The Ohio State football program is on pace to have the worst full recruiting class since Ryan Day took over as head coach. Right now, the Buckeyes have the ninth-best recruiting class in the country, which would be by far the worst class since the 2019 class when they were transitioning between Urban Meyer and Day.
Since then, the Ohio State Buckeyes have had a top-five recruiting class every single year. Adding five-star safety recruit Bralan Womack would certainly help that recruiting ranking. He is expected to pick Ohio State when he announces his commitment on August 21st.
Unfortunately, rumors have popped up that might not be the case anymore. It sounds like the Buckeyes might end up losing out on him to another school because of a lack of NIL, something that Ross Bjork refuses to use with collectives like every other school in the country.
Ross Bjork continues to handicap the Ohio State football team with his approach to NIL
Bjork hasn't been approaching NIL like every other school in the country. Instead of allowing outside collectives to help funding for incoming recruits, he insists on handling the NIL through the Buckeye Sports Group, which is the in-house NIL collective that the university has.
That approach is why the Buckeyes can't land some elite recruits in the 2026 recruiting class, in addition to the money they are spending to keep the current roster intact. Ohio State is lagging behind, despite the fact that Bjork touted the fact that he wanted the university to be at the forefront of NIL.
Womack is the best safety recruit in the country. The Buckeyes should try everything they possibly can to land him, as he can eventually replace Caleb Downs if he were to be on campus. Texas Tech has taken the opposite approach, and they are landing some of the best recruits in the country.
Unless something changes, the Buckeyes are going to continue to lag behind in recruiting because of this. They have a limited amount of time to fix this issue before the class becomes so far gone that it's unsaveable from an elite recruiting class standpoint.
Bjork is to blame for this. Day would probably be open to spending a little bit more money for five-star recruits if it were available to him, which would happen if Bjork opened up money from collectives. The fans are begging to help the team out.