The Hurry-Up is your nightly dose of updates from the Ohio State football recruiting trail, keeping tabs on the latest from commits and targets from around the country.
Day on transfer portal
It’s not official yet, but we are working closer and closer to the NCAA approving the one-time transfer rule that could be a landmark rule change across college sports.
The Division I Council met on Thursday to go over the rule once again, and it is set to meet on April 15 to discuss it once again. It’s expected that April 15 will be the day the measure will be approved, according to Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger.
Whether it passes or not, transfers are going to continue to be more prevalent than they ever have been. For a while now, Ohio State’s head coach has been supportive of transfers either in or out of the Buckeyes’ program, and Ryan Day was certainly a huge benefactor of one of the biggest transfers of the last five years in the sport when Justin Fields left Athens for Columbus. Day and the Buckeyes have also seen their share of guys exit the program for other pastures.
On Monday, Day was asked about his philosophy on the one-time transfer rule and whether or not he thinks about that during the recruiting process in each cycle.
“There’s two ways to look at it, and I’ve been very supportive of guys who have left our program,” Day said. “I have supported them in their waivers, and I think all of the guys who have left the program in the last two years have gotten waivers to play immediately because I’ve supported them in that area. They’ve all left in good standing. I think if they have the opportunity to go play somewhere else, they should.
“I think we have to be careful about letting them do that multiple times, though. It’s tricky. It is a slippery slope, but I’ve decided to support these guys on where they wanna play.”
The one-time transfer rule is going to become more prevalent and will probably be used in recruiting pitches moving forward.
For instance, if there are already two five-star, or borderline five-star, quarterbacks (to use this position as an example) already on a college team's roster, that could provide some hesitancy for a high school junior or senior to have the desire to commit to that program. Once the one-time transfer rule is enacted, though, a coaching staff can use that as part of the pitch:
Come here and compete. You'll get a fair shot, but if you don't win the battle, you'll learn for a year under our system, grow physically in our strength program and mentally with our coaching, and if you lose out on the position battle, we'll do our best to put you in a good spot if you decide to move on.
Alston hopes to book Columbus visit
And speaking of future visitors, we already know that Ohio State will be hosting priority running back targets Dallan Hayden (June 18-20) and Nicholas Singleton (June 25-27) on back-to-back weekends.
Hayden broke down his recent Columbus trip and previewed his official visit with Eleven Warriors last week, and Singleton caught up with us and updated his decision timeline last week as well.
Hayden and Singleton, at this point, have emerged as the Buckeyes' top two targets at the position (1a and 1b, respectively, is my best guess after getting a read on the situation), but still lurking as one of Ohio State's top RB targets in the 2022 cycle is Georgia's Damari Alston.
Unlike Hayden and Singleton, however, Alston has not visited Ohio State. He has told Eleven Warriors multiple times that he is looking at setting up a visit as soon as he can, and that stance hasn't changed. Alston is still trying to make a visit to Columbus with his family, and we will update further as we get word. He is looking to make his visit in June, but perhaps he will find his way to campus sometime this spring for a self-guided visit.
Getting back to normalcy in late 2022 cycle, 2023 class
Obviously, the past year in recruiting has been 100x weirder in a world that's already pretty weird.
The prolonged dead period has thrown a wrench into everything, and it speaks to the power of Ohio State's brand and the program's ability to build relationships from afar that the Buckeyes have been able to sustain one of the best recruiting runs in the modern era despite it all.
It really feels like we're starting to turn the corner back to normalcy here, though, and we could be in for a big summer.
We're likely hurtling toward an incredibly busy and potentially wild June and July, both here at Ohio State and nationwide, in terms of visits, offers, commitments and flips. So buckle up and stay tuned.
