The Ohio State football program should be feeling great about its recruiting class in the offseason, coming off a national championship. Whenever a team wins a national championship, there is usually a recruiting bump that comes from that. That has not happened for the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Right now, the Buckeyes have just the seventh-best recruiting class in the country. They just had an in-state recruit flip his recruitment to North Carolina. The 2026 recruiting class is actually shaping up to be the worst recruiting class that Ryan Day has had since he took over as head coach.
A big reason for that has been how poorly Ross Bjork has decided to run the NIL that they have access to. Despite the fact that the Buckeyes are spending the third-most of any program in the season, they are willingly turning away more money that can help them get recruits.
Ross Bjork isn't doing the right thing with NIL for the Ohio State football program
Ohio State has decided not to allow outside collectives to give them NIL money, instead funneling all of their NIL through the university. Other schools are not following suit, as they believe that there will be legal challenges coming for the House settlement that was agreed to.
That settlement is the main reason why so many NIL deals are being denied with current recruits, but that won't last. The Buckeyes should allow collectives to still help collect money so that they can afford their current roster in addition to top incoming recruits.
Once August 1st hits, the Buckeyes will have a little more clarity on what is going on in the world of NIL. That's when the settlement is supposed to officially come into effect. Until then, there is a lot of gray area that Bjork and Ohio State aren't taking advantage of.