Ohio State, Ohio State, Ohio State.
WRU pic.twitter.com/3AgSV7WrF4
— Mark Pantoni (@markpantoni) April 29, 2022
That one tweet pretty much says everything that this article is going to get into, but if you (like me) believe that reading is fundamental, then press on. If not, be content with the idea that Ohio State had three first-round NFL wide receivers on the field at once, and that the guy who helped make that happen had one of the best nights of his coaching life last night.
Last night was Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, and Jameson Williams' time to shine, and their achievements in college should and will be the focal point for the discussion going forward, at least for a little bit. But serendipity made explicit the underlying advertisement for Ohio State football that was having all three of these wideouts go so high in the draft.
It would've been nice for the three to have been the first wide receivers off the board (Atlanta selecting Drake London at the eight spot isn't a terrible pick or anything but I'll remain salty about it), but having them all be drafted in a row within short order and near the top ten is a giant neon sign screaming OHIO STATE BUILDS WIDE RECEIVERS to the rest of the country, and the biggest beneficiary to all of this is the guy responsible for selling exactly that to high schoolers looking to someday make the 12 million guaranteed that he did at one point with the Miami Dolphins. And actually, hopefully more than that.
And potentially a lot more! Last season, when the Eagles drafted DeVonta Smith out of Alabama in the first round with the 10th pick, his 20 million dollar contract was entirely guaranteed, and it's likely that Olave, Wilson, and Williams will get something similar to that. Which is, of course, good news for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but also not exactly a bad thing for their former college positional coach either.
Brian Hartline, unsurprisingly, spent most of last night tweeting about the accomplishments of his former players.
It'd be unfair to say that this was a purely cynical exercise in great advertising, as it's evident that he enjoys his job and the players that he works with, but it'd also be naïve to ignore the extremely obvious: with the exception of Alabama, no other college football program has built this kind of recruiting pitch to wide receivers in the past several seasons.
And what's funny about Alabama is that while they've had some incredible NFL Draft victories in the past few seasons (they had two WRs taken in the first round in both the 2021 and 2020 editions of the Draft, including Heisman winner Smith), that's been undercut in 2022 by Williams being seen as a Hartline and Ohio State prospect that moved to greener pastures rather than an underachiever who was led to greatness in Tuscaloosa.
In any event, not only did last night help continue to establish the Buckeye brand for wideouts (and give Michigan fans a little more blood to wring from their only victory over Ohio State in a decade), but it also sets the program up nicely for the future. If C.J. Stroud and Smith-Njigba continue to be dominant (they will), to say nothing of the rest of the potential superstars on the team, they will be supported by a coach in Hartline who is excellent at his job and a head coach with an offensive philosophy that will only serve to raise the profile of everyone involved.
It's not quite "Just Do It" or "Got Milk?" but the pitch that Ohio State can now make to anyone interested in someday catching footballs for a living is approaching rare air for the Buckeyes.
Brian Hartline was drafted in the 4th round of the 2009 Draft, a few rounds after fellow Buckeye Brian Robiskie, and a few years after Ted Ginn, Jr. and Anthony Gonzalez were both 1st round picks themselves. That 2007 Draft was the last time, until Thursday, that Ohio State had a wide receiver drafted with one of the first 32 picks.
Don't expect another 15 year wait for it to happen again.
