Former players littered the sidelines, signed autographs, shook hands with coaches and individuals who not long ago were teammates. They cheered. They clapped. They took selfies They took part in a halftime throwing competition and jeered at each other when mistakes were made after they failed to haul in a punt.
A record crowd watched in delight, pleased they stuck around to see the old heads show their faces one more time in Ohio Stadium, though the day belonged to those that wore pads and helmets. It was this fresh crop of mostly new faces that had more than 100,000 fans flipping their pocket rosters back-and-forth in order to identify who did what and when.
Cardale Jones, Michael Thomas, Jalin Marshall, Eli Apple, Tyvis Powell, Bradley Roby, Jack Mewhort, Jim Cordle, Kirk Barton, Anthony Schlegel, Bobby Carpenter — the past.
“What I saw today was the future is bright at Ohio State.”– Urban Meyer
Torrance Gibson, Austin Mack, Jerome Baker, Joe Burrow, J.T. Barrett, Michael Jordan, Demetrius Knox, Dante Booker, Chris Worley, Jashon Cornell — the present, the future.
Ohio State's final transition from a senior class with 50 wins to a new one that only has six names was on full display Saturday when Gray defeated Scarlet 28-17 in the spring game.
One book closed. Another one opened.
"There is a common denominator going all the way back to Bowling Green," said Urban Meyer, the man at the head of it all and with a 50-4 record in his first four seasons. "The teams that have great success, they're the ones that come back. If you were part of a really bad class, you didn't play well, those kids don't come back, because what are they going to come back for? To say, 'we were the average ones?'
"University of Utah, to see those kids come back. They're part of the 12-0 team. To see Florida, the two national championship teams come back. To see the teams now, I'm seeing now, you know, the Mewhorts and the Zach Borens come back and look around. Talk about making your day. For the rest of their lives, Zach Borens all the way up to the Eli Apples, this is their home. When they come back, they can be extremely proud of what they've done."
That is correct, with an undefeated season, Big Ten Championship, the first-ever College Football Playoff National Championship and a Fiesta Bowl trophy to show for it — all in the last four years. Meyer and his staff have built a monster. Now, the bulk of it is readying to take the next step and become professionals.
What's left is a roster clouded with talent and inexperience. But make no mistake, it is very, very talented, and began to come into its own this spring and at last on Saturday.
"What I saw today was the future is bright at Ohio State," Meyer said.
Bumps in the road are inevitable as evident on Saturday, with Barrett tossing a pair of interceptions because either his receiver ran the wrong route or offensive line struggled to protect him. Mack, Gibson and Parris Campbell streaked behind a secondary on more than one occasion, but that unit also has Marshon Lattimore and Malik Hooker. The latter's 82-yard interception return to pay dirt served as the game's first touchdown.
There was Baker's out-of-this-world one-handed interception. Torrance Gibson's two touchdown grabs, though one came off a jet sweep when he showed the raw talent of which Meyer doesn't see a ceiling.
But then, Burrow fumbled once and got sacked twice on his first drive when his offensive line barely touched anybody.
The good. The bad. The youth. The talent.
"I think even if you might not have played well, the good thing about it is that they recognize that this was good for them and a lot of people don't have the opportunities, but they know what to do next," Barrett said after. "Even if you didn't play well. But if you did play well, you just gotta keep on going and advance whatever you did."
More than half the roster hadn't done much between the lines in Meyer's program. He hopes he'll eventually get to liken it to 2014, a year when he witnessed a mess of younger players blossom and run roughshod over the nation's best teams en route to the program's first national title in more than a decade.
We are nearly five months away from seeing if that comes to fruition, with trips to Oklahoma, Penn State, Michigan State and Wisconsin intimidatingly resting on the horizon.
"There is a gap there a little bit, whenever you lose nine juniors, there is a gap," Meyer said. "It's like missing a recruiting class."
Ohio State didn't miss a recruiting class. In fact, its last three finished ranked fourth, seventh and third in the country according to 247Sports.
Those guys are still wearing the scarlet and gray, too, anxious to at last get their chance to put the world on notice what they can do in place of the NFL talent set to be drafted later this month.
"When you lose that many players, the most I think we lost was six one year," Meyer said. "That's six premiere players you're losing, so you get that gap and someone's gotta — and it's up to the staff to get there — because there is a lot of talent.
"Just gotta push 'em up a year."
Meyer thought his 2014 team reached its ceiling a year early. Could 2016 be similar? That will be determined later, but Saturday served as the final step of a program reloading in its transition.
"Some former players like Brad Roby come back, Jack Mewhort come back, and then all those players getting ready to get drafted," Meyer said. "Extremely proud of where we're at as a program. They're young. We won't win a lot of games right now, but we don't have to yet, but very pleased with where we're at right now."
