Ohio State Football: Border war with TTUN is heating up

Ohio is bordered by five neighboring states, but if you are an Ohio State football fan, only one other border state matters, and that’s the one to the north. Not only has Jim Harbaugh been able to get the better of Ryan Day on the field the past two seasons, but he has begun to sneak in behind enemy lines, grabbing four commitments from 2024 Ohio High School athletes.

Ohio’s 2024 class is deep. In fact, many experts are calling it the deepest class in well over a decade, especially at the offensive line position. That being said, whenever a state’s class is as deep as Ohio’s is in this recruiting cycle, it is going to no doubt garner the attention of many of the nation’s top programs.

In years past, Ohio State was able to be pickier with which recruits from Ohio they chose to welcome into their program, thanks in large part to Urban Meyer’s recruiting tactics, which opened more doors nationally to Ohio State than ever before.

Gone were the days of 75-80% of Jim Tressel’s recruiting class coming from Ohio and the Midwest while sprinkling in a couple of recruits from the South, east coast, or West. Programs such as Michigan State then swooped in to pick up 3-star kids from Ohio whose only other offers were from smaller schools.

Mark Dantonio made recruiting Ohio kids who Ohio State overlooked, and then developing them into above-average college athletes by the time they were upperclassmen, his top priority. In fact, one could argue he built his entire program in East Lansing on this very tactic.

When Meyer changed the number of Ohio kids he was going to take as he switched the program’s recruiting strategy into a more national ideology, this offered Dantonio an even better crop of Ohio kids, which in turn made his program even stronger.

During Meyer’s seven-year tenure, it was Sparty who was his greatest in-conference foe. That Team Up North, who was unable to crack Ohio in recruiting thanks to the wall Tressel built around the state, affected the Wolverines more than any other program in the country.

As much as many maize and blue fans might not want to admit it, their program would never be as successful as it has been without Ohio recruits, which is why since 2000, they have fallen behind the Buckeyes as Sparty was beating them out for second tier Ohio talent.

Michigan’s list of Ohio kids who have succeeded in Ann Arbor is long and prestigious. Desmond Howard, Charles Woodson, Elvis Grbac, and Mario Manningham to name a few. Even former coaches Bo Schembechler and Gary Moeller were Ohio boys before they became “Michigan Men.”

When Harbaugh arrived in Ann Arbor, he vacated the state of Ohio when it came to recruiting, and he suffered greatly for it. However, a recommitment to traveling down I-75 into enemy territory has become a priority for our rivals to the north once again, and given their recent success in THE Game, shots are not only being fired on the recruiting trail, but some are even finding their mark.

Currently, TTUN has commitments from RB Jordan Marshall (#3 ranked), OL Luke Hamilton (#11 ranked) TE Ted Hammond (#14 ranked), and OL Ben Roebuck (#15 ranked). Harbaugh and his staff currently feel confident that they will also receive commitments from DE Brian Robinson (#4 ranked), and the big-time recruit of the state in CB Bryce West (#1 ranked.)

Yes, it is true that some of these Ohio kids that Michigan has commitments from did not receive offers from the Ohio State football program. But some did, and they lost out, which isn’t something we as fans have had to deal with in decades.

The recruitment for the West has become an all-out war with daily hand-to-hand combat taking place. If Ryan Day is going to overcome this rival hurdle that he has stumbled over the past two seasons, he not only needs to win THE Game and put the chatter from Buckeye Nation that he is John Cooper 2.0 to rest, but he also needs to make sure he doesn’t allow Harbaugh to make inroads in recruiting the state of Ohio. Otherwise, we may indeed be on the doorsteps of the 1990s all over again.