Anyone here who has been following the recruiting threads recently (thanks Spooner!) has heard the rumors that there will be a hard cap of 25 players for the 2020 class. Yesterday, this rumor was confirmed by Birm over at Lettermen Row, meaning that the Buckeyes will have to be very picky with regards to their few opens slots in the class.
Not including projected grayshirt kicker Jake Seibert, we have 19 scholarship commits for 2020 class. However, there was some confusion as to whether Michael O’Shaughnessy (a punter from the 2019 class who was initially reported to be grayshirting) would also be counted against this year's scholarship limit.
Given that, I reached out to Birm, and he informed me that O'Shaughnessy was actually a preferred walk-on, not a grayshirt. This means that the definitive number of open slots the Buckeyes have left for the 2020 recruiting class is 6.
Note: I initially was going to post this in Spooner's latest Class of 2020 Recruiting News thread, but I decided to not clog another one up with the hard cap discussion.
Edit: Apparently the 25 hard-cap has not been definitely confirmed. As a part of his most recent article on Lettermen Row, Birm just posted the following:
About that 25-man hard cap at Ohio State
We talked the other day about the 2020 recruiting class and how many players will end up at Ohio State. After speaking to sources over the last few weeks, we settled on a 25-man class for Ohio State.
That number was determined, primarily, as a result of those conversations with sources in Columbus who believed that the number moving forward had to be 25 because of stricter NCAA regulations that were enacted last year.
On Thursday morning, I received a message from another source close to the Buckeyes. That source indicated that after further review, there was still some chance the class is bigger than 25 after some internal discussions. How does the number go above 25? How far above can it go? That’s still apparently going to require some sorting out.
One source said: “It’s complicated.” But just know that the hard cap of 25 appears to no longer be an issue.
So in summary...
