"You're not allowed to have favorite recruiting classes because that is politically incorrect. However, so far, I think this is going to be a special one.”
That is Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer's early thoughts on his program's historic 2017 recruiting class, of which nearly half of the signees are already enrolled. He spoke with Big Ten Network on Wednesday morning on how the Buckeyes keep track of recruiting rankings, top cornerback commits Jeffrey Okudah and Shaun Wade and more:
- Meyer confirmed the JUCO cornerback and former Alabama commit Kendall Sheffield will be at Ohio State in March.
- Meyer: “We've had a pretty good run, you had the '08, the '06 class that ended up doing good things at Florida. You had the '13 class, those are those legendary classes that will go down, bunch of NFL prospects, guys that did it the right way and then obviously that won championships.”
- Meyer on the reality that this is only the beginning for the members of the 2017 class: “That's everyone's dream but that's so far from where we really are. But I'm like every other coach or fan base in America: We're excited, we're jacked, a lot of hard work, lot of good people.”
- On recruiting rankings and prospect evaluations: “It cracks me up where you say 'Well, ratings don't matter.' Well, if they're keeping score we'd like to win that thing. I do look at that.”
- On recruiting ratings: “When you start throwing out numbers like 94 and 5-stars, 4-stars, those aren't the end all but they sure they matter. We're all competitive, we're very competitive here. And to say that we've had one of the historical, great classes of all time, there's a lot of hard work that went into that.”
- Called Okudah an "A, 1A corner" and noted how he is a "great, twitched up guy." Okudah also already recorded a 10-foot, 10-inch broad jump, "NFL Combine-type explosiveness." Meyer said Okudah "will play this year."
- Early returns on Wade as a Buckeye are "over the top."
