Given this article, I say it is time to forget about putting most/all our eggs in the Ohio basket. There are more and better FB players in th e southeast part of the country. The question is: how can we get more to OHIO!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2014/10/28/col.../

Just quickly scanning the Ohio roster there are athletes from Ohio, CA, PA, FL, GA, TX, KY, KS, NE, A.S., Canada, VA, NY, AZ, MS, IL, NJ, MD, W.Va, and IA. There are HS recruits, JUCOs, walk-ons and transfers. It is interesting to me how far the Ohio staff will cast their nets to find the next potential; Carrie, Brazill, Mitchell, Herman, Weller, Tettleton, Blankenship, Thompson, T. Scott, Carpenter, Huynh, Strum, Flading, Lechner, Keller, ...

With Russell, Wyatt, and Johnson leaving, this class will be a bit bigger than expected. It will be at least 16, probably more like 18 players when done, would be my current guess.

At this point, I'm still looking for more defensive tackles and more defensive backs. Both positions will lose a lot of players over the next two years, and Ohio needs to plan ahead and get the players in to fill those positions now, so that those players can redshirt a year before they are needed.

DT - Ohio loses three defensive tackles this year (Crutcher, McLeod, and Davis), and another one next year (Purdum). That leaves only Aloese and Porter. They already have Arp coming in at DT, but if they don't get more than one, they will probably have to move a defensive end to tackle, or get one-two JUCOs next year.

DB - Ohio moved to defensive backs to other positions this year (Alexander to OLB, and J. Brown to WR0. They also will lose 3 defensive backs this year (Ingol, Kristoff, and Carpenter), then 6 more next year, Macer, Bass, Wells, Layton, Terpin and Jones. That leaves only Brunson, Fox, and Nelson at CB, and only Davis, Scipio, and Quallen at Safety. They already have Hagen and Howell coming in, which is a start, but I wouldn't mind seeing another db or two.

Ohio recruiting a dlinemen from california. Apperently he has a couple offers from some mountain west schools and its gonna be interesting what he deciedes. His name is johnny stuart. A bounceback from colorado. Heres his tape http://www.hudl.com/athlete/2965389/john-stuart

Can't wait to see the reaction on here to this wisdom.

TE should be a strong position next year, so I'm not worried about there not being one in this class. The last couple years it hasn't been as strong because injuries took out a number of players, and the remaining players were young. Now those young players have some experience. Next year we'll have Mangen, who has been a 2 year starter, plus Henry and Morgan, both of whom played a lot this year, and Boland, a JUCO from this year who was hurt, and ended up redshirting. Behind them you have Connor Brown and Zach Hawk, a walkon.

I guess I'm confused with the criticism of Ohio here. If half of WMU's recruits are 3 stars, and virtually half of Ohio's recruits are 3 stars, isn't Ohio recruiting 3 star athletes at the same ratio WMU is?

Hi Monroe, I see what you're saying (not sure all the numbers are now accurate-isn't Ohio's class now approaching 16?) but I'm not sure how it's Ohio's fault WMU may have 10 more scholarship offerings for this year than Ohio has. I'd love for Ohio to have 100% of their recruits being 3 star or greater but not even the great WMU is able to do that.

For those interested in a more comprehensive summary of recruiting rankings...

---------------------------------------STARS/RATING
Commits-------------------Scout----ESPN--247Sports----Rivals
Jake Hale---------------------2-------2-68-----NR-----------U
Clayton Glasco--------------3-------3-73-----NR-----------U
Jovahn Fair------------------2-------3-73----2-77----------U
Trae Williams----------------3-------3-71----3-81--------2-5.4
London Cloud----------------3-------2-69-----NR---------2-5.4
Brian Arp---------------------2--------NR------NR---------2-5.3
Austen Pleasants-----------2--------NR-----2-79--------2-5.3
Najee Stevens Mackenzie--2--------NR------NR---------2-5.3
Kyle Belack-------------------2--------NR-----2-74--------2-5.2
Mayne Williams---------------2-------3-71-----NR---------2-5.2
Quinton Maxwell-------------2--------U-------NR-----------U
Javon Hagan------------------2-------3-73-----NR---------2-5.4
Maxell Howell-----------------3-------3-73----2-72--------2-5.4
Elijah Ball---------------------3--------NR------NR---------3-5.6
Evan Croutch-----------------U--------U-------NR-----------U
Menyelek Austin-------------U--------NR------U----------2-5.4
Khamil Rangolam------------2--------NR-----2-70--------3-5.5

U = Completely unknown to the service
NR - Known but not ranked

Other notes:
Scout assigns everyone in their service 2 stars even if they haven't viewed them, which makes it impossible to know if those 2's mean anything

ESPN Starts 3 star ranking at 70.

247Sports starts 3 star ranking at 80.

Rivals Starts 3 star ranking at 5.5

As you can see we have 9 of 17 commits with a 3 star ranking from at least one of the services. We also have 2 players that are 1 tick down from 3* (Pleasants at 79 on 247Sports, Menyelek Austin at 5.4 on Rivals).

Evan Croutch, Quinton Maxwell, & Menyelek Auston are the mystery men. Jake Hale as a long snapper obviously gets no love.

You actually may be able to tell which ones Scout has looked at and rated, and which ones are just arbitrary 2 star ratings. As of last year you could, anyway. Note that if they assign a "National Rank" to a player, that obviously means they actually looked at the player and rated them. Last year a number of players had "National Ranks" assigned even though they were 2-star players. Specifically Connor Brown, Jalen Fox, and Kent Berger had only 2 stars, but had "National Ranks".

This year they have only given "National Ranks" to 5 players, the exact same 5 players that they have given 3 stars to. One possible conclusion is that they now only give "National Ranks" to 3 star players. My conclusion is that so far they have only actually looked at 5 of the Ohio recruits, and they gave 3 star ratings to all 5.