Ohio State has unofficially added a former five-star recruit to its roster for the upcoming season, while it's still trying to woo a current five-star recruit to become a Buckeye this fall.
Although it still hasn't been officially announced by him or the program, all indications are that former USC linebacker Palaie Gaoteote is transferring to Ohio State, so we begin this week's episode of Real Pod Wednesdays by discussing why the Buckeyes are bringing him in, what we think he'll bring to Ohio State's defense and what that could mean for the rest of the linebacker depth chart.
Of course, we couldn't go too long on this week's podcast without talking about J.T. Tuimoloau's official visit to Ohio State; that conversation begins at 22:14. Dan talks about what it was like to cover Tuimoloau's arrival at the airport, then we discuss our level of confidence that he will end up at Ohio State – or whether Nick Saban will be able to close the deal and get him to Alabama – as well as the possibility that Tuimoloau could join Chris Holtmann's basketball team, too.
We also discuss the potential addition of Wilfredo Aybar (38:50), another defensive end who's reclassifying to the class of 2021 and is expected to choose soon between Ohio State and Stanford, and debate whether Emeka Egubka or Marvin Harrison Jr. will have the bigger freshman year at receiver (51:30).
(UPDATE: Aybar committed to Stanford on Wednesday, so if you don't want to hear us spend six-plus minutes talking about something that isn't going to happen, skip ahead to 45:36.)
You can listen to this week's episode of Real Pod Wednesdays in the audio player above or wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
(Programming note: Real Pod Wednesdays will be off next week while Dan is on vacation. Our next episode will be published July 7.)
