 6:18Ons. There's a proud history at pretty much every program involving their walk Ons,
- 6:24walk Ons elevating two scholarship players. You know, or you know you
- 6:28don't have enough scholar or you have you're at eighty five. So the walk
- 6:30Ons don't get a scholarship. They're paying their way to play, and some
- 6:33great memories, some great experiences, some great stories come from all of that,
- 6:38and so definitely does not want to give that up. Yeah, I
- 6:42would imagine that would be a tough sell with pretty much any football coach,
- 6:45especially with the season potentially getting longer. You're probably going to need more people,
- 6:48not fewer. So that seems like that's probably probably not going to be
- 6:53an idea that goes all that goes over all that well with college football coaches,
- 6:57but as we have seen in the past, they do not always get
- 6:59the fun I'll vote on that type of thing, So we'll see. We'll
- 7:01see where that ends up. Heading. I can tell you where we're going
- 7:04to be heading, and that is to the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Wednesday
- 7:06morning to cover Ohio State's first summer camp of the year. This is always
- 7:12a really fun chance for us to get out there and you know, spend
- 7:15some time in the sunshine and or thunderstorms as the forecast is calling for on
- 7:19Wednesday afternoon, but it's a chance to see a bunch of players who are
- 7:24potentially trying to earn an offer from Ohio State, Guys who maybe are younger
- 7:29guys who are You're getting a first look in person at some of these guys.
- 7:30I remember covering a safety by the name of Caleb Downs a couple of
- 7:34years ago at camp, getting some great pictures of him working with the coaching
- 7:38staff. Whatever happened to that guy, But lots of other guys branded in
- 7:42this we saw at one of these camps. Carnel Tate, We've seen at
- 7:44these camps. I mean, all these guys, Tavian Saint Clair, We've
- 7:46seen at these camps over the years. So this is a really good opportunity
- 7:50to see, you know, the potential stars of the future up close working
- 7:55with the Ohio State coaching staff. And it's also sort of it's not an
- 7:58official recruiting event, but you know, some times you guys get guys who
- 8:01earn an offer at these camps. Sometimes you get guys who you know,
- 8:03cement relationships with coaches and end up committing, you know, following a couple
- 8:07of days of these camps. So you know, this is you know,
- 8:11this is potentially a very impactful day in the future for some of these players
- 8:15and for the program as well. I have always found, though Tony,
- 8:18that this is something where there's some positions that are better to evaluate in these
- 8:22camps than others. Like you can watch the running backs, and the running
- 8:24backs are generally just kind of working through drills, and it's not you don't
- 8:28necessarily get a sense for the type of vision they need that kind of thing.
- 8:31You get a sense for how fast guys are, how shifty, but
- 8:33not necessarily the vision for running back. But there are certainly positions where I
- 8:37you know, you can look at guys, especially during what they call the
- 8:41winter loser position at the end the winter Loser drill, where guys are going
- 8:43one on one where you get a chance to really get the measure of how
- 8:48these guys stack up. Yeah, and it's interesting to watch them over a
- 8:52couple of years, as we've gotten to see with the tav in Saint Clair,
- 8:56where you see the growth from year to year. But anytime you can
- 9:00watch some one on ones, so you take it with a grain of salt,
- 9:03but still it's fun to watch. And like you said, you can
- 9:05see when somebody just dominates and continues to dominate, then you know, you
- 9:11take note of that and all of these different evaluations that go on, whether
- 9:16it's you know, the linebackers. And you got James lorn niis out there
- 9:20yelling or wherever it's happening. The amount of eyes, the amount of pressure,
- 9:26this is all. You've got so much moving on around you, going
- 9:30on around you, and everybody's vying for like a scholarship, and it doesn't
- 9:35happen for many, and it happened, and you most of the guys there
- 9:39are going to walk away and without a scholarship. And the guy that I
- 9:43keep thinking about is Antoine Winfield Junior. A few years back, he was
- 9:48he was part of the class of twenty sixteen, so this probably would have
- 9:50been twenty fourteen. On the indoor field at the Woody, I'm standing behind
- 9:56Antoine Winfield Senior watching his son work out, vying for scholarship offer from Ohio
- 10:01State. He did not get that scholarship offer. Tom And before you look
- 10:05to see who Ohio State signed in that twenty sixteen out of the secondary,
- 10:09I'm gonna give you some names that Ohio State signed instead of offering Antoine Winfield
- 10:13Junior. And you tell me if they did the right thing. Now,
- 10:16Jordan Faller, I'll give you that one. Then you've got pardon me.
- 10:22Wayne Davis out of Norfolk, Virginia, Brod Jay Burns Corner out of Trinity
- 10:30in Louisville, Kentucky, Johnson Wentz, and Kareem Felder. Kareem Felder eventually
- 10:37did not make it into school. So those are the guys that they felt
- 10:41were more equipped to play at Ohio State than the son of one of the
- 10:46greatest to ever do it. Am I bitter? Am I disappointed in the
- 10:50the decisions of these grown evaluating men. No, no, no, yeah,
- 10:56I'm just I'm just glad this is not something that you're still angry about
- 11:00literally ten years later. That's wonderful. I'm so glad to hear it.
- 11:03There are good stories as well, Tony doesn't have to be just bitter and
- 11:07angry about everything, you know. I think back to like Darren Lee,
- 11:09for example, who kept coming and kept coming and kept coming and kept coming,
- 11:13and Luke Fickle kept pounding the table and pounding the table and pounding the
- 11:16table for him and he ended up being a real impact player on that twenty
- 11:20fourteen National championship team. And you see guys typically you can sort of almost
- 11:26see it coming when you're at camp, where you'll see a guy and you
- 11:28know, you can tell usually from across the field who are the potential prospects
- 11:33versus who are the guys who are just there to camp and get the experience,
- 11:37And so you can sort of tell immediately. And then you watch a
- 11:39guy maybe dominate some of the drills, and then generally if Ryan Day comes
- 11:45over to watch that guy, you know the position coach has it, texts
- 11:50Ryan Day, hey, come over and watch so and so that's an indication
- 11:52Okay, they're thinking about it. And then if the player goes back into
- 11:56the coach's offices. A lot of times during the course of camp, you
- 12:00can sort of see the coaching staff walking guys back into the building is like,
- 12:03uh huh, I bet I know what's happening now, And those are
- 12:05the guys who tend to If you see that, it's a good indication.
- 12:09You know, hey, you might be might be looking at someone who's going
- 12:11to get an offer. And generally you'll see that tweet it out by the
- 12:13player later on in the day. We will sometimes get a chance to talk
- 12:16to those guys at the end of the camp at the end of the day
- 12:18as well, so we get a chance to get to know some of these
- 12:22guys a little bit and get some more information on them. So really,
- 12:24really a big, big potential day in the careers of a lot of these
- 12:28different guys. There are a bunch of guys coming in this week, Tony,
- 12:33I'll just run through a couple quick that just are players of me,
- 12:35you know, maybe some note people to keep an eye on. Twenty twenty
- 12:37five offensive lineman Nolan Davenport out of Massialin. He has offers from Penn State
- 12:41and Wisconsin and Missouri and others. Could potentially be an Ohio State offer.
- 12:46We'll see. He will get a chance to work out with Justin Frye.
- 12:50Twenty twenty six tackle Adam Guthrie out of Miami Trace. He's got offers from
- 12:52Penn State and Tennessee in Oregon, Miami, among others. John Stover.
- 12:56He's another top twenty twenty six lineman. He's out of Texas. Probably more
- 13:00of an inside guy Gothrie, maybe more of a tackle. Penn State and
- 13:03Oregon offers there. Twenty twenty six cornerback Victor Singleton out of Toledo Central Catholic.
- 13:07He's a top fifty player in the country, putting to two four seven
- 13:09so those are some of the names. The name that's going to get the
- 13:11most attention this week, and justifiably so. Though Tony is jakeem Stewart,
- 13:16number one player in twenty twenty six, potentially could reclassify at twenty twenty five.
- 13:20He's someone that Mark and Kevin met with on Southern Swing. He's going
- 13:24to be there Thursday, and you can usually you know, first of all,
- 13:28you can usually tell the guys who are like this is potentially the number
- 13:31one player in the class. Those guys are not very hard to pick out.
- 13:33I am not the single most talented scout out there. I can usually
- 13:37pick those guys out. That's one where you know, this is potentially a
- 13:41very big visit to get someone who is a Louisiana native up to Columbus on
- 13:46something that's an unofficial visit, get a chance to see the facilities, meet
- 13:48the coaches, all that kind of stuff. This is potentially a really big
- 13:52deal for Ohio State to have him on campus this week. Yeah, and
- 13:54a lot of these guys look come up, but they're not going to work
- 13:56out, you know, so regardless, State's going to take the visit.
- 14:01Whether you want to work out or not. Just to be able to continue
- 14:03to build that relationship. And if somebody from Louisiana wants to come up on
- 14:07their own dime, somebody, you know, a five star defensive lineman from
- 14:11the South, Yes, come on up. Do you have do you have
- 14:15mac Quest? Do you know how to get here? And and this is
- 14:18one that you take it and you Larry Johnson, I'm sure is going to
- 14:22be spending time with them. It is always interesting also during these camps to
- 14:26watch the position coaches. You don't have to watch long to figure out who
- 14:28are the targets because they'll pull them aside, they'll run them through again,
- 14:33they'll talk to them while other drills are going on. And then you've got
- 14:35the assistant running the drills. So they're they're they're coaching up, they're building
- 14:39relationships. And I remember watching Devin Devin Sanchez last year with Tim Walton,
- 14:46they were pretty much shouldered to shoulder for a lot of a lot of one
- 14:48of those afternoons just watching drills, going through them, talking it out.
- 14:54And we've seen that with Larry Johnson for years doing that with all kinds of
- 14:56defensive linemen coming in, and I expect we'll see that again this. Yeah,
- 15:01as you're talking, I'm just thinking through all these current O High state
- 15:03football players that we saw coming in at camp. Or remember Hero Canoe coming
- 15:07in with the group from Europe and watching him and boy Larry Johnson spent a
- 15:11lot of time with Hero Canoe. Now Hero Canoe on the Ohio State defensive
- 15:13line, so high Hamilton a few years ago, working at the working at
- 15:18the camp. So yeah, this is this is one of those things that
- 15:20I think the average fan probably doesn't pay a ton of attention to, but
- 15:24is a sort of low key, very important month and very important series of
- 15:28events pro high state recruiting for not just this current class, but for several
- 15:33classes in the future. There are some twenty twenty seven quarterbacks that we're going
- 15:37to be keeping an eye on, which I'm not emotionally ready to talk about
- 15:39the recruiting class of twenty twenty seven yet, but we'll get there eventually.
- 15:43But we will be out there on Wednesday covering everything for you at bucke huddle
- 15:48dot com and YouTube dot com slash bucke Huddle. We'll try and get you
- 15:50some interviews, get you some photos, some video, all that kind of
- 15:54good stuff. Get you some real, genuine Ohio State football content coming to
- 16:00you from from the Woody Hayes Athletic Center this week again at Buckey Huddle dot
- 16:04com and at YouTube dot com slash Buckey Huddle. That'll do it for today.
- 16:07Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day. We'll
- 16:10talk to you tomorrow.