4-star 2027 Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback commit Brady Edmunds is biding his time until he very likely flips from OSU to either the UCLA Bruins or Northwestern Wildcats. UCLA has blitzed Edmunds with its strongest recruiting efforts, wrapping in Troy Aikman to the pitch with a special video for the Huntington Beach prospect. We all get what's going on here. Especially after Edmunds alluded to the fact he was waiting to see who'd sweep him off his feet. That might've done it, and if it didn't, there will be more convincing coming from the Bruins and, presumably, the Wildcats as well.
Edmunds is soft-launching his departure. It was never a solid commitment to begin with. Mainly, because as Edmunds said himself in so many words, this is merely a business decision for him and his camp.
“I think at this point in recruiting and in college football, it’s a whole different game,” Edmunds told reporters on Wednesday. “So you got to look out for yourself in a sense and that’s kind of what I’m doing. At the end of the day, it’s a business. It’s turning into one, day by day, and so many rules are changing. So for me to just continue to talk to schools and continue to be a recruit still, is I think is key to just protect myself at the end of the day.
“If, for whatever reason, it ended up going the other way, it would be a tough thing to walk away from, just because I’ve been a part of this for so long, obviously committed for 18-plus months, one of the longest commits in all of the class. It means a lot. I mean, my family, just everything like that, my grandpa obviously being from here, so it’s a big deal in my house.”
It's a big deal, but it's a business decision. It feels hard to believe those two statements can be married. Most would agree that it's fine to look at your recruitment this way. Sometimes, though, this current business of recruiting feels a bit soulless.
The Brady Edmunds situation is the new normal in college football recruiting
The Edmunds situation is a sign of the times. This won't be the first time OSU is a prop in a recruiting battle, and it won't be the last. When you have the Buckeye brand, smaller schools will use you to boost their own recruiting wins.
That doesn't make it sting less. Knowing that many recruiting announcements don't mean anything at all, and that you have to follow the news leading up to signing day, is a bit frustrating on some level. There's a lot of bait-and-switch in this sport now. The Brendan Sorsby gambling situation with the Texas Tech Red Raiders is a great example.
It's all about profits. That's true for those behind the product, so that should be the case for the product. It's not about Edmunds seeking a paycheck. He has every right to and should. If he wants the California or Illinois taxes on his earnings, more power to him.
Why did he commit in the first place, then? Commitments used to mean more in this world, across the board in every walk of life. This is just the world now. Get used to soulless statements about doing things solely for profit everywhere you turn. You should be used to it already, quite frankly.
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